Most of us would like to spend less time than we do on our housework. But whether you love it or whether you hate it, somebody has to do the dusting, polishing and vacuuming around the house!
The vast majority of us would prefer not to do things the hard way and we’d much prefer household cleaning tasks to be a lot easier. It may come as a surprise, then, to find out that you might be cleaning things around the home the hard way rather than the efficient way.
It pays to take a tip or two from the professional home cleaners. Because they have to get through a certain amount of work in a set time, even if they are being paid at an hourly rate, they know how to work efficiently and quickly, making the most of all the cleaning time available. If you could have a wee chat to a professional housemaid, she (or possibly he) could tell you a few things that you are doing wrong and could do more effectively.
And who doesn’t want to make the job of cleaning the house easier?
Habits That Make Domestic Cleaning Harder
Here are a handful of bad habits that seem good: ways that you are making things harder for yourself. Do any of these sound familiar?
- You clean the bathroom and/or kitchen in one big hit when you’ve got plenty of time during the day to spend on cleaning jobs.
- You take activities from one room into another room. For example, you take a snack away from the table and through to the TV room. You polish your nails in the kitchen instead of in the bathroom. You take your paperwork away from the home office (or the corner that you’ve got set aside for your computer and files) and into the bedroom.
- You leave all your windows open all the time (or at least as much as possible) and you wipe your shoes on the mat before walking inside.
- You pick up any cleaning products in the supermarket that look good. The same goes for cleaning tools.
- You clean when you feel like it, doing whatever tasks pop into your head.
- When you start cleaning, you buzz from the room you’re working on back to the rubbish bin or laundry with dirty clothes or things that need to be thrown out.
None of these habits sounds too bad at first. But they could be making the task of getting your home presentable a lot longer and harder than it has to be. But how?
- If you leave dirt and grease to settle on the kitchen bench or the bathtub, it dries on and becomes harder to remove when the time comes for that big domestic cleaning session.
- If you do activities away from where they’re supposed to be done, you tend to leave equipment and bits and pieces all over the place, as it’s harder to put things away where they belong if you’re not in the right room. This is how pens end up in the bathroom, plates end up on top of the TV and so forth.
- Doors and windows let dust and dirt in as well as people. Doormats can only get so much off your shoes.
- A cleaning product that you never use or hardly ever use is just going to clutter up your cupboards. The same goes for gadgets that are too difficult or impractical to use. Take robot vacuum cleaners: they’re fine if you keep your floors clear most of the time. If you have small people (or larger people!) who drop things all over the floor, then you’re going to have to pick everything up off the floor before you set the robot vacuum going or it won’t vacuum you carpets properly.
- As the old saying – or cliché – goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
- Trips back and forth are inefficient and a waste of energy. If you buzz back and forth, you probably spend most of your time going from A to B, especially if you have to trek up and down stairs.
Home Cleaning The Easy Way
So how do you make these jobs easier? How do you correct these bad home cleaning habits? Dear reader, all will be revealed…
- Clean up the bathroom or kitchen as soon as you’ve finished using it. Foam, grease, soap scum etc. all come off so much easier when they’re fresh and it can be done in a jiffy with a quick wipe of a cloth with minimal effort.
- Do things in the right place to avoid scattering things through the house. Or if you absolutely have to take something into a different place, be very scrupulous about taking it back to where it belongs straight away rather than leaving it there until it’s time to tackle your cleaning.
- Close your windows if they face the prevailing wind. This way, dust, pollen, seeds and leaves won’t get blown indoors. Take your shoes off at the door so they don’t bring mud inside.
- Look out for all-purpose cleaning products that can do several jobs rather than specialised ones. When choosing tools, think about your home and your lifestyle. If you’ve got heaps of carpet and not many hard surfaces, then buying a floor polisher is probably a waste of your hard-earned money.
- Schedule your cleaning tasks and have a list of things you really want to get done rather than cleaning at random whenever the fit takes you. This way, all the jobs that need to be done around your home will be seen to, rather than just the ones you like or the ones that are the most visible.
- Take all your tools with you as you clean, just like the professionals do. Also bring a big basket with you to store items that need to be taken to another place rather than put away. Deal with these items (dirty laundry, rubbish, things in the wrong place) all at once rather than as you come across them.
Home Cleaning The REALLY Easy Way (OK, You May Call It Cheating!)
Hire a professional cleaner! If you need your home cleaned efficiently and effectively, then don’t just that housemaid how to clean the house – making enquiries about prices, contracts and schedules may be the answer. This means that all the heavy-duty cleaning work gets done effectively, freeing you up, and you only have to do basic surface cleaning work.