Helpful Cleaning Tips

Many people nowadays, since they are so very busy, often neglect to keep their homes clean. This can prove nothing if not quite problematic in the long run and even in the short run, as a dirty home can contribute to illness and poor well-being, can reduce the chance of restful sleep, can harbor pests and parasites, and can also reduce not only your health but also the health of those who live with you, and even those around you. (It can be very embarrassing to have to be paid a visit by your city Health Inspector’s office, and/or to be ignored or shunned by the neighbors because your place has the reputation of being a dump.)

But being busy is never an excuse not to keep one’s home as clean as possible. Even if one is so busy that one feels one doesn’t have time to even breathe, there is always something that can be done to help one take better care of one’s house and make sure that it is worth visiting - or, more to the point, coming home to. Here are some helpful cleaning tips that don’t take too much time to do and as such are perfectly suitable for today’s harassed people.

1. Incorporate cleanliness into your daily routine. The reason why many people can’t keep their own place clean is that they don’t make cleaning up part of their day-to-day activities. Change your mindset - if you see something out of place or messing up a particular area, go and deal with it right away; for the most part it will only take a minute or so to deal with anyway. I can guarantee that if you leave it be to “deal with it later”, in nearly all instances, by the time you get back to it, it’s gotten far worse and you’ll need to spend far longer cleaning it up than you might have had you dealt with it early on.
2. Incorporate cleanliness into EVERYONE’S daily routine. Have everyone who lives in your house do their own share of the chores. And that means cleaning up their spheres. No dumping of soiled clothes on floors; put them in separate hampers and/or in the laundry room if that’s how it works in your household. Make everyone develop a sense of responsibility for their own sphere - and if they can go out of these spheres and help with the common areas, or help others with their own areas, that would be very welcome indeed.
3. Set aside time to be able to clean. Sure, you may be busy, but take a long hard look at your schedule. Maybe you don’t have to go out to see the guys on Tuesday evening; you’ll be hanging out on Saturday anyway. Set aside half an hour every other day to be able to walk around the house, deal with immediate small things, see what needs a bit more attention, and then respond accordingly.
4. Place cleaning equipment within easy reach. Ten minutes just to retrieve the vacuum cleaner from the attic or toilet brushes from the basement is an unacceptable waste of time. And shouldn’t those things be where you need them - in the house itself and close to areas that need cleaning? Do the same for brooms, cleaning cloths, cleaning solutions, etc.
5. Lastly, familiarize yourself with common household stuff that you can use to clean. Lemon juice, white vinegar, baking soda, boiling water - these and more common kitchen ingredients have wonderful cleaning powers, and since they’re just around, you don’t have to take too much time to pick them up and use them to fix up the house.