Ten Quick Tips to Clean “Good Enough”

“Good enough” is my mantra for cleaning.  When it comes to the dreaded task, I definitely don’t strive for perfection.  My idea of a clean house is one that would pass inspection by the department of health, but not one where I would feel comfortable with the prospect of desperate housewife, Bree Van De Kamp, arriving at my front door with a basket of her scrumptious muffins.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’d welcome the muffins, but I would not be inviting her in for a cup of coffee to go with them!

Let’s face it, routine cleaning is just plain boring!  As soon as you’re finished cleaning something, it just immediately begins to get dirty again, and that drives me nuts!  Being a goal-oriented person, I don’t like to do things that I know are on their way to having to be done again, even as I’m still completing the task at hand.   So, I have made it a point of trying to find as many cleaning shortcuts as possible to clean “good enough” so that I can satisfy the powers that be (my husband, my kids, my mother, and occasionally my daughter’s friends, who seem to be dissatisfied with just about everything in their tween years!), as well as my own good senses, while still maintaining my sanity and a little time for myself.  Here’s the kicker – you’d be surprised by how many compliments I actually get from people thinking my house is so clean!

Here are some of the ten best general cleaning tips I have found for keeping your house sparkling, without having to exert too much effort.  Down the road, I’ll be uncovering more detailed tips to make easy work of cleaning, but this seemed like a good place to start.  I hope that you find a few helpful hints here to make your workload lighter.  If you have any other time-saving cleaning tips to share, I’d love to hear them too, because I’m a big believer that many hands make light work, or in this case, many ideas make light work - so the more ideas the better!

10 Quick Cleaning Tips:

1.  Declutter.  There’s nothing that shouts ‘clean’ more than a decluttered house.  Clear away all of the extras around the house, and everything immediately looks cleaner and more organized.  The important thing is to get into a habit of keeping it decluttered so you don’t have to keep redoing it each week.  Don’t keep extra stuff “just in case”.  If you don’t need it now, and haven’t needed it for awhile, then chances are you’re not going to need it.  And if your house is a mess and you can’t find it, what good does that do you anyway?  If there is “stuff” you just can’t get rid of, one good idea is to have a designated spot to stash some of the day to day things that you need but that seem to create clutter.  In this way, the mess is out of sight and when the space is filled you know its time to clear through it and declutter again.   For storing these items, a small pine chest of drawers works well, or even just a designated draw, shelf or cabinet in a room is more than enough room.  If it’s too big, you’ll be tempted to keep too much.

2.  Clean as you go.  Don’t save everything up for one big cleaning day, because it then becomes a monumental task that you come to dread.  Instead, keep everything as clean as possible as you go about your daily routine.  Keep disposable cleaning wipes in the bathroom and wipe down the sink and toilet on a daily basis.  Just a minute or two a day keeps you from having a big job to do at the end of the week.  Spray the shower right before you get into it and give it a quick wipedown before you clean yourself.  Kids can do their own bathroom, too – they’re not allergic to germs!  The key is to teach them early that it’s just part of what they have to do each day.

3.  Focus on what you see.  When the carpet is vacuumed in the main areas of the house, you can tell the house looks clean.  If you get on your hands and knees to clean the baseboards in the corner, no one but you will probably ever know they were cleaned, so why bother?

4.  Don’t wear shoes in the house.  If you can stop some of the dirt before it starts, there’s that much less to clean!  Besides, being barefoot or having socks on is so much comfier!  And there’s no need to eat in front of the TV in the family room either.  Keep snacking and eating relegated to the kitchen and you’ll not only have fewer crumbs to clean, but maybe you’ll save your family a few calories in the process!

5.  Make kids responsible.  Do you think you’re doing your kids a favor by making their bed and cleaning their room?  Well, you’re not!  It’s much better to teach them early to do it themselves.  Giving them responsibility for their own things builds confidence and necessary life skills and should be started at an early age so it becomes routine.  You may not like how neatly they make their bed at age 4, but if you can manage to look the other way for a few years and give pointers on how to make it neater, you’ll be a lot happier than if you walk into your teenager’s room and it looks like a bomb went off!  Focus on the long term goals and you’ll reap rewards for many years to come and so will your kids!

6. Get rid of the knick-knacks.  I’m not advocating that you get rid of every little thing you’ve collected over the years, but you don’t need to display everything you own.  The more items that are out, the more dust they collect and the longer it takes you to clean.  Hold onto the ones that really make a decorating statement, box up the sentimental ones, and donate the rest.  You’ll cut down on your cleaning time and help someone else, too!

7. Keep the kitchen in order.  The kitchen is the center of most homes, and therefore seems to collect the most ‘stuff’.  The more organized you can keep it, the less cleaning you’ll have to do.  Keep colored folders for each family member to hold important papers neatly.  Keep a small (and I mean small!) bowl on the counter to house keys, phones, etc.  Make it a family habit to put things right where they belong rather than leaving them on the counter and then having to do something with them later.  You may have to convince everyone that it’s actually less work, but explain that once and done is much faster than the whole process of ‘leave sitting around-nag-nag-nag-yell-put away-sulk in the corner’ – and everyone wins in the end!

8. Make your house smell nice.  People are more apt to notice a good smelling house than a well cleaned house, so keep it smelling fresh and clean and you’ve won half the battle.  The clean smell won’t rid your house of germs, but you can be sure that it’ll be a lot more noticeable that your house needs to be cleaned if it doesn’t smell good.

9. Share the work.  Not all housework has to be boring.  When done together, it can even be fun (at least that’s what I try to convince my kids!)  Turn on some music and hand everyone a dusting cloth and the dust will be gone in no time.  Make it a competition for everyone to clean their room and see who can get it done the fastest.  Ask your daughter for help cleaning out the fridge, and use the time to just talk about whatever comes to mind.  Or show your son how to do the laundry and not only will he learn important life skills, but he’ll realize that there’s not a laundry fairy that miraculously delivers his clothes to his room when he’s not there, and he’ll learn to appreciate what you do for him.

10. Break down the work into smaller tasks.  If you keep up with the routine cleaning on a daily basis a few minutes at a time, you won’t need to commit to a whole day of cleaning.  That leaves time for the occasional ‘bigger project’ – the things that need to be done sometime but not all the time.  Break down the big tasks into smaller ones and just do a little at a time so it doesn’t seem like such a big deal.  If it’s time to clean the ceiling fans, just do all the ones upstairs one day and the downstairs another.  Or schedule non-routine cleaning by breaking it down by room.  Clean everything that has to be done in just one room and then stop.  Or if even that seems overwhelming, just set a timer for as long as you care to clean – 15 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever works for you.  You’ll be amazed by how much you can get done when you just do a little at a time!

Hopefully, some of these quick and easy cleaning tips will help you to shorten your daily workload, while still leaving your house looking “good enough” to make it seem like you worked harder than you really did!  Please keep your best cleaning tips coming, so we can all benefit from ways to work smarter, rather than harder.  Thanks!