Keeping a clean home is important to most people, even those who hate cleaning, but few want to spend all of their free time doing it. Fortunately, by creating a flexible cleaning routine that can be adapted to suit time constraints, you can still keep a clean home, while maintaining a healthy balance between that and everything else in your life.
Cleaning tasks to complete daily
The best way to ensure that cleaning doesn’t take up more of your time than you want it to, is by doing a little bit every day, or at the very least, every other day. With this in mind, here are some quick cleaning tasks that can easily be completed every day:
- Making your bed
This is literally the work of minutes, but can make such a big difference to a bedroom.
- Cleaning the floors
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to vacuum and mop your floors every day, but you should at least check to see how grubby or dusty they are, and clean them accordingly.
- Declutter
By taking out the trash, putting kitchen items away in cupboards and drawers, and picking up toys and clothes from the floor, you can quickly declutter every day, and give dust and grime less annoying items and surfaces to cling to.
- Wiping down counters
This is also the work of mere minutes, and since many surfaces in the home can easily become breeding grounds for bacteria and germs, it’s a good idea to spend 5 minutes wiping down frequently touched surfaces in the kitchen and bathroom.
Cleaning tasks to complete on a weekly basis
Daily cleaning is immensely helpful for reducing your workload and keeping your home clean, for more of the time, but some tasks don’t need to be completed quite so often (unless you really want to, of course!), or can be saved up for one day of the week, for example:
- Vacuuming
Depending on the size and grubbiness of your floors, you may choose to spend half an hour a week vacuuming, instead of doing a little every day.
- Bathroom cleaning
It’s usually okay to clean a bathroom once a week, although you may find you need to pop some toilet bowl cleaner into the toilet one night a week for tougher stains, and then give it a scrub once a week. Make sure you get rid of all toothpaste stains and soap scum from sinks, tubs and showers and refresh the towels and bathmats.
- Dusting
This can also be done once a week, and you may use a vacuum cleaner and attachments, or a microfiber duster, or a combination of both to get rid of dust in areas where it commonly accumulates.
Some motivational cleaning tips
It’s all well and good to have a flexible cleaning schedule, but what about those days when you just don’t feel like cleaning?
To help get you in the mood, here are some tips to motivate you into cleaning your home:
- Break large chores down into smaller ones
If a room is dirty and untidy, focus on one aspect of it first, and then over the course of a day or two, get the entire space clean.
- Create a checklist
Everyone loves that sense of accomplishment you get from ticking things off a list, and with a cleaning list, you can do exactly that for an added bit of motivation.
- Clean early
Getting up and cleaning will give you the rest of the day to feel proud of yourself!
For those who like to enjoy a clean home but prefer not to be responsible for it, you should consider hiring a cleaning company. Taking all of the effort out of cleaning, you can relax and unwind in a spotless home for a lot less than you might think, and after all: can you really put a price on cleanliness and peace of mind?