Keeping a house clean can be a difficult task. Often times, all the occupants in the house are so busy with work and school, cleaning isn’t very high on the priority list. Before you know it, dishes are piling up, the laundry basket is overflowing and countertops are dusty. A lot of homeowners struggle to know how to keep a house clean, especially if everyone in the family have busy schedules. There’s no doubt that maintaining a cleaner house is on many New Year’s resolution lists. Luckily, there are some general house cleaning tips to help families keep their homes neater and cleaner.
House Cleaning Tips for the Family
In families where everyone is busy at work and school daily, it’s important that everyone also contribute their part to keeping the place clean. Here are a few house cleaning tips that could help busy families:
- Give every household member their own personal glass and coffee mug. Whenever anyone wishes to enjoy a beverage, they’ll need to use their own personal mug. If the mug or glass is dirty, they’ll have to rinse it out beforehand. This might seem like it won’t make a difference, but you’d be surprised how much cups and glasses contribute to dirty dishes.
- Allow each family member to fold and iron their own washing. On washing day, sort the piles of clean laundry by who owns it and leave washing in their rooms so they can put it away.
- Give everyone a specific chore, even if it seems small. For instance, one person can be responsible for feeding the pets, while another is responsible for dusting surfaces.
- Set up an exact schedule for cleaning so that the whole family can know what to expect. If everyone knows which days are laundry days, they’ll be prepared for the extra task of packing away their clothes.
- Teach everyone in the family to clean up after themselves. When they spill something, be sure they know to wipe it clean. If they used something, make sure they put it away.
The Benefits of Family Teamwork
Cultivating habits of cleanliness is beneficial for the whole family. Especially children, who are still learning new life skills every day. Parents won’t always be around to clean up after their kids, so it’s important that children learn how to maintain a clean space from a young age.
Although many parents feel like they should be solely responsible for cleaning, both parents work full-time jobs in many families. If children are old enough to clean after themselves, it’s good to set guidelines for them.
When everyone contributes to cleaning according to a schedule, parents are also able to teach their kids the importance of teamwork. However, it’s best to cultivate clean habits from a young age. This is why even younger children should be encouraged to help with small, easy tasks.
General House Cleaning Tips
A lot of homeowners struggle to keep their house clean even if they don’t have a family. The demands of a full-time job combined with personal obligations towards friends and family can be challenging to balance with housekeeping tasks. Here are some general house cleaning tips to help keep things manageable.
Do Small Things Daily
Set a list of easy daily cleaning tasks. Things like washing the dishes, wiping countertops and putting away clutter can take less than an hour each time if you do them daily.
Doing some basic cleaning every day saves time as opposed to letting things get worse. Once cleaning starts piling up, it takes much longer to get even basic tasks done.
Create A Schedule
Create a cleaning schedule to break cleaning tasks down into manageable portions. Have set times during the week for doing laundry, cleaning floors and other tasks.
Spring Clean over Weekends
Set aside two to three hours every weekend to do some spring cleaning. You won’t have to spend all your time off cleaning. If you simply wake up at 7 on a Saturday morning to clean, you can be done with everything before eleven. This means you still have a large part of the day all to yourself to relax.
Find New Ways to Save Time
Find ways to save time in other areas of your life so you’re able to clean. For instance, if you find ways to save time cooking by making only meals that take 30 minutes or less, you’ll free up some time.
If you’re allowed to work flexi hours at your job, consider going into work at about 6 a.m. This will allow you to skip traffic and leave earlier, so you’ll be saving time that’s normally wasted on the frustration of being stuck in traffic.
Find Ways to Speed up Cleaning Times
Find ways to get great cleaning results without spending as much time. For instance, you can spray you shower with a cleaning solution right you arrive home from work. Later in the evening when you go take a shower, simply use a scrubbing brush to clean the shower out while you’re busy.
The benefit of this is that you can stand in the shower with the water running while you’re busy cleaning, so rinsing will be easy.
You can also avoid a lot of ironing by simply hanging t-shirts out on clotting hangers straight after washing them.
Lastly, you can save time cleaning around the house by avoiding clutter. It’s much easier to wipe surfaces and clean floors when you don’t have to move a whole pile of stuff every time beforehand.
Even if it takes a bit of time, sort through your things and throw out what you don’t need. Make sure that all the things you keep have a designated storage place packed away.
Always Clean up after Yourself
Cleaning up after yourself is an easy way to build positive habits that make your life easier. Practice being more mindful about cleaning things at home sooner rather than later.
Simple things like looking inspecting the contents of your fridge every time you open it help a lot. Not only does this enable you to use all your food before it goes off, you completely avoid the unpleasant task of having to clear out spoilt foods every month or two.
Every now and then, do small things. If you notice your mirror is full of marks while getting ready for work, just take a minute to wipe it. Doing so doesn’t take long and it helps maintain the overall cleanliness of your home.
House Cleaning Tips for Outside
A lot of homeowners think about the inside of their homes much more than the outside. However, the outside of your home also gets dirty over time.
If you have a deck or patio, be sure to sweep it every now and then to get rid of debris. Make sure you also wash the deck surface after having a barbeque there. Use a damp cloth to wipe your outdoor furniture from time to time. After a while, a lot of dust accumulates on outdoor furniture, which makes it appear duller.
But it’s not just your deck and outdoor furniture that need cleaning. The windows, sidings and roof of your house also need to be kept clean.
The good news is that you don’t need to do all this work yourself. Hiring a Miami pressure cleaning company can help you keep the outside of your house clean with minimal effort. You can simply schedule to have your sidings, driveways, roof and windows cleaned regularly. A lot of pressure cleaning companies also offer windows cleaning, so you don’t even have to work with multiple companies.