‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’, so the saying goes, and anyone who lives in a permanently messy house will know the struggle of reaching such a god-like state. If you live in a house with many people, hours of work cleaning can be undone within hours, even minutes, as everyone brings in muck from outside and flings their belongings every which way. Keeping a spotless home is much harder than it sounds. However, at A Tidy Mind, we believe, not in perfection but in realism and it is possible to keep your house looking clean enough to be proud of.
It might all start with lowering your expectations slightly, making concessions for the other people who live there and maintain a new standard that is easier to meet. And to meet this standard, it requires organisation and dedication.
Set a house cleaning schedule
Unless you have professional help, it should never be one person’s responsibility to keep the house clean. That’s where a cleaning schedule comes in. Whether you’re living with other adults, students or your own kids, assign everyone a task that they are responsible for for the whole week. Once everyone has a task, the whole thing will become a lot more manageable.
If you live on your own, it also helps to set yourself a schedule. Maybe it suits your busy life to create timed sessions in which you clean as much as you can within an allotted time period. Alternatively, you don’t like doing things in bits and enjoy the satisfaction of seeing everything clean at once, you can dedicate an entire day to cleaning the whole house.
Easy things you can do to make your house look cleaner
Did you know you can make your house look cleaner without even cleaning? Sometimes, it’s the little things that make a huge difference. You can make your house look infinitely more inviting simply by straightening the pillows on the couch, making your bed properly, hanging the towels neatly in the bathroom and stashing your laundry in a basket.
Start with the room that you spend most time in. Perhaps the living room is a mess of fuzzy blankets and cushions from your movie night the night before. All it takes is a few minutes to put these neatly away and get the room back in order. The kitchen is also a hotspot for mess, so take ten minutes to put the clean dishes away, put a damp cloth to the surfaces and arrange the chairs and table in the correct way.
Keep your home clutter-free
One of the easiest ways to keep your home clean is not to have too much ‘stuff’. More belongings means more to tidy and organise. And this is before you’ve even started cleaning! Start with a good declutter of every room and category of belongings. Doing so will pave the way for your home to be easier to clean in future.
Clever use of furniture
Installing hooks for towels, placing storage units next to the front door, dedicating boxes and drawers to bits and bobs and installing beautiful pieces of furniture like illuminated mirrors will all work in making your house look cleaner, tidier and more welcoming. Make sure that everything has its place, thereby reducing clutter and giving you peace of mind.