When it comes to my home, I have one firm rule that I live by. Always keep your house looking like you are going to put it on the market. It’s pretty simple when you think about it. If you are going to sell your house you want it to look it’s best. You want everything to be in its place, the couch fluffed and no messes on the counters.
Right now I can hear you all saying “is this girl crazy, I don’t have time for this.” Well, you actually do have time for this. I promise you, if you have time to scroll through your phone for an hour you have time to keep your house clean and keep it looking open house ready at all times.
For those of you wondering, yes I do keep my house super tidy at all times. I do fall off the wagon from time to time and it looks like a bomb when off in the house. I’m human too, messes are a natural part of life. In fact, in my closet I actually love to keep little squirrel piles on the floor. If you don’t know, squirrel piles are tiny organized piles of stuff. They actually look horrible, but are somewhat organized chaos.
Over the years I have developed a good outline on how to keep your house clean. It was much easier in my single days and now it takes a lot more work. However, I try so hard to keep on a schedule and not have it pile up. I hope some of the tips below help you keep your house clean and tidy too!
Create a Weekly Cleaning Schedule
Breaking up the cleaning makes keeping a clean house so manageable. I used to spend a morning cleaning the house and dreaded doing it. Once I started to split up the tasks it became much more manageable to do.
My schedule looks something like this.
Sunday – Clean all the floors
Monday – Dust all hard surfaces
Tuesday – Clean the bedroom, dust, straighten up and clean up closet
Wednesday – Clean the bathroom, floors, counters, shower
Thursday – Clean the kitchen, wipe everything down, straighten up the cabinets and fridge
Friday – It’s the weekend, take the night off! If I’m getting wild I’ll do a load of laundry 🙂
Saturday – Laundry day, because that counts as cleaning too.
You can split up the cleaning by room or by task. I’ve done it both ways and don’t have a preference. In fact, some weeks I jump around a bit. No matter how I tackle it I don’t over do it. I spend 30 minutes or less each day on the given task.
Have a Deep Cleaning Schedule
It’s the same concept as a weekly cleaning schedule, but on a deeper level. I like to have a deep clean of the house in the spring and fall. Spring cleaning gives the house a refresh and let’s you get ready for the warmer weather.
For the spring cleaning you must open the windows and air the house out. I suggest going room by room for this deep cleaning. You’ll want to really clean your house, get into corners you don’t normally do during the weekly cleaning. You can accomplish this in a weekend or two depending on how fast or slow you move. Here is an example of a deep cleaning schedule.
Bedroom
Wash all the bedding, vacuum or dust the headboard, pull out all the furniture and dust behind everything and get on your hands and knees and clean the baseboards.
Closets
Take all your clothes out, dust the shelves, clean the floor and wipe down the walls
Kitchen
Empty the fridge and wipe it down, clean out old food from the freezer, wipe down the counters and condition them. Move the appliances and clean behind them and clean out the cabinets, getting rid of expired food.
Living Room
Vacuum the furniture, shampoo it if necessary and clean under every piece you have. Dust every shelf and refresh the decor to switch things up.
Bathrooms
Bleach your heart out! Scrub down everything that you can find! The bathroom is the most used room in the house, spend the most time and clean every nook you find.
Cleaning Tips
In order to keep the house looking good I have a few quick cleaning tips that I used daily. These aren’t anything earth shattering. Instead they are simple things that take less than 5 minutes to do.
Straighten Up Before You Go to Bed
Always go to bed with a clean house. Take a few minutes before you head to bed and organize your house a little. You don’t have to do a major clean, just straighten up. For me I always have a book, computer, iPad and notebook out. They are usually all over the living room. At the end of the night I pack it all up into one of my squirell piles and set it on the counter. Everything is now in one place and not thrown all over the house.
It’s a simple task that eventually becomes part of your routine. Straightening up a little at night saves you the time in the morning. It lets you get out of the door ontime. The benefit of this is coming home to a clean and organized house every day. Try this for a week, I promise you it will become a habit after that.
Check out my hiding spot for the Dock-A-Tot. I know it’s in plain sight under the media stand, but it looks way better then laying out on the floor.
Always Make Your Bed
Always, always, always make your bed right when you get up. There are a few reasons to do this. First of all, you’re an adult and you should make your bed, period. You aren’t in college anymore, get it together girl and make your bed. It will be nice to come home to a clean bedroom.
The second reason you should make your bed is it will never tempt you to get back into it. I love sleep and if I can get two more minutes of it I’ll do it. There are days that I snooze for an hour and there are days when I want to get back into the bed. When it’s made and looks pretty I won’t get back in it. I literally force myself to stay awake by making the bed.
And finally making your bed in the morning lets you do something productive right away in the morning and sets the stage for the rest of the day. It lets you go on to accomplish even more during the day. If by chance you are having a bad day, at least you can say you accomplished one thing…making your bed 🙂
Never Leave Dirty Dishes In The Sink
This one is easy, put all your dishes in the dishwasher. I’m joking, well kind of. Yes, use the dishwasher to make your life easier, but sometimes you have to wash dishes by hand. I like to wash everything right after I use it to save time later. If I am cooking I clean up the pots and pans as I go. It makes the clean up less intimidating at the end.
Clean Up Toys
Now that Lizzie is here there is a whole other mess around…toys! I want Lizzie to play her heart out every chance she gets. However, that means that the living room looks like a tornado when she is done. To solve this problem I picked up these baskets and we clean everything up when she is done. They hide the toys, but are manageable enough for her to get her toys out of. Everyone wins!
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