5 Quick Ways to Maintain a Clean Home

30Nov07

How old school is it to clean your house once a week or once every two weeks?  Of course, if you live in a home with 800 square feet or less, this may be less of an issue, but even so … small home or large … a “deep clean” every week or two can be tiring and de-motivating, and who are we kidding — boring!  Well, I have some news for you.  If you are ready for some new-age cleaning advice, you’re going to get it.  Consider your last deep clean — uh, well — your last deep clean.

1.  Pick up daily.  The best way to maintain a “neat” looking home is to pick up the random stuff lying around and causing eye sores (a.k.a. clutter).  If you make it a routine or ritual each morning, right after you wake up (feed the baby, feed the dogs, whatever), you will no longer have stuff monsters everywhere you turn.  Simply pick stuff up.  Put things where they belong.  Everything you own should have its own home, and if it doesn’t, that will be discussed in previous or later blog entried.  Or see, services for more information in this area.

2.  Make a weekly list of tasks.  Create a list with all the days of the week.  Feel free to give yourself a “day off” from doing anything.  On the days you are “on”, however, write down one of the cleaning tasks that you would do on a “deep cleaning” day.  For example, if you vacuum all the rooms during “deep cleaning” day, make that a weekly task on, say, Monday.  Perhaps you have two big labs that shed constantly and you prefer to vacuum 2-3 times per week.  That’s cool too; just remember to write it down on the days you will plan to do it from this day forward.  Go through all your “deep cleaning” tasks and assign a day to each one.  Some days might have 2 or 3, but they should be easy-peasy tasks, not involved tasks that take up too much time.  (For example, you might quick-vacuum all rooms and dust your bedroom on one day.)

3.  Empty all garbage cans.  Sometimes the simplest things can make a huge difference.  If you are feeling zealous each morning while you perform your Daily Pickup, empty all the little garbage cans around your home into the big “master” trash either in your kitchen or garage.  This will make your home look fresh & inviting and will also make garbage day a cinch.

4.  Perform a quick purge.  You might want to perform this task before you start your maintenance fun.  The definition of a quick purge is just that.  Do a quick purge.  By quick, I mean set a timer for about 15 minutes and briskly walk around your home with a big, black garbage bag.  Throw away anything that doesn’t mean anything to you.  Just toss it and never look back.  If you find things that are good items but you no longer want them, those are items worth donating.  Find a box to put these items in, and then put that box in the back seat of your car right away (or put them on eBay as soon as humanly possible if you can’t find it in your heart to give them away).  Performing a quick purge about once a week will soon clear your home in ways you never imagined.

5.  Forget being perfect.  This is so important.  So important, in fact, that I’ve written another blog posting just about this: Perfection Exits the Building.  One of the biggest traps of spending too much time cleaning is trying to get every nook and cranny clean.  Let’s face it, we are human.  We like a clean environment, sure, but if there’s a dust bunny under the couch that won’t budge (but you swear it’s there), you really don’t have to move the entire couch to get to it.  Yes, really.  No one will know but you.  And that’s ok!  If you want to deep clean that badly, set a monthly task for yourself to focus on one large deep cleaning project (e.g. sweeping under the couch for dust bunnies).  Perhaps that’ll put your dust bunny fears to sleep once and for all.

So you see, maintaining a clean home can be as easy as doing 1 or 2 small tasks a day.  Never again will you have to slave away for hours at a time inhaling Clorox bleach and ammonia vapors at the same time.  Whew — doesn’t that feel better?

Filed under: cleaning, simplify / minimize   |  
Tags: clean home, cleaning house, cleanse your environment, dust, maintaining a clean house, quick clean, simple cleaning, vacuum