Busy parents and people with an active lifestyle know how difficult it can be to have a clean home on any given day. Between laundry, dishes, and making beds, there is always something that falls to the wayside which can leave a house looking less kempt than desired.
And whether your plan is to keep up with cleaning throughout the week or you have an unexpected guest coming over, here are some ways you can clean your house in an hour or less.
Prioritize Rooms
The first step in cleaning your house quickly is to decide which rooms to give the most attention to. If you are having a guest over, prioritize which rooms to clean based on which rooms they will actually use. Include the living/family room, kitchen, and guest bathroom to start, as well as a guest room if your company plans to stay over night.
If the goal is to tidy all bedrooms in the middle of the week, start from there and build out with time. The key is to first decide which is the most important goal in achieving the clean look you want.
Speed Clean with a Basket
This is an easy technique that quickly creates a tidy look for every room in your home. Grab a small basket for each room—ideally smaller than a small round laundry basket—and walk around putting anything that creates clutter into the basket. Whether it is unfiled papers, remotes, or out of place candles, put it into the basket first and think about it later. This will clear up any surfaces to be wiped down and instantly give a tidier appearance to each room.
Sweep and Vacuum
After you’ve successfully cleared and wiped off the countertops and tables, take a quick minute to sweep and vacuum the floors. Use a carpet freshening powder or a lemony fresh hard floor cleaner to add a nice scent to the room. Aside from decluttering and dusting, sweeping and mopping are one of the top ways to freshen up and clean a room quickly.
Follow the Top to Bottom Rule
A common mistake when cleaning is to start low with floors or countertops and move higher to hanging shelves or the fridge top. The problem with this method is that if you spent 15 minutes sweeping and mopping your kitchen floor, and then wipe and dust the countertops, you will have to clean anything that got on the floor from the counters again. Start by dusting the highest items like fan blades and the tops of bookshelves before moving to waist height surfaces and finish by sweeping or vacuuming the floors to make sure the dust isn’t just redistributed.
Empty Trash Bins
Another often forgotten quick cleaning tip is to empty out each trash bin in each room of your household. Keeping an individual trash bin in each room will help to keep every room decluttered, and it takes less than five minutes to empty out each bin as you are walking around tidying the house. And an empty trash bin, makes a room look a lot more decluttered.
These painlessly quick tips will give you an instantly tidier looking home in a fraction of the time. You can feel confident having invited or unexpected guests over knowing that you can have your house clean in under an hour.
Chasing Foxes was started in 2016 as a way for Grace and her husband, Silas, to start traveling. However, they started to realize that they had a passion for improving themselves, and wanted to help others level up their lives as well. So whether it's with cooking, travel, or staying healthy, they want to help you better your life bit by bit, as they do the same.