Ten Helpful Tips to Tidy Up Your Home

Keeping your home clean isn’t always easy, especially if you live with kids, pets, and other individuals. Everyone should take part in cleaning the home to make sure it stays nice and tidy. Instead of killing yourself off once a week to keep your home clean, here are ten tips to tidy up your home:

1. Keep it simple. One of the best things to do is to stop focusing on how much work you have to do and simplify it. Take it one room at a time instead of thinking about cleaning the entire house. Create a daily schedule so you know what you are going to focus on cleaning each day. For example, let’s say Monday is your dusting day. Instead of getting out the vacuum and mop on Monday, you only need to take time to dust the home and the other cleaning tasks will come throughout the week.
2. Organize it. A great way to make tidying up your home easier is to organize all of your cleaning supplies. Use a cleaning caddy to carry all of your cleaning supplies, this makes it much easier to find them and carry them around with you while you are hiking up and down stairs and heading from room to room. Try to find cleaning products that can be used in multiple areas of the home. It’s easier to carry around one cleaning spray and paper towels than an entire cleaning caddy.
3. Know your cleaning standards. A big part of keeping your home clean is to know what your standards are. Do you want your home to look clean all the time or are you ok with a little clutter here and there? You don’t need to focus on doing a big deep clean of your home everyday. Just do what you can when you can.
4. Use a timer when you are cleaning so you don’t push yourself too hard. If you keep a timer close by, you can set it to go off every 10-20 minutes, this way you won’t spend too much time in each room and you won’t burn yourself out.
5. If you have kids, make sure they pitch in with the cleaning efforts. Since you are not the only person living there, everyone needs to pitch in. Give your kids simple tasks to handle like the vacuuming or sweeping. Only give the age-appropriate children the bathroom cleaner and other toxic chemicals.
6. Storage bins. A simple way to keep your home clean and tidy is to get some storage bins to put items in. Have your kids use the storage bins to hold their toys or other items like their shoes. Keep them in the washroom so they are out of the way. You might also consider using an organized shelving system in the family room to hold your kids’ toys and other things that tend to take over the family room.
7. Throw it out! A great way to keep your home tidy is to start throwing away things like old newspapers. Paper can easily pile up and clutter up your home. Use a trash bag to go through your closet too and donate all the clothes you don’t wear to Good Will.
8. Vacuum twice as often. Even though you may hate vacuuming, it’s one of the easiest ways to make your home look nice and tidy. Get out the vacuum two times a week and vacuum every two to three days. This will keep dirt out of the carpet and it helps to pick up all the other gunk that is starting to gather in the home.
9. Make time for it. You need to clean when you are most alert and awake. Right after exercise is a perfect time because you will be high on endorphins. First thing in the morning is another great time to clean.
10. Do it! To keep your home tidy, don’t put it off. You just need to buckle down and do it. Plan time to clean each day so your home doesn’t get out of control.