Cleaning up at home isn’t everyone’s favourite past time. For most, it’s quite the opposite actually. Few are the people who find enjoyment in the idea of spending their precious free time on domestic cleaning tasks and chores rather than on their hobbies. And really, who can blame them – after a busy week, doing more work is the last thing that you’d want, right? Sadly, the chores need to be done and, if neglected, tend to pile up.
Eventually, you’re faced with a decision – you either have to hire a dedicated domestic cleaning agency to do the job for you, or you have to grab the vacuum cleaner and face the consequences of your neglect. But if you’re currently in this situation and you’d rather go with the DIY approach, don’t worry – you’ve come to the right place. Read this article until the end, and you’ll learn how to clean your home quickly, effectively, and with minimal hassle.
Blindly rushing to the finish line will rarely do you any good. And while trying to challenge yourself, by timing your cleaning sessions or by using music to up your pace can be great (more on that later), on its own, it won’t help you achieve your home cleaning goals. The real key to efficient domestic cleaning is organisation. Look at it like that – cleaning is a process, and every process can be optimised. And before you shake your head in disgust, yes, this does sound like more work. But doing it will save you so much time later down the line, that it’s more than worth it.
If you’re a DIY type of person, and you’d rather handle all of your domestic cleaning chores on your own, without relying on outside assistance, then you’d best keep all of your tools in check. Make sure that your vacuum cleaner is emptied out, keep a steady supply of clean cloths within hand’s reach, ensure that your cleaning solutions are in order and restock as necessary, and, most important of all – stock up on rubber gloves. While you’re at it, you might also want to consider reorganising how you store your tools and supplies – if everything isn’t kept in the same place, you’re bound to lose a bit of time collecting products from around your home before you can even begin cleaning.
As you most certainly know, we’re much better at keeping track of things if we follow a plan. This is true for almost everyone, as our brains enjoy following patterns and establishing one for your domestic cleaning tasks can go a long way towards achieving efficiency. And while your cleaning session frequency may vary, depending on a plethora of factors (general foot traffic, household population, kids, pets, family get-togethers, parties, and so on), you should never settle for less than one long cleaning session per week, as is the norm for most people.
As we already established above, most people would rather only clean during the weekend, doing everything in one go. But here’s the thing – splitting your long cleaning session up across the weekdays will achieve more, with less time investment. Not only will that save you some time on the weekend for other activities that you’d actually enjoy, but it will also preserve the longevity of your carpets, appliances and furniture. And why is that? Well, to put it simply – the less time you give the dust and dirt to seep into your fabrics, the easier it’ll be to get rid of them.
This is absolutely vital for an efficient home cleaning session and would help a great deal in the long run by ensuring that you never miss a spot. There are two main things to consider when thinking about a domestic cleaning pattern – the direction in which you clean and the room order in which you go. Generally, with any type of cleaning task, you’d want always to start cleaning from the topmost surface and work your way down. This will ensure that no dust or dirt falls down on an already cleaned surface, saving you a few precious minutes of needless work.
You can further enhance this by choosing a “direction” in which to clean – either start from the left or the rightmost side and work your way to the other end of the surface (or room). Having a set direction will help you stay focused on the task at hand, make it easier to visually distinguish how far you’ve gotten and make sure that you never miss a spot. Furthermore, it’s good to also decide on a room order, further solidifying your routine.
Make sure that once you start cleaning, you won’t stop until you’re done. To make it easier on yourself, consider logging out of social media (or shutting down your computer completely), disabling the notifications on your phone, and asking your family not to bother you. And while this can be rather difficult if you’ve got young kids at home, you’re guaranteed to see an increase in efficiency if you pull it off right.
As we mentioned before, listening to some music while cleaning can be a great help. Make a few playlists with your favourite tracks and go to town. When we listen to music that we enjoy, we’re much more productive and time seems to fly. Music can also help in timing your cleaning sessions if you want to challenge yourself and see how quickly you can handle a particular room – instead of checking with your stopwatch app, just put on a couple of songs that you know the length of and have at it!