If you’re like a lot of us, you save all your household cleaning for one day of the week — Saturday.
Then Saturday morning arrives.
And you find yourself engaged in a four-hour cleaning frenzy, desperate to get your apartment back in working order. Yet, as the days go on, your apartment becomes less and less inhabitable.
The best way to prevent this?
By cleaning a little every single day of the week.
So let’s go over some of the best habits to keep your apartment comfortable, clean, and guest-ready at all times!
1. Do One Chore a Day
You love having six days a week free from cleaning. Yet, you also know what it’s like to witness your apartment slowly turn into a trainwreck as the week goes on.
The best solution?
Do a little cleaning every single day!
Develop a cleaning schedule that makes sense and is easy to keep up. For example, it wouldn’t make sense to schedule a load of laundry every day but only clean your dishes once a week.
Also, remember that some tasks might need doing more than once a week. You may need to vacuum more often if you own pets, and the countertops might need wiping a bit more often if you cook every night.
A sample schedule might look like:
- Sunday: Laundry, cleaning floors (sweeping & mopping)
- Monday: Dusting, vacuuming, dishes
- Tuesday: Take the garbage & recycling out
- Wednesday: Wipe down surfaces, dishes
- Thursday: Vacuuming, reorganization
- Friday: Full bathroom & kitchen cleaning, dishes
- Saturday: Cleaning up anything else
Overall, you’re just trying to keep the tasks from piling up to the point where they take a whole day to clean up.
2. Put Things Back
You like having your favorite items always available to you. At the same time, having random objects lying around the apartment begins to add up and only increases the amount of clutter.
Everything in your apartment should have a rightful place.
When you’ve finished using something, put it back where it belongs. If you need it again later, just take the extra few steps and take it back out. Don’t let your laziness ruin how neat your apartment looks.
If everything doesn’t have a rightful place quite yet — make one now! Invest in some high-quality organization tools like shelving, boxes, and cubbies.
Most of all, skip the stockpiling.
Apartments are already lower square footages. Allowing outdated or broken items to build-up will make your place look even smaller.
Do you struggle with the idea of straight throwing things out?
Consider donating them to a thrift shop, selling them at auction, or giving them to somebody else that could use them.
If you think an item might be useful to you in the future, a storage unit might be a better solution for you.
3. Start Bright and Early
Would you count procrastination as one of your strongest skill sets? You always convince yourself that you’ll do it later, right?
When it comes to cleaning, it can be hard to find the motivation to clean as the day progresses. And, tomorrow can’t always wait (nor does it ever seem to come, in some cases).
So, start your cleaning in the morning. Begin with making your bed first thing in the morning.
When you start cleaning in the morning, you can span specific tasks out throughout the day.
An example?
You can throw the laundry in the washing machine first thing in the morning. Switch it over to the dryer around lunchtime and have it neat and folded by the end of the night.
Soak dishes in the morning and get to scrubbing them later in the day. Pop them in the dishwasher at night and take them out the next morning.
4. Some Things CannotWait
Even if you have a cleaning plan, there are definitely some times you’ll have to go a little off schedule.
Let’s say you have your surface cleaning set for Wednesdays. On Friday, you spill an entire bottle of red wine on the counter.
Are you really going to wait another four days to clean it up? Are you going to let it sit, soak, and get all sticky?
Of course not!
Some things just cannot wait until your scheduled cleaning day. Clean up any spills on the carpet, hardwood floor, or other hard surfaces immediately.Use necessary cleaning tools for places that are hard to reach, especially windows to clean any dust and smudges.
(This also applies to not letting dishes pile up until you can no longer use the sink.)
The goal is to tackle some cleaning while it’s easy and doesn’t require a ton of effort. Set-in stains and dried-on food can be tough to loosen days later.
5. Clean In “Chunks”
One of the best ways to avoid that day-long cleaning routine is by setting aside a chunk of time every day to do minor chores. The best part is, you can be successful in as little as 5 to 15 minutes a day.
When 6:00 PM rolls around (or whatever time you choose), set your timer for 10 minutes and do as much cleaning as you can. When the timer goes off, finish the task you’re doing and call it a night.
The most important thing is doing what absolutely needs cleaning first.
Like, having a sink full of dirty dishes takes priority over dusting your living room.
This type of schedule can be incredibly easy to stick to. You know precisely how long each cleaning session will last and know exactly when it’ll end.
Conclusion
As complicated as it might feel to keep your apartment clean, there are plenty of ways to get a little bit of cleaning done every single day of the week.
Now, you won’t feel like you have to dedicate all your Saturdays to just cleaning.
Clean in short chunks of time. Make your own cleaning schedule that you can stick to and handle immediate concerns as they happen.
Avoiding pile-ups is the best habit to keep your apartment clean day in and day out.
Ryan Sundlingis a Group Marketing Manager at Cardinal Group Management. He has over ten years of experience in the conventional housing industry and works with The Oliver on a daily basis to help them with their marketing efforts.
