Neglecting home cleaning is common when other priorities arise, but regular care and maintenance is important. Here are some tips for making cleaning a regular habit throughout your home.
Floors and Walls
To maintain a clean and healthy home, establish a regular cleaning routine for all the floors and walls throughout your home. Clean walls at least once a month, and more frequently if needed depending on your climate and weather conditions. Pay attention to corners, ceilings, and floors, and remove any cobwebs. Use a paint roller wrapped with adhesive tape or a vacuum with attachments to make the job easier.
Sweep hardwood and tile floors weekly and vacuum carpets and rugs every week. Additionally, schedule professional cleanings every 3 to 6 months to renew carpets and remove allergens and dust.
Living Room / Den
One of the easiest ways to ensure your living room will become an unbelievable mess is to slowly let clutter accumulate. It begins with a pair of shoes or socks in the middle of the floor, but can quickly escalate to piles of junk that makes cleaning seem way to overwhelming to even attempt. Make a point to remove anything that doesn’t belong as soon as possible; otherwise, the clutter will grow rapidly. This will make it easier to perform other cleaning tasks like vacuuming, and you can avoid an overwhelming mess later on.
Just like your carpets, upholstered furniture should be cleaned by professionals on a regular basis. Ideally, it is recommended to professionally clean your upholstery once or twice a year.
Don’t neglect regular dusting, either. It may seem like your home is relatively dust-free, but dust accumulates a little bit at a time until suddenly, it seems like your house is covered in it overnight. Even if it seems invisible, it’s there. Be sure to dust behind the furniture and large electronics like television. A little effort now can go a long way.
Kitchen
The kitchen is the source of some of the biggest messes in the house, but proper maintenance can easily prevent them from getting out of hand. Handle spills immediately. Letting a spill sit allows a potential stain to set and that stain can quickly become a permanent feature of your counter or floor.
For the best results, mop your floors at least every two weeks. If you have children or pets, you will need to do so more regularly. If you have stone tiles, maintain them with regular mopping, but you should also schedule a professional tile cleaning every few months to keep those areas free from dirt and grime.
Bedrooms
Most of us know that we should change our sheets every one to two weeks. Yet, we often get distracted and don’t think about until four months have gone by and our sheets are disgusting and crusty. To remedy this, set a reminder in your phone or on your calendar. You’ll start getting a better, healthier night’s sleep in no time.
Once a week, you should also run a duster along with your blinds, or even better yet, a vacuum with a brush attachment. Then, once or twice a year, do a more thorough cleaning with a soft cloth. Make sure you keep dirty laundry in a hamper and make sure that laundry is done regularly, rather than allowed to sit for a while.
Bathrooms
Bathrooms are notorious for all kinds of nasty build-ups. Every few days, check the sink for any build-up and clean any built-up residue with a damp cloth or paper towel. Keep an eye on your fixtures, both in the sink and in your tub or shower, for any calcium build-up due to hard water. If you have a water softener, keeping it thoroughly stocked can prevent this kind of buildup from even happening.
A quick scrub once a week with a disposable toilet scrubber can prevent your toilet from developing into a huge mess. Mop the floors every week or two if possible, and swap out your towels for new ones on a regular basis. Professionally clean the tile surfaces in your bathrooms a couple of times a year to keep them free from dirt, grime, and dust.
Hallways and Entrances
In areas where you have a particularly high amount of foot traffic, you’ll want to pay special attention to carpets and rugs. Dirt and allergens tend to accumulate around doorways leading outside, and from there, they can get tracked to every other room in the house. Do a simple sweep around the entrance every couple of days to catch any dust before it accumulates and spreads. Vacuum hallways and heavy foot-traffic areas slightly more often than your main rooms, because dirt can build up, dulling the look of your carpets and home as a whole. Make sure to dust around and behind wall art, and don’t forget to dust behind running tables and other hallway furniture.
By following these tips, you can keep your home looking fresh without a lot of heavy effort. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You can prevent yourself from getting stuck doing much more intense cleaning work in the future if you make some simple changes to your cleaning routine today.