Controlling grime and clutter in your home doesn’t have to be an all-day chore. If you set up routines and keep up with the cleaning work during the week, you’ll find your weekends are free to play, rather than scrub. With these simple steps, you’ll wonder how you lived any other way.
Tidy as you go
Nothing saves time and effort like refusing to let the mess pile up. Get into a “put-it-away” routine for every room in the house. That means clothes go into closet and drawers at night, the dishes are done and the kitchen floor is swept nightly, and the top goes back on the toothpaste after every use. Then the toothpaste and everything else on your bathroom counter goes where it’s supposed to. Get the idea? An extra 30 seconds of effort to put things where they belong will yield massive results.
Make a cleaning caddy
One of the best ways to encourage yourself to clean regularly is to make the tools easy to get to. Assemble a bucket or cleaning caddy with everything you’ll need for each room in your house. Go green if you can. Amazing things can be accomplished with vinegar, lemon juice and baking soda, for instance. (Read: Green Cleaning for Your Apartment)
Other items to assemble are old toothbrushes, cleaning cloths or laundered rags, wipes, sponges, scrub brushes and rubber gloves. You might also want to get yourself a work apron, which will save you from having to put together an outfit of expendable clothing several times a week.
Weekday cleaning
To keep things scrubbed and shiny, don’t wait for a weekend when you will probably have something more fun to do. Create a chart of weekday chores. Some of these tasks can even be done before work. Mondays are already hard, so why not make that vacuuming day? There is often something therapeutic about pushing a whirring machine back and forth over the floor. Tuesday can be bathroom day; Wednesday for clean sheets and laundry and Thursday sounds like a good time to dust, do a fast mop and empty the trash in each room.
Keep in mind that none of these chores needs to take long. A quick, weekly cleaning in each of these areas means that you’ll never have to spend long at it. Flylady.net offers an even shorter version of the above that she calls “Weekly Home Blessing Hour.” You’ll be amazed at what even cursory attention to these chores can do for your apartment!
Cut the clutter
Of course, no home can be truly clean if it is cluttered. To tame your worldly possessions, you’ll need to stay on top of how much you’ve got and where it accumulates. Our article How To Declutter Your Apartment has some great tips on how to declutter your apartment and keep it that way.
Don’t let your apartment turn into a jungle of missed chore days and misplaced belongings. Getting yourself on a daily regimen of just a little cleaning means big returns for your happy and healthy home.
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