Keeping on top of making sure your home is clean and tidy can be a battle, especially if you’ve got a house full of children and pets. One social media user said they had felt like a “failure” because they had struggled to keep their home clean – but said following eight easy tips had changed everything for the better.
Posting on Reddit, the user said: “I’ve been feeling like a failure because I can’t seem to keep my house clean. I’m not young; I’m 51 to be exact. In my entire life, my house has always been messy, I mean, I didn’t have a disaster-level situation going on, but if someone dropped by unannounced, it would’ve been super embarrassing.
“When my kids were younger, we had a housekeeper because I just couldn’t keep up. Now that we’re empty nesters, I realised I never really learned how to keep house.”
They continued after reading the self-help book ‘Unf*** Your Habitat: You’re Better Than Your Mess’ by Rachel Hoffman, they had started following eight simple tips to stay on top of cleaning tasks.
Eight simple things you can do to keep your home clean
- Put things away, not down. “Whatever you have goes right back where it’s supposed to go when I’m done with it,” they said.
- Do laundry every day. “Just one load, start to finish,” they said. “Wash, dry, fold, and put away. Also, no chair or floor laundry. It gets put in the hamper or hung back up. No clothes are ever out.”
- Make the bed every day. “It just makes my bedroom look cleaner and I smile every time I come in my room,” they said. “Plus we aren’t fighting over the covers when we get in because the bed is straightened out.”
- Do a quick daily clean-up of commonly used spaces. “I keep a stack of cleaning rags in my master bath because it’s the only bathroom that’s used every single day,” they said. “Every night, I spray the counter, wipe everything down, put everything back (that my husband leaves out), and wipe the mirror. I also wipe down the toilet. I find that I don’t need a huge, big cleaning of this space because I’m keeping it up daily. Same goes for the kitchen.”
- Always put dishes away. The user saidL “Dishes are finished in the dishwasher? It’s emptied and dirty ones are placed inside while waiting for the dishwasher to get full.”
- “Shoes are taken off and put away immediately when walking into the house.
- “If it takes less than five minutes, clean it while you’re waiting for something else to get done,” they said.
- No scheduled cleaning days. “I just do something all the time,” the user said. “My life is kind of unpredictable, we love travelling or going out for the day so my so called cleaning schedule would be shot to hell every time. It’s better this way, because now I never feel behind.”
Users applauded the tips in the comments. One wrote: “Oh yay! These are not just tips, this is a solid all around solution. And the beauty of it is it only takes a few seconds in the moment, and that avoids building up a large backlog of stuff to handle later.”
Another said: “It’s about changing those micro-habits so you don’t end up with a huge chore later. Consistency definitely beats sporadic deep cleaning. Love that you found a system that works!”
And another said: “Making the bed is underrated. Sets the tone for the whole room.” A fourth replied: “I use the rule, put it back where it came from, then it’s always where you expect it to be.”
Others, however, were more sceptical, with one replying: “Keep house clean and tidy by keeping the house clean and tidy. Got it!”