7 Effortless Ways to Make Your Home Look Cleaner
I don’t know about you but there are days when I get up and I can’t face getting out of bed – let alone making it! But, don’t worry! Sammy Dolan is here with a few simple hacks and some morale-boosting chat to help you keep your home clean one more step at a time.
It can be hard to maintain a clean home when you are trying to balance it all: Work, family, life, a favorite television show, can all be higher-up on the list of priorities compared to a sparkling clean house. The problem is, we often feel guilty about not maintaining a clean home and find ourselves trying to tackle it all in one day.
This becomes exhausting in the end, and we develop an irritation against all things related to cleaning. It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t need to feel this way about your vacuum cleaner. There are ways to help with maintaining a presentable home, that are much more effortless than devoting an entire day trying to play catch-up.
Here are seven ways that you can make your home look cleaner, all with minimal effort.
1. Make Your Bed Every Morning
Sometimes, it’s hard enough to get out of the house without a piece of toast still in your mouth, as you rush the kids off to school and try to get yourself to work on time. So, if you think I’m crazy to suggest adding making your bed, I promise you, this is an important task.
In the Navy, they teach you to make your bed every morning. Their reasoning is that it allows for you to complete a task right away off your to-do list. You will not only instill a sense of pride within yourself, but you will be more inclined to attempt more tasks that are on your list. They insist that the little things matter, at the end of the day, you will have a complete list of all the “little things.”
2. Wipe Down Countertop and Sink in the Bathroom
Yes, another morning task! But, if you completed making your bed already, you should be ready to tackle this one as well. This doesn’t take as long as you might think. Keep a cloth at the ready, some homemade cleaning products, and after everyone has finished their morning routine, give the sink and counter a quick wipe. This can also be done in the evening. With regular maintenance, when it comes time to clean your bathroom, you won’t have as much to worry about.
3. Do a Load of Laundry Every Day
This may not be as big of an issue for someone who lives alone, but if you are part of a family unit, you know that laundry can really add up. Who wants to spend a whole Sunday washing, drying and folding clothes anyway? (Even more so if you chose to iron your clothes.) If you can complete one load, every day, or at least every other day, you will benefit from a free Sunday to do what you really want.
4. Maintain a Clean Kitchen
No one wants to cook dinner in a dirty kitchen. Having to wash the pots and pans before you can even use the pots and pans, is a chef’s worst nightmare. By putting your dishes away after every meal, whether in the dishwasher or washing them by hand, will make a big difference.
The kitchen is the hub of the home, we share meals, stories, and connect with our family here. When you prepare a meal, try to clean up as you move through the recipe, and by the time the meal is complete, all you’ll have to clean up after are the plates and cutlery. Keep that connection with your family by keeping a clean kitchen.
5. Put Away What You Bring Into The House
Whether you have a hallway, front entrance, mudroom, or a small alcove, this space is often the first thing you, and guests, see upon entering your home. A lot gets passed through this space: jackets, shoes, books, bags, mail, the list goes on, and it can sometimes be too convenient to let it just drop on the floor or on a nearby table.
Make an effort to put things away as soon as you enter the home; jackets and shoes in the closet, mail in a cubby, school bags upstairs. All this clutter is eliminated, and you will feel more organized the next morning when you are in a hurry to get out the door.
6. Maintain a Clean Floor
Choose one floor to vacuum or sweep at a time. Set aside two days per week to deal with each floor individually. On the first day, pick up anything that may have been left on the floor: toys, books, or the like, then vacuum the floor. Depending on the type you have, carpet or hard flooring, you may want to add mopping to do as well.
When the other day comes around, repeat the same process on the other level of your house. If you only have one level in your house, you could choose to split up the sweeping and mopping between the two days.
7. Have Enough Storage to Hold Your Things
When we don’t have enough storage, we often get an overflow of toys, books, clothing, all over the floor. If you suffer from this problem, there are a couple ways to handle it.
The first is if you don’t have enough storage space to hold all your items so that at the end of the day everything can be put away, then it is time to get rid of some stuff.
This can work for toys, an overflowing closet of clothes, sporting equipment; it might be a good time to go through them and find a place to donate that which isn’t used any longer. Often, kids tend to play with the same toys, we wear the same few outfits regularly, and we stop playing a sport because we don’t have enough time. What this means is, you may not really need all of this, and it just causes your house to look cluttered.
The second choice is, if you really feel as though you cannot part with your excess items, you need to go out and buy some more storage or organize your home in a better way. If everything has a place to be put into at the end of the day, then there really is no excuse for the excess clutter.
Adapting these seven tips will start you on the right track to having a cleaner home. One small task can lead to another, and soon you won’t find yourself trying to play catch-up on your day off. Choose the effortless way to maintain a clean home, and see what a difference it makes.
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