With everyone being at home nowadays, the home can get quite messy more than it used to be. Kids are running around, gadgets are everywhere, and if you have pets, you know how they can just get all over the place! If you are a busy person, whether you work from home or at the office, you might have been wanting to start cleaning up, so we’re here to give you some tips on how to tidy up your house quickly and efficiently!
- Clean Up As Soon As you See Them
One of the messiest places in the house is the kitchen. Specifically, the sink. With all the foodstuff, grime, and stagnant water that goes with the dirty cups and dishes, it’s no surprise that most of us would rather put them off until the last minute. And at the end of the day, when we see the pile of dishes neatly – or un-neatly – stacked by the sink, we tend to lose the drive to clean them because they just look so dirty!
The trick here is to clean dishes as soon as you’re done using them. Don’t wait two hours after lunch. No, as soon as plates start coming up to the kitchen, clean them now. Don’t let the work pile up. The same principle applies everywhere in the house. If you see something that looks like it will be more hectic later on, do it now. Your future self will thank you.
- Schedule a quick cleaning session every night before heading to bed
Save maybe 15-30 minutes every night to clean up, regardless of how dirty it actually is. Use those few minutes to look around the house, maybe organize a few shelves, dust off some furniture, whatever. You don’t have to do major things in this time like vacuuming the carpet. Dedicate this time to doing small things that don’t require much effort, so that the chores don’t become insurmountable before long.
- Start With the Bed, and Do This Everytime You Get Up
This is important for establishing a tidying up habit. It’s a very small thing that won’t take you more than 5 minutes every day. As soon as you get up, fold the sheets, tidy the pillows, and you’re all set! Not only does it get you into a cleaning mindset (and eventually, a cleaning habit), it also reduces the places you have to clean at any given day! Knowing that there’s at least one clean spot in the house is a good motivation to clean up the rest of the house while you’re at it!
- Take out the trash every time you head out
Most of us tend to wait for the trash to really pile up before we take them out, and there’s not necessarily something wrong with that, but there’s something that feels relieving about never having a trash bin that always has to be full. Since you don’t have to expend a lot of effort into tying up your garbage bags and bringing them out whenever you go, just bring them with you on the way out and drop them off! These small things you do will all add up to a tidier, more visually appealing, and more presentable home that feels just nice and welcoming.
- Schedule the Cleaning of Different Areas to Different Days
Let’s face it, cleaning an entire house all in one go is exhausting. Perhaps something that would work better is if you divide the different places of the house into different cleaning days. You could dedicate Mondays to the bathroom, Tuesdays to the bedroom, Wednesdays to the kitchen, you get the idea. It is much easier and less mentally taxing to think about cleaning just one area of the house for the day, and time management is so much better this way. You do not have to sacrifice an entire day for cleaning; you can just clean as you go, and by the end of the week, you’re all set. This also establishes a cleaning habit for you so before long, tidying your house is second nature!
- Get the housemates involved
If you’re not living alone, but with roommates or family, don’t tackle the cleaning tasks all by yourself! Everyone has a duty to help out in making the home a more livable place, so they all have to pitch in! You can be more efficient this way if you delegate different parts of the house to specific people, or entrust specific cleaning days to a particular person. This is so much more efficient, and can go a long way into ensuring a cleaner house for everyone. Just because you are the one who’s the most conscious about having a clean home, it doesn’t mean you’re on your own here.
