You take a look around your kitchen. There’s a trail of cookie crumbs to the coffee pot, a casserole dish you forgot to soak and a mound of unopened mail on the counter. Then you think about how the shower needs a good scrubbing and the closets need reorganizing. You close your eyes and imagine everything vanishes — except for the living room couch.
Sometimes it feels easier to fantasize about having a clean home instead of just cleaning it. After a long busy day, who feels like cleaning? By mixing some daily cleaning habits into your routine, having an organized peaceful home can become your reality in minutes!
Before you jump in, make it a goal to declutter your rooms as you clean them. You’ll have a much easier time keeping up with a cleaning routine with less clutter. As you clean and declutter, consider these questions:
Are you ready? Fit the following room-by-room tips into your everyday groove and enjoy the results. At at the end of the day, you can kick back, take a breath and savor the cleanliness of your home.
Here are a few reasons to keep a clean bedroom according to a National Sleep Foundation survey:
A clean bedroom doesn’t have to take a lot of time. And now we also know it’s worth it for your health!
Making your bed when you get up takes approximately a minute and instantly gives the entire room a tidier look. Get rid of excess blankets and pillows, as they only get in the way. Use an attractive bedspread to effortlessly make your bed look neat and inviting.
Reserve a day to wash bedding at least once a week. As the statistics prove, you’ll sleep better and feel better all around with nice clean sheets!
Keep a hamper in your bedroom to chuck dirty clothes in. Hang jackets and sweaters immediately after use. As soon as the basket is full, throw a load in the washer.
If you’ve developed the habit of throwing the day’s accessories on top of the dresser instead of back where they belong, you know what it’s like to be left with a twisted, tangled ball of necklaces and bracelets! Whatever piece of jewelry you take off or try on, put it back in its box. It only takes a few seconds and saves you from a bigger mess later on.
The more cleaning and organizing you work into your daily routine, the more access you’ll have to the things you cherish.
It’s easy to let water glasses and mugs of chamomile tea build up on your nightstand, but it’s not easy carrying an armful of dirty glasses to the kitchen at the end of the week!
Every morning on your way to the kitchen, take last night’s glasses with you. Wipe up any left behind watermarks. Put books or magazines back on the shelf or stack them in a neat pile.
Got a little carried away with eating popcorn in bed last night? Wrapped presents in the bedroom with glitter- covered wrapping paper? It’s okay — the solution is quite simple.
Keep a lightweight vacuum cleaner handy so you can easily transport it to any room. Give the bedroom floor a quick vacuum in spots that get used the most. You could do it in a minute after making your bed!
If you follow these bedroom tips every day, when you enter your bedroom at night you’ll feel more relaxed than ever and ready for slumber.
On average, Americans spend an hour a day in the bathroom. That’s two full weeks a year! The bathroom needs daily TLC to make every moment a clean, happy and comfortable one:
Soap scum builds up over time. This can make for a rough Sunday afternoon spent on your hands and knees scrubbing away to no end. It’s a frustrating, exhausting experience that could have been completely avoided with daily upkeep.
After every shower, give your shower a spray with your favorite cleaner. You can use a natural spray, such as a water-vinegar mixture. Just fill a spray bottle with equal parts water and white vinegar and you’ll be set for a couple of weeks.
After you spray, squeegee the walls and floor of the shower to remove excess moisture. Wipe these areas with a towel to make sure it’s dry. Keeping the shower dry will keep mold and mildew at bay.
Also consider using liquid body wash instead of bar soap, as this will also help prevent soap scum buildup.
Have a container of disinfecting wipes nearby for quick cleaning. Every day, wipe the toilet seat and rim with a disinfecting wipe.
Try sprinkling baking soda in the toilet bowl and scrubbing it with a toilet brush.
Voila! Your daily toilet cleaning routine is complete!
Store a microfiber cloth and a bottle of glass cleaner under the bathroom sink or in the closet. After brushing your teeth, give your mirror a quick spray and wipe down.
Keep water running while you brush your teeth to help prevent toothpaste buildup in the sink. After you brush your teeth, remove any left behind toothpaste immediately.
Use a towel to dry the sink after use. This will make it shine and will help prevent dirt and soap buildup.
If you want to feel happy and clean when you’re at the bathroom sink, use citrus or pine-scented hand soap to wash your hands!
Hand towels should be replaced at least every two days to eliminate germs. Have a neatly stacked pile of clean towels ready and drop the dirty towels right in the hamper when it’s time.
Instead of letting towels and dirty clothes pile up on the floor, have a hamper ready for use. When the hamper is full or contains smelly workout clothes, it’s time to get washing! Don’t let dirty laundry build up in the bathroom. Old odors can make any bathroom feel unclean even if everything else is sparkling!
Everyone sheds hair — close to a hundred hairs a day on average! Keep a lightweight vacuum nearby to pick up hair after your shower. Use a towel to dry any moisture from the floor.
Even a little bit of trash could be emptied every day to prevent odors. Next time you get ready to take the kitchen garbage out, make a pit stop along the way and empty the bathroom trash.
Discard any old, expired or unused make-up, medicine, toiletries or cleaning products. Use caddies and shelving to keep favorite items organized and accessible. Don’t let makeup and other items build up around the sink.
When you enter the bathroom, turn on the fan even if you’re not taking a shower. It will help reduce moisture and circulate the air, keeping the bathroom fresh.
The kitchen is where you find nourishment and comfort, indulge your senses and often wind up laughing and eating with family and friends. Even more reason to keep a kitchen clean, functional and beautiful! Here’s how:
In the morning while you’re waiting for coffee to brew, unload yesterday’s dishes and start reloading the dishwasher immediately after breakfast. When your evening snack is over and you’re ready for bed, start the dishwasher so you have clean dishes waiting for you in the morning. It’s a great routine to get in and requires very little time and effort.
No dishwasher? No problem! Make it a habit to do dishes after every meal and keep the kitchen sink empty. Set dishes on a drying rack but have a clean drying towel handy, too. By the time you’re ready to do dinner’s dishes, breakfast dishes should be ready to be put away.
Give the sink a quick scrub with a little bit of dish soap every time it’s empty to make it shine.
Remove excess clutter from counters and pile into a basket to go through at the end of the week. Discard empty boxes, containers and expired items. Put all spices and cooking accessories back in their place after use.
Wipe down the counter with a little soap and warm water and then dry it off. This could take only moments every day after a meal, but it prevents stains and spilled food from building up. After all, who doesn’t love a clean and spacious countertop?
Whether it’s a drop of coffee on the floor or a rim of apple juice on the counter, clean up spills immediately before they dry.
Cleaning a microwave that’s dirty with old splashed food is not an easy task and could take hours. Prevent this from happening by giving your microwave a swift wipe-down after every use.
Cooking can be a lot of fun and very therapeutic, but it can also lead to quite a mess. Keep up with dirty dishes by washing them or loading them into the dishwasher between tasks.
Small steps like this one can help you avoid having to take a big, exhausting step later on. Cleanliness makes cooking an all-around more enjoyable and inspiring experience!
Always keep a broom and dustpan handy to sweep up crumbs. When you’re ready to do a more thorough cleaning of the kitchen floor, there will be fewer crumbs hidden under cabinets and shelves.
As one of the most frequently used rooms in the home, you owe it to yourself to keep a lovely living room for yourself and for everybody who visits. Here are some tips to keep your living room in top shape:
Pillows and blankets make a living room cozy and inviting, but when they are hanging off the couch or in a pile in the corner, they make a room look sloppy.
It’s an easy and quick fix — fold throws so they hang smoothly over the arm of a chair or the back of a couch. Fluff up the pillows and arrange them neatly. Do this on your way out the door or before you make your trip to the bedroom at night. It’ll look as if your living room had an instant makeover!
It might seem easy to build empty DVD cases into lopsided stacks alongside the television or let books pile up on top of the end table. But at the end of the week, all that convenience is now an hour-long chore that cuts into your weekend fun.
It’s simple: when you’re done using something, put it back.
DVDs, magazines, books, gadgets, dog toys, all of it. Make sure they all have a place of their own. It’ll take seconds to put an item back where it belongs but will save hours of tedious reorganizing.
Invest in pretty woven baskets or more shelving to help keep things in a designated area. Discard or donate what you don’t use. Take dishes and cups out to the kitchen as soon as you’re done with them. Get a mail sorter or a tray for important mail and make it a habit to go through mail at the end of the week.
After everything is back in its place and all the dishes and snacks are put away in the kitchen, brush the crumbs from the table tops and wipe them down.
Tote that handy lightweight vacuum of yours into the living room and take it for a daily spin. If you keep up with vacuuming every day, it should take only a few minutes to vacuum the living room as opposed to letting dirt, dust and pet hair build up. Nothing says “clean and comfortable living” quite like a freshly vacuumed carpet!
But what about the basement? Or the closet that’s stuffed with two decades of shoes and jackets? Some tasks simply require more time, so instead of overwhelming yourself with chores that can’t be tackled in a few minutes a day, schedule one day each week to work on more time-consuming activities like cleaning out the garage. Once you get these other areas better organized, you can apply your cleaning habits to these rooms, too!
The more you clean every day, even for just seconds or minutes at a time, the more time you’ll have to enjoy your clean home — without sprucing it up again — at the end of the week. Sometimes a clean home also means accepting that it’s not always going to be perfect, but a little bit of effort goes a long way.
As you can see, having an effortlessly clean home isn’t a once-a-month chore — it’s a lifestyle! By dedicating just a few minutes here and there every day to cleaning, you can enjoy your home to its full potential.
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