Secrets to Keeping a Clean, Organised, & Functional Home, Pt 2

We’re continuing our discussion on cultivating habits that help your home stay clean, organised, and functional. But can’t you just clean? Are there really habits you can develop aside from “just cleaning” the bare minimum that makes our homes functional (or not)?

The answer is yes. How we clean matters, and it really does determine how organised or functional our homes are. Developing these habits will help us in becoming more efficient in cleaning, organising, and keeping our homes functional!

* Clean Thoroughly Once a Week (or more, if needed): be intentional and as thorough as possible in your routine cleanings—and clean once a week! This doesn’t mean you spend two hours shining up the bathroom faucet. It means that you get up all of the grime on the faucet. It’s cleaning intentionally to pull up dirt, not just wiping it down. There’s a difference.

It’s also important to clean up as often as you need to. Usually this is a thorough clean once a week rule. But you might need to clean twice a week, or in the least do some chores twice a week. Maybe the kitchen just needs a thorough cleaning once a week with wipe downs every evening? Maybe your bathrooms need to be cleaned once a week but your floors need vacuumed twice a week? No matter what it is, the more often you thoroughly clean the less build up accumulates; and the more often you are cleaning the faster the subsequent cleanings become (even when you are being thorough).

* Put Things Back in Their Places Immediately after Use: when you’re done with something, put it away immediately. Sometimes we like to drop junk mail off on the counter or throw dirty clothes on the floor, but putting these things away immediately saves us time and keeps our homes more functional. Be intentional in the ways you put things back. Put things back correctly. Don’t half heartedly throw shoes in the closet. Take the extra two seconds to place them there correctly.

This really will save you a lot of time over a longer period of time. You won’t be spending an entire day to clean up what you threw into a pile. Ten extra seconds of intentionally putting away items is not as much as hours of an organising day.* Deep Clean Once or Twice a Year: deep clean at least once if not twice a year. Even when we’re regularly cleaning and it’s thorough, there are places that might need a deep clean (like baseboards, under or around furniture, etc. Set aside the appropriate time to spend a day really deep cleaning everything that you need to. It doesn’t mean you clean everything the way you do in your cleaning routine. You deep clean the things you don’t normally clean: like light fixtures, baseboards, etc.

We hope these steps help you keep a cleaner home. If you have ideas for keeping homes clean and functional we didn’t mention it here, reach out to us and let us know what your ideas are!