Got "Keep House Clean" on Your 2011 Resolutions List? Shop for These Items to Speed Up that Chore!

Unless you're related to Mary Poppins, house-cleaning probably isn't on your list of favorite activities. The problem: if you keep coming up with one elegant excuse after another for delaying dusting, mopping, and all those other tedious tasks, you can end up with a very big, very inelegant mess!

I've experimented with a variety of options for keeping my home clean - or as Mary Poppins would say, "spit-spot." I've tried cleaning one room each day of the week. The challenge to keeping that method from turning into madness: inevitably, I would get invited to a potluck on my day supposedly devoted to cleaning the bathroom. That invitation meant using cleaning time for cooking. So I would delay the bathroom by a day...but then a few days later, it would be my monthly book club meeting, which required frantically reading my book instead of cleaning....and so it went. I have friends who swear that listening to their favorite music kept them motivated to move with that mop. But when I cranked up the music loudly enough to hear it over the vacuum cleaner, my next-door neighbors complained.

As a result, I inevitably found myself frantically running around the house whenever I expected guests. Dusting required an endless array of items, followed by attempting to clean the kitchen floor, vacuuming, more dusting to tame the dust that seemed to appear out of nowhere when I vacuumed...is it any wonder that I always suggested, "Let's go out" rather than invite people over to my home?

Out with the Old Cleaning Junk, In With the New Solutions!
Then one day I paused and took a look at my growing collection of cleaning gear. Because none of it seemed to (a) last very long, or (b) do a very good job, I kept accumulating more and more options. And even Mary Poppins would have groaned at how quickly those dust bunnies continued to proliferate!

I decided to ask friends whose homes always seemed immaculate. I ended up buying a few key items that they recommended - and here's what works in my now much cleaner home:

1. Swivel Flex Dust Mop from Quickie.com:
I am still amazed at how quickly this nylon dust mop picks up dust! Cool factor: the mop part is machine-washable, and there's a hang-up feature on the hook that makes keeping your cleaning gear tidy much easier.

2. Old socks and ripped nylons:
Sounds like a joke - but it works! Inevitably, one sock will have a hole in it and the other won't - or you'll face the mystery of the disappearing sock after you've done your laundry. Stop tossing out those old socks. Keep them for quick dusting tasks - they're easy to store, and great at getting into those little crannies. Ditto for those nylons that get a run in them: save them and turn them into fabulous cleaning implements for Venetian blinds. They treat even your most expensive blinds with TLC, picking up dust perfectly.

3. Magical microfiber products:
I also discovered just how well good quality microfiber products work. For example, I have a set of pots and pans that I used to love - but that gradually became stained over time with "gunk" such as burnt chocolate pudding made from scratch (and "scratch" is the word for the mess I made when I tried to clean it up!). These were sitting in my "to be cleaned" pile for longer than I want to admit. The solution: the Green Cleaning Microfiber Non-Stick Cookware Sponges from Quickie.com. These two-sided microfiber sponges contain one side with polyester scrubbing strips that removed all that gunk faster than a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down! Mary Poppins: prepare to turn green with envy.