Cleaning
10 expert secrets to keeping a clean house
Do you have a friend whose house is always clean and tidy? Do you wish you knew how they keep their home so immaculate? Do you make excuses as to why your house is always a mess? Do you blame your husband, the kids, or the dog? Do you wish there was some holy grail for homes where the secrets to keeping a clean house would magically reveal themselves to you over a cup of frothy coffee?
Well, look no further my friend; here are the 10 secrets to keeping a clean house.
10 Secrets To Keeping A Clean House
- Keep your home tidy
Seems simple, eh? It is possible if you live on your own, but if you have a family, not so! You can’t clean around clutter and stuff, so you need to find a place for everything before you clean. Read this post if you’re not sure where to begin. You can then start your journey with a tidy home. Start by putting things away!
- Make your bed
So what does making your bed have to do with keeping your home clean, you might be wondering. It’s all psychological.
Think of it as eating a meal.
If you were faced with a huge plateful of food, you would probably feel overwhelmed and unable to start eating. Housework is the same. It’s about presentation.
The more areas in your home that you keep tidy and fresh looking, the more motivated you will be to keep other areas of your house clean.
When you make your bed properly you get a quick fix or an energy shot of tidiness which tricks your brain into thinking that:
✔️ Housework is easy
✔️ It’s nice to be clean and tidy
therefore you are more prone to doing a little more than before. - Start in the kitchen.
This area of the home makes you feel overwhelmed when it’s in chaos. When your kitchen is messy, you feel your whole home is messy.
Get stuck in and make your kitchen sparkle, fizz, and shine! Get rid of unused gadgets and try to put as much away into the kitchen cupboards as possible to keep your surfaces clean and clean.
Get into a bedtime routine of tidying away the dishes before you go to bed.
There’s nothing like coming down to a clean kitchen first thing in the morning. To read more about how to organize and clean your kitchen, read this post. - Don’t rely on fancy cleaning products.
To have a clean home, your need to work hard. You can buy all the fancy cleaning products in the supermarket, but they won’t do the work for you. Pouring some fizzy stuff down the loo will mask the dirt for a day, but you’ve still got all the pee and poop under the rim to deal with. If you don’t tackle that daily with a scrubber and some soap, you’ll soon find yourself with pee and poop buildup! To keep your house clean, you need to scrub everywhere! If you can see it, clean it!
Read all about the old-fashioned products I keep in my cleaning kit here! - Keep on top of the laundry.
Laundry is another motivation drain, don’t procrastinate. Switch the TV on, and get it done. Wash, dry, fold, put away, and watch how your home becomes magically much cleaner!
If it’s not in the washing machine, getting dried, or in the closet, then it’s clutter!
Read how to keep on top of the laundry here. - Always leave a room better than how you found it.
Whenever you leave a room, take something with you that doesn’t belong in that room, like dirty cups, rubbish, or toys. Look around your living room and see exactly what you could get rid of right now. I bet there are tons of items that you could re-home!
Before you leave a room, scan it to see how you could improve it, straighten the cushions, fold a blanket, tidy some magazines, or pick something off the floor. Every little bit helps. It doesn’t matter how small.
The little things that you do all day long as a matter of habit prevent the snowball of dirt and mess you struggle to clean up in one go! - Spend 10 minutes a day in each room.
Spending 10 minutes straightening each room was a game-changer for me, and it is still one of my favorite tips. I do my son’s room and the bathrooms before the school run, the lounge after tea, the kitchen while the tea is cooking, and any other areas when I have some spare time. You’d be surprised how many jobs you can get done in 10 minutes. I timed all the household jobs and listed them here so you can cherry-pick the easiest jobs to do in each room.
10 minutes in each room every day can include:
✔️ Making the beds
✔️ Putting away laundry
✔️ Tidying the floors
✔️ Putting toys away
✔️ Straightening books
✔️ Decluttering a hot spot
✔️ Straightening cushions
✔️ Doing the dishes
✔️ Sweeping the floors
✔️ Giving the sinks and toilets a wipe
It doesn’t matter what you do in that 10 minutes as long as you improve the room somehow. - Learn to speed clean.
No one wants to spend their days cleaning, right? But it’s got to be done, so one of the secrets to a clean house is speed cleaning. If you want to learn how to speed-clean a house professionally, read this post for speed-cleaning tips. You will learn what order to clean your house in to make the most of your time!
- Don’t get bogged down by perfection.
If it’s clean, then it’s ok. You don’t need to compare yourself to the Instagram perfection that is all over the internet these days. If you have a family, your house will look lived in. It’s as simple as that.
Read this post if you want to know why I suggest you stop trying to compare yourself to the craze of the Hinchers! - Follow a cleaning schedule!
Getting into a good cleaning routine is one of the secrets to keeping a clean house and probably the most important. It needn’t be overly complex. Just get into a routine of doing the same jobs on the same day each week until you’ll eventually find it a habit.
I’ve done the hard work for you here by creating a daily and weekly cleaning schedule so simple that my kids could do it!
What are you waiting for?
Remember getting rid of clutter is one of the secrets to a clean house. You can’t clean clutter!
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