Cleaning Made Easy

Now that a majority of couples both hold full-time jobs, it seems the household "to-do-list" has become a sort of "I don't have time to-do" list. Since no one person stays home and keeps things tidy, keep your sanity by following a few steps to help you "cheat" at cleaning.

Get your mind and your heart into it:

Relax! Take a real world approach to cleaning - time saving, minimal effort techniques. We'd all be much more stress-free if we could "cheat" our way through cleaning. Get yourself into the right state of mind to clean and the make sure you do not spend more time and energy than is absolutely required.

A lot of us have trouble throwing things away. Even things that are worn-out, beyond repair, or of no value to anyone anymore. "If it is older than 2 years and is not being used, get rid of it" - this is a rule I live by. This goes for clothing, appliances, gadgets, etc.

You probably fail to realize exactly how much time you take away from you life by removing stains, hand washing or ironing clothing. Together, these clothing items are a tremendous burden in your life. Start the "replacing" game. If that blue blouse that is so willing to wrinkle is a little older, toss it, and replace it with a nice "wrinkle resistant" one. Do this a little at a time until you have replaced any stain/wrinkle prone items. Easy care and easy cleaning will free up your time that much more.

Do not let your ego be the cause of some of your cleaning stress. Whiles luxuries are nice, do you really want to spend the entire day during a cook out trying to keep people of your "special" sofa? Or do you want to spend 6 out the 7 days a week taking your car to the car wash because it is a "luxury" car and you must keep it looking as such? Keep yourself surrounded by easy care possessions, even if you can afford something else. It will help to shorten your clean time when you are spending several minutes cleaning a "black spot" out of your luxury white sofa, and you will be relatively more anxiety free while you do your cleaning.

Get your hands into it:

Don't try to clean the entire house from top to bottom. Try taking a different approach and work on "mini" cleaning projects. If you have five minutes before you leave for work, grab the toilet brush or sponge and give it a nice shine. You can work on the rest of the bathroom later - but this is one less step you have to take now. Just spend 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there cleaning things up throughout the week and you will be facing FAR less of a mess when it comes time to really clean over the weekend.

I cannot stress enough how important storage is! Make use of the storage areas in your home. That is the best way to eliminate clutter. Use shelves and store things in decorative boxes for a sophisticated look. Or try throwing all the extra blankets, towels, sheets, etc. into a storage ottoman or pretty trunk in your house. Don't forget closets and hangers...lots of things can be kept in your closets and out of sight!

"A cleaning task will be accomplished on a frequency that is inversely proportional to the distance between the object to be cleaned and the materials necessary to clean it". Jeff Bredinberg - How to Cheat at Cleaning. I'll translate -- When it's hard to get to your cleaning tools, less cleaning gets done. Keep them within reach or keep one or two "cleaning kits" on each level of your home. It may be that you think "Oh, its downstairs? I'll just get it when I next go down there". Then you forget, and whatever it was you were going to clean is added to list of other things to clean at a different time, thus providing you with more stress that could have be avoided if you were properly prepared.

Finally, be willing to replace the old, used items with new things -- like stove top drip pans, shower curtains, or cookie sheets. These things will never really come clean, so why not save yourself the trouble and just use them until they can't be used anymore and then replace them!