Can’t find the time to clean? Sick of spending hours vacuuming, polishing, and mopping – only for your home to look a mess the next day? Cleaning ace KC Davis has provided nine brilliant tips to help busy Brits stay on top of their cleaning
Don’t let household chores take over your life with these time-saving hacks everyone should know about.
After a long hard day of work, followed by a gruelling commute in the dreary British weather – the last thing you want to do when you get home is put on your Marigolds and start cleaning. Or perhaps you’ve spent the day sleep deprived due to the little one, who won’t stop destroying everything in sight now that they can walk, and simply can’t face the mountain of dirty laundry you said you’d sort.
The point is, most of us are too busy to dedicate hours and hours on cleaning. Not everyone has the time of influencers on TikTok, who have slowly convinced you that your wall needs mopping three times a day, your duvet needs ironing every night, and that only monsters don’t clean the back of their fridge regularly. Luckily, there a nine simple tricks that can reduce your cleaning time – while keeping your home looking neat and tidy.
1. Stop folding
Folding laundry is a timely chore that nobody enjoys. No, it’s not ‘therapeutic’ to spend a Friday night turning your t-shirts into perfect squares, only to stash them in your wardrobe where nobody can even see them. Instead of wasting time and effort on folding your clothes, invest in some coat hangers for your shirts and everything else can get dumped into a clean laundry basket or in your drawers. It really is that simple!
2. Time yourself
It’s easy for cleaning to take up more time than necessary as we’re tackling a perpetually messy home. However, setting a 15 minute timer and seeing how much you can do during that time is a good way to increase your efficiency and provides a sense of urgency. Setting aside just 15 minutes a day can really boost your productivity and makes cleaning less daunting.
3. A dirty rack
KC Davis, author of How to Keep House While Drowning, says dirty dishes are like the ‘Mount Everest of care tasks’. Instead of dumping your dirty plates and bowls into the sink, she recommends using a drying rack as a ‘dirty rack’. According to Real Simple, the expert says this keeps your kitchen ‘functional’ and is ‘less visually overwhelming’ that coming back to a sink full of grime. When you have time, transfer the dishes into the dishwasher, or hand wash them.
4. The ‘5 Things’ method
KC, who has even done Ted Talks on organising the home, has also theorised that there are only five types of items in a cluttered room: rubbish, dishes, laundry, things that have a place, and things that don’t have a place. Addressing things in this order can help provide stricture to your cleans. You don’t have to go through all ‘five things’ in one day either. Even if you go through one a day, you’ll notice a big difference to your home and will eventually get into a productive habit.
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6. Leave your cleaning items out
Yes, a table full of bleach and air freshener might not look appealing, but keeping your cleaning items (including appliances like your vacuum) in plain sight can encourage you to make use of them and means they’re always easily accessible. Of course, if you have guests coming round, it might be best to put the loo cleaner in the cupboard…
7. Closing time
KC suggests selecting three-five simple tasks that you do in the same order every night. “For example, taking out the trash, clearing the kitchen island, packing kids’ lunches, and loading the dishwasher,” she told Real Simple. “The house doesn’t have to look perfect, but it does need to function, and those few things are the must-haves for every day.” You can curate your own closing time routine based on what you need to prioritise. This can also be a fun activity to get the kids involved with, and teaches them about responsible cleaning at a young age.
8. Reset board
The cleaning ace suggests implementing a ‘reset board’ into your daily cleaning tasks, where ‘to-do’ duties are moved to a ‘done’ column. You’ll get the same kind of buzz your receive when ticking off a work task, and can also help make cleaning seem less daunting by having it visually spelled out in front of you. Again, this is a great way to get kids involved in keeping the home clean.
9. Schedule
Social media has created a pressure that we should be cleaning 24/7. But the reality is we all have different schedules and commitments, so finding time to mop and vacuum etc can be a challenge. If you’re busy during the week because of your job or family commitments, don’t worry, allocate some time at the weekend to clean – or perhaps you have 15 minutes every morning you could use to stop the bigger tasks piling up.
What’s your top cleaning hack? Let us know in the comments section below
