Spring cleaning time is over and with summer in full swing, you might notice your house gradually getting dirtier again. Keeping your house clean can be tricky. There are so many spots that go unnoticed. Only once spring cleaning time rolls around again, do you notice how grimy these areas are. Spring shouldn’t be the only time you get to enjoy a clean house, though. Summer is one of the best times of the year to have a clean house. Here’s how you can keep your house clean all year round.
How to Manage Cleaning Tasks
The easiest way to keep your house clean is to regularly clean different areas. Conversely, letting cleaning chores pile up before you do them leads to the house slowly becoming messier and dirtier.
Once your space is clean, maintenance is a lot easier than letting chores pile up and cleaning from scratch again.
Get into the habit of cleaning as you go. It will save you a ton of work later and make your yearly spring cleaning so much easier.
Setting up a Chore List
Setting up a chore list is one of the best ways to ensure you don’t forget to clean any areas in your house. Have a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly list for cleaning different areas.
For instance, your daily list can include doing dishes, wiping down counter tops and sweeping the floor. The weekly list can add dusting, vacuuming and washing the floors. On your monthly list, add things like cleaning your windows, cleaning out your fridge and repacking your grocery cupboard.
When listing each chore on the list, break it down into smaller sections whenever applicable. So, when you list dusting, list areas in your home that need to be dusted so you know you got all of them. When listing laundry, list bedding, towels, light colors and dark colors separately.
Having a checklist of this nature will help you break big tasks down into smaller sections. Add one or two of your weekly tasks to your cleaning schedule each day and you’ll manage to knock off all the items on your checklist quite easily.
On your yearly list, include home maintenance tasks and special cleaning tasks.
Make a Habit out of Keeping Your House Clean
The best way to keep your house clean is to get in the habit of cleaning as you go:
- When you used something, put it away straight after, or do a daily tidy up session.
- When you spill something, clean it straight away. Don’t wait till later to clean it.
- When someone else leaves an item where it doesn’t belong, put it away as soon as you see it.
- Don’t leave garbage laying around. If you sat eating a bag of chips on the couch, throw the bag in the bin as soon as you get up.
- Include chores like doing dishes or washing the laundry into your schedule to ensure it doesn’t pile up.
Teach everyone else in the house to have the same mindfulness and keeping your space clean will become much easier.
Clutter Makes Cleaning Much Harder
If your house is cluttered, there’s a good chance it’s also dirty. That’s because it’s just so much harder to keep a cluttered space clean. Cleaning as you go is easy if you can wipe countertops down without having to clear a ton of things from them first. Vacuuming floors is easier if you don’t first need to move a bunch of things too.
When your house is cluttered, you’ll spend twice as much time cleaning things than if it weren’t. One half of your cleaning time will be spent shuffling your clutter from room to room as you clean, while the other half will be spent on actual cleaning.
Avoiding Clutter in Your House
The best way to manage clutter, is to make sure everything in your house has its own space. Make sure that the place you store each item makes sense. If you use an item regularly, don’t put it away where it’s out of reach.
If your broom is hard to reach, for instance, you’ll get to a point where you just don’t put it away at all. Either that, or you’ll leave it stored away and neglect sweeping your floors. You use your broom every day, so make sure wherever you store it is accessible.
The same rule applies for everything else in your home. If an item is hard to reach, you either won’t put it away after using it, or you won’t use it all. Because of this, you shouldn’t store things you want to use regularly in hard-to-reach places.
Reserve hard-to-reach storage spaces for storing things you only expect to use occasionally. Things like camping gear or seasonal holiday decorations can be put away in hard-to-reach storage places, as you’ll only need to go through the effort taking these items out and putting them away again a few times yearly.
The more you expect to use an item, the easier it should be to put away after using it. Also store things where it makes sense to have them.
It makes sense to have your coffee and sugar close to your kettle in the kitchen, for instance. That is, after all, where you make your coffee. It also makes sense to have storage for kids’ toys where your children usually play. If your children play in the lounge, put down some baskets to collect toys. This will make it easier for kids to clean up after themselves.
What if There isn’t Enough Space to Store Things?
Hoarding can make it much harder to manage clutter. While some homes are cluttered because there aren’t proper designated spaces to store items, some homes have more stuff than can realistically be stored.
Getting rid of clutter is an important part of keeping your house clean. Try not to buy more things than you can store. Be realistic about how much space you have for things. Just like you need to stick to a financial budget to live within your means, you must live within your means when it comes to your space.
You only have so much space available to you, which means you must use it wisely to get the most from it. Like financial debt, getting more things than you can store in your space will cause stress and lower your quality of life.
Be honest with yourself about what you need. There are a lot of clever gadgets available for different things nowadays, but you probably don’t need most of them.
If you struggle with a small space where you don’t have enough storage for everything you need, try to look out for some clever ways to maximize your storage space, such as a bed base with drawers, or a coffee table with storage underneath.
How to Keep Your House Clean on the Outside?
It’s easy to get so focused on the inside of your home, that you forget to clean the outside too. You don’t need to clean the exterior of your house as regularly as the inside, but you will need to do it occasionally.
Pressure cleaning is one of the best ways to keep the exterior of your home in good shape. You can call a pressure washing professional to clean various different areas of your home exterior. The following exterior areas of your home can be pressure washed:
- Sidings
- Roof
- Driveways
- Patio or deck
- Garage floor
- Walkways
- Outdoor furniture
- Picket fencing
- Gardening equipment (wheelbarrows etc.)
- Outdoor play areas
Booking an annual session for your home will ensure that the outside stays clean. This will improve your home’s curb appeal and make a good first impression with people visiting your property for the first time.
Cleaning your house on the outside is also necessary if you want to repaint it soon. The same applies for when you want to redo the finishing on your patio or deck.
Kleanway Pressure Cleaning offers pressure washing and window cleaning services in Miami. Get in touch to book a cleaning session at your property.
