Many people struggle with keeping their house tidy. It doesn’t matter if you simply hate cleaning up or just don’t have enough time to do it regularly – the result is a messy home. However, there are a lot of ways to clean your house without spending too much time and effort. Below you’ll find 10 hacks that even people who hate cleaning will love.
1. Assign a place for everything
As we all know, organizing stuff is way easier than cleaning it afterwards, so if you want to spend the least time cleaning up, make sure that your belongings stay where you put them. Everything in your home should have its own place. Let you car keys have a separate hook on the wall, keep your mobile phone on a nightstand, put your TV remote controls on a small table near the couch. It’s also important to put away clothes, shoes and accessories right after you take them off, so that they don’t lay around in your home, creating a mess.
2. Spend 10 minutes every day cleaning
A weekend cleaning can take a few hours, so it’s understandable when you feel too lazy or tired to do it. On the other hand, everyone can spend 10 minutes a day cleaning up. You can make your whole family do it. Let your husband take care of the bathroom, your children can clean their rooms, and you can work in the kitchen. Put away the plates, hang the clothes, put the toys where they belong, and you’ll see how clean your house will become if you spend just 10 minutes!
3. Make your bed every day
This seems like such an easy task, and yet millions of people leave their beds messy in the morning, making the whole room look untidy. It won’t take you more than 2 minutes, but the effect of making your bed will help your bedroom look like it’s just been cleaned. If you can’t stand making the bed, ask your sweetheart to do it while you’re making coffee for both of you.
4. Wash dishes regularly
Leaving your dishes in the sink for a few hours after dinner or even overnight makes your kitchen look incredibly disordered. Washing the dishes is not a fun task, but imagine how easy it is to wash 3-5 dishes after every meal compared to washing 10-15 dishes that are collected during the day. Avoid the necessity to soak your dishes and spend hours washing them by doing it immediately after the meal. You can even take turns with your spouse or children!
5. Make some room for mess
Nowadays it’s impossible to find a perfectly clean home, so you don’t have to find a place for every piece of paper or children’s toy you see on the floor. Instead you can create a space (it can be a separate room or just a corner in one of your rooms) where your family can put stuff down if they don’t want to deal with it right now. This strategy also works wonders for children. Just make sure those things don’t stay there forever: take care of the place every week or so.
6. Clean as you cook
Every adult knows that cooking can get quite messy, especially when you cook a 3-course dinner for your whole family and a couple of friends. The more time you spend in the kitchen and the more ingredients you use, the dirtier and more cluttered your kitchen can become. To avoid this situation set a rule for yourself to do as much cleaning as you can while you’re still cooking. For example, if you’re making fried rice and you need to clean and slice some vegetables, throw away the leftover bits from the vegetables right away, and wipe your cutting board between each ingredient. In that way you’ll only have to do some minor cleaning after your dish is done: wash the stove, clean the dishes, and take care of the refrigerator.
7. Don’t delay your laundry
Even though your laundry is usually done by your washing machine, you still have to hang, fold and iron your stuff. If you leave doing laundry for the weekend, you’ll be constantly tired, because weekends are usually filled with all kinds of house work. To avoid this you can do your laundry on your weekday evenings. Come home from work, put your dirty laundry into the washing machine, spend a few minutes hanging the clean laundry up, and you’re done!
8. Get rid of excess things
One of the ground rules of a tidy home is to remove the excess. Saving things is common for a lot of Nigerian families, but let’s be honest: do you really need those piles of old newspapers, clothes bought 10 years ago, a broken bicycle and an old iPhone you no longer use? Assign a day and deal with those excesses. Throw out the things that are broken or the ones you no longer need, and then sell the rest on JiJi. Not only will you have a much cleaner home, but you’ll also make some money!
9. Use tea to clean your mirrors
We all know that a bathroom mirror becomes dirty in just one day. Cleaning the mirror can be a difficult task, but not after you learn this! The most effective way to keep your bathroom mirror clean is to use some black tea. We know it sounds weird, but you simply have to try it! Simply brew a pot of black tea, soak a clean cloth in it, wipe your mirror, and enjoy the flawlessly clean result!
10. Get a 100% clean toilet with no chemicals
Nobody really knows how dangerous the chemicals used in bathroom cleaners are, but they smell really bad and it’s best to avoid them for as long as you can. If your toilet needs cleaning, just mix baking soda with vinegar, put the mix in your toilet, let it stay there for 10 to 15 minutes, and clean the toilet with a brush. You’ll see an impeccably white toilet with no side effects of chemicals.
