We all wish we could come home to a perfectly clean and maintained house, but that’s not the reality. Keeping a house cleans requires being diligent and staying on schedule with your chores. For example, if you forget to clean the bathroom, the next time it comes around in your schedule it will be twice as dirty and take far longer to clean. To keep your home sanitary and liveable, it’s vital that once a week, every room in your home gets a deep clean. You can either do this all in one day or split it up throughout the week as part of a routine. Despite these efforts, however, your house will never look pristine unless you also incorporate daily chores.
One of the most frustrating aspects of cleaning is that it doesn’t last, especially with small children. The desire to dwell in a pristine environment is outweighed by the burden of spending all your free time cleaning. Keeping a house looking pristine isn’t as difficult as it looks, however. Most of the house stays generally orderly, with exception of a few problem areas that require more attention. As long as we can prioritize and incorporate daily chores into our routine, we can keep our home decent for the majority of the time. Here are the chores that require the most attention and should be incorporated into your daily routine:
1) Declutter
Probably the biggest eyesore in an unkempt home isn’t dirty at all, it’s clutter. Most people have a nasty habit of not putting things away after they use them. Whether it’s an unfolded blanket on the couch, school books, sporting gear at the entrance of your house or clothes, clutter can infiltrate your tidy home rather quickly. If it’s only attended to once or twice a week it can take a while to properly declutter and organize. If done daily, however, you can have even a large house fully decluttered in under 15 minutes.
2) Kitchen
There’s no way around it, kitchens require constant attention in order to stay clean. To ease your daily kitchen cleaning, it’s important to lay down an important house rule: Dishes are to be cleaned immediately after use. Dishes pile up fast and can greatly exacerbate your daily cleaning. Your stove top and counters need to be wiped down thoroughly followed by a quick sweeping and mopping. To save time, get a swiffer type mop for a quick clean and reserve your heavy duty mop for major cleanups.
3) Laundry
Laundry piles up quickly and before you know it, you have 4 or 5 loads to do and are inundated. If you can do one load a day, you can have it folded and put away in no time. In fact, you can incorporate folding laundry into your leisure time by doing it on the couch while watching television.
4) Make Your Bed(s)
The bedrooms require significantly less attention, as they are mainly for sleeping and don’t get too out of control. Making the bed can render a chaotic room, nearly perfect. After that, you just need to spend 30 seconds to toss all the dirty clothes in the hamper and you’re done.
Original article found at: http://dreamcasa.org/living/daily-chores-ensure-house-stays-clean/