Is your house always a mess? Is your sink always full of dishes? Do you have a pile of clean clothes sitting on your bed? This was me & is me when I don’t follow my own advice! Follow these 10 cleaning tips for people who hate to clean to regain control of your house.
To me, cleaning is one of the most challenging things because I dislike it so much. It just feels like this never ending task and having small kids doesn’t help!
BUT it is important, no one enjoys having a dirty house. I know I don’t anyway. You also don’t want to spend your whole day cleaning though. Through lots of trial and error I have finally found the balance with keeping a clean enough house and not hating my life because I’m cleaning all the time.
9 Cleaning Tips:
- Make Your Bed
- Do the Dishes
- Wipe Down Counters
- Have Specific Laundry Days
- Clean Bathrooms Once a Week
- Put Away Toys Everyday
- Get Kids Involved
- Clean the Floors
- Deep Clean Seasonally
Those are pretty basic on the surface, so let’s dive in to the strategy behind these cleaning tips that will help you get a handle on your messy house!
9 Cleaning Tips for People Who Hate to Clean
1. Make Your Bed
It only takes like 1 minute to make your bed. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just needs to look neat. It really does set the tone for the bedroom. My bedroom is visible from the living room, so I find this is super important for me to do every day.
2. Do the Dishes
That’s obvious advice isn’t it? When you have a dishwasher, this is a bit easier. Unload it and load it up throughout the day; then when it’s full, run it. You might find that it works best for you to run it overnight and unload it the next morning so that it’s available to put dishes in throughout the day.
For those of you who have to do dishes by hand, things are much more complicated, aren’t they? I get it, I don’t have a dishwasher either! There are 2 tactics here, you could do the dishes after each meal or you can do them once a day.
I choose to do the dishes first thing in the morning. There are 5 of us, so not too many dishes. We each use the same plate for all meals most days unless they get really messy. Breakfast and lunch are usually simple, so there’s only crumbs on the plate and not messy food until dinner. That’s one way we cut down on how many dishes we use so that I can do them once a day and our kitchen isn’t constantly overwhelmed with dirty dishes sitting around.
They key is definitely to make sure they get done once a day. This is the perfect time to listen to a podcast or audiobook as well, which makes it much more enjoyable!
3. Wipe Down Counters
Keep a container of kitchen wipes handy all the time, so you can quickly and easily wipe down the counter. This is another thing that only takes a couple minutes and goes a long way toward your house feeling clean and neat.
I do this every morning after I do the dishes and if they get dirty throughout the day when I’m cooking.
4. Have Specific Laundry Days
Laundry can seriously take over your life if you let it. Trying to do 1 load a day just did not work for me. I would regularly find the previous days load still in the washer a full 24 hours later. I’m not the only one who has done that, right?
The better way to handle laundry is to have 2 specific days per week to wash all of your laundry. I wash laundry on Mondays and Thursdays. I’m able to remember it so much better this way. And it all gets done in one day. Make sure you start the laundry first thing in the morning so that you have time to put it all away too! That way you don’t have clean laundry sitting around.
5. Clean Bathrooms Once a Week
Pick a specific day every week to clean your bathrooms. We only have 1 bathroom, so I can quickly and easily clean it. Even if you have 3 or 4 bathrooms, you can probably clean all of them within an hour or less. It’s just one of those things that has to get done and needs to get done once a week. Listen to music, a podcast or audiobook to make the time more enjoyable.
6. Put Away Toys Everyday
Toys should have specific places that they belong. Instead of tossing everything into a toy box, use bins and a cube organizer to put specific types of toys together and show your kids where the basket goes.
Throughout the day you should give them reminders to put things away when they are done with them. Younger kids will need you to do it with them until it becomes a habit.
It’s a great idea to make picking up toys a part of your bedtime routine. That way you always wake up to a neat house. I’ve also found that the kids’ play improves when they start with a clean house and bedroom everyday!
If this is overwhelming, then you might need to cut back on the amount of toys they have access to.
7. Get Kids Involved
Make it a regular expectation that kids help with housework! At first it can be hard, it takes longer to teach them how to do things, but it will pay off!
Young kids can put silverware away and help dry dishes. They can keep up with their own toys and put them away. Have them wipe down the table.
At around 3, you can start teaching your kids to put their own clothes away. Now that my 5 and 4 year old put away all of their own clothes, it only takes me about 1/3 of the time to put laundry away than it used to! It’s great. It might not be quite as neat as if I did it, but it’s done.
As kids get older, give them more responsibilities with housework. They can do it. And hopefully they’ll get in the habit of cleaning so that they have a handle on it when they’re adults and don’t have to read posts that have cleaning tips!
8. Clean The Floors
For me, this is the most difficult thing. Floors take up the most space in your house and just get so messy! Sweep the dining room and kitchen every day after dinner or if a big mess is made (like when kids play with playdough).
It’s less overwhelming for me if I get my husband to help out with moping and vacuuming, so we do it together on the weekend. It so much faster when 2 people are working together to get the floors clean!
9. Deep Clean Seasonally
The above tips keep a house clean enough for day to day life. There are some things that need to be done occasionally on top of that other cleaning. Cleaning baseboards, windows, light fixtures, and cleaning the refrigerator. You don’t have to tackle this alone, do it on a weekend and get the whole family involved.
Implement these 9 cleaning tips to get back in control and have a house that’s clean enough!
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