The secret to a clean home that no one tells you…but I will
Cleaning your home doesn’t have to take hours with these small and simple tips
Content creator Lucy Kalice is one of Ideal Home's Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on cleaning, home decor and making the most of small spaces. See the rest of her articles here.
The secret to a clean home that no one tells you…but I will
Cleaning your home doesn’t have to take hours with these small and simple tips
I’ll admit it…keeping on top of the cleaning in a home is hard. Or at least I find it hard! It’s funny how it takes 2 seconds to make a home dirty but hours to clean it again. And finding the time to clean when you have a job, want to socialise, be a good partner or even just binge a TV programme can be tough.
So as someone that does find keeping on top of the cleaning hard, I’ve had to find ways to make it much more manageable. I now have systems in place that make it so easy to clean, I don’t feel like I spend much time cleaning at all. Which is perfect because it means I can spend more time doing things I enjoy (like reading a Sarah J Mass book with my red light face mask on – my dream evening!)
Without further ado, here are the little tips that will transform your home and your cleaning routine...
Cleaning caddies
My pet peeve used to be when I saw that my bedroom windows needed a clean but all the cleaning products were downstairs. Or when I noticed the landing light needed dusting but my duster was downstairs. Or when I saw the sink had toothpaste stuck on it and needed to be wiped. Because what would happen would be one of two things:
1) I’d go downstairs to get the necessary cleaning item, get distracted, forget why I was downstairs and then never get round to cleaning said thing.
2) Not be bothered to go downstairs to get the cleaning item in the first place so never get round to cleaning said thing. Either way, it wouldn’t get cleaned!
So the solution I found to fix this problem was to keep a cleaning caddie upstairs. I still have a fully stocked cleaning cupboard downstairs which is my go-to when I need to clean something there. But the upstairs cleaning caddie is a small basket with all the essentials - some anti bacterial wipes, a cloth, a duster, some white vinegar and a cleaning spray. That way whenever I see something upstairs that needs cleaning, I can clean it straight away because I have the tools to hand…genius I know.
I’d really recommend this to anyone because it does help you keep on top of the house. Convenience is key so by having easy access to the necessary cleaning tools you will clean more. We keep our cleaning caddie in our en-suite bathroom. You could also leave it in a wardrobe or a bathroom cupboard, whatever works for you!
Little and often
I used to do a big Sunday deep clean every week…a Sunday Reset as the internet likes to call it. Every single room would get cleaned from top to bottom and to be honest I thought that was normal. Especially because I grew up in a household where my mum was always cleaning. I assumed that’s what everyone did.
Maybe it is the norm for some people but if I’m honest, spending a whole day cleaning absolutely exhausts me and I don’t enjoy it at all. So when I used to force myself to do it every weekend I would absolutely dread it. A whole day of my weekend wasted cleaning the house? No thank you. So now I’ve stopped. I don’t do a big Sunday reset. I actually don’t spend more than an hour at a time cleaning my home.
Instead I’ve switched to a little and often approach that makes it all feel a lot more manageable. If I see something needs cleaning then I clean it there and then. If I see marks on the kitchen cupboards I wipe them off. If I see a shelf is looking dusty, I clean it. I know this sounds obvious but I think it can be so easy to let things build up until the big cleaning day because you think there’s no point doing it now, i’ll do it when I clean the house on Sunday. Then by the time Sunday rolls around you’ve got the longest list of jobs to do, it’ll take you hours and you’ll hate it.
Little and often fixes this issue and means a clean home is manageable.
Convenience is king after all and putting these two systems in place has changed the cleaning game for me. So simple yet so effective. Just like the Occams Razor theory – sometimes the simplest solutions are the answer.
