5 WAYS TO MAKE HOUSEWORK QUICKER AND EASIER
Who loves housework? I’m sure not many of us. Yet, if you’ve got a house and there’s at least one person living in it, let alone a family, then you’ll need to do housework at some point. How much, when and how you do it, is different for everyone. Some people even enjoy it! For the rest of us who try to put it off until tomorrow, here are 5 ways to make housework quicker and easier.
5 WAYS TO MAKE HOUSEWORK QUICKER AND EASIER
#1 Get a routine in place
This first one is a biggie! Most things are easier once you’ve got a routine in place.
Do you have regular routines for all the mundane stuff that needs to happen around the home so it runs like a well-oiled machine (at all times!) with minimal effort from you?
Or, do you run around like a headless chicken at the end of the week when you realise that none of you have clean clothes, or there’s no food in the fridge, or you have haven’t changed the bedding for weeks?
Every home, even simple and minimalist ones, require a bit of attention now and then.
You’ll always have dirty laundry to wash, no matter how big or small your wardrobe. And none of us feel like food shopping, cleaning or tidying up when we’re ill or had a busy week at work, but it needs to be done.
Get some regular routines in place and stick to them. Your home will function as you need it to every day without you running out of food, clean clothes or having to do a 24 hour deep clean session.
For some specific examples and tips to get started, check out my post on 10 simple household routines to help you keep a clean home without the fuss!
There’s also a free download to help you set up routines in your own home that will really make difference. Pop your details in the box so I know where to send it!
#2 Little and often
If you’ve not done any housework for a month and you have a family, the chances are that it’ll be quite a big and daunting job to get your home sparkling again.
Instead, what about doing housework in smaller, bite-sized chunks? You could set your timer for 15 or 30 minutes per day, even a dedicated ‘Power Hour’ for bigger jobs. Pick a room or a particular task (for example, the windows) and set to it. Keep going until your timer goes off and then stop.
Short periods of time seem much more manageable and can be squeezed into our day with little impact so we can spend our time and energy on other things.
By doing a little bit often, the dirt and mess never really gets a chance to build up so your home is always nicer to live in and presentable in case an unexpected guest drops by!
#3 Establish a rota
Make a list or some kind of chart that lists all the rooms in your house. Go through each room working out exactly what needs to be cleaned and how often.
Make sure you include everything from skirting boards to ceiling lights and the cobwebs you don’t really see unless you look up. Don’t forget behind and under sofas – the places where everything from food to Lego pieces collect.
Come up with a rota for tackling each room. Work out whether it’s easier to group similar jobs together, for example, dusting all the skirting boards downstairs, rather than as you do each individual room. Or maybe doing all the toilets in the house in one go, or one at a time when you come to do that particular room.
Work out how often you need to do each job. Is it weekly, monthly or every six months?
Write it all down so you have a note of it somewhere, on your phone or stuck on the front of the fridge.
Stick to the rota as much as possible but if you miss a task, don’t worry. Just catch up when you can and keep on track.
#4 Delegate
If you’re not the only one in the home then why should you be the only one to clean it?
Make a list of all the jobs that need doing around the house. Include things like washing the dishes, putting away the clean laundry, putting the dirty laundry in the wash, putting the bins out, feeding the dog.
Come up with a rota so that everyone who lives in the house can help to keep it clean.
The kids can get involved if you look at age-appropriate household chores. It teaches them a valuable life skill and helps you out in the process.
#5 Organise your cleaning supplies
Gather together your cleaning supplies and keep them all in one place. Replenish as and when needed and add to your shopping list whenever you’re running low on something.
Separate them out by room or type of cleaning product so that you can easily grab what you need when you’re cleaning a particular room e.g. the bathroom. Have some spare baskets or boxes so that you can pop things in to carry them around the home.
Keeping your cleaning supplies in one place will make it easier for you to grab what you need when you need it, avoids you buying things you don’t need because you couldn’t find what you were looking for and ensures you do buy what you need when you’re close to running out.
Organised efficiency made simple!
These are just 5 ways to make housework quicker and easier. I hope they help free up your time and energy so you can use these for other things!
There are a couple more points that might help you to consider…
FORGET PERFECTION
Let’s face it, your home is never going to be show-home material, especially if you’ve got a family.
Your home is for living in and if you’re holding yourself back from doing things just because you don’t want to mess up your home, then it might be worth revisiting those priorities!
That being said, I know I do prefer a cleaner, tidier and more organised home so it’s just about finding a way to balance this alongside my kids and their stuff!
Unless I clean 24/7 and ban my kids from entering the front door, my home will never be spotless but it’s clean enough and we can live freely in it too!
LESS CLUTTER = LESS STUFF TO CLEAN
It may sound pretty obvious but if you’ve got less stuff then you’ve got less to clean, tidy up, move around and get in the way.
Table tops, worktops, floors, beds, cupboards and stairs are all just a few of the places where clutter builds up.
Yet, your home is so much easier to clean when it’s not cluttered and you don’t have to move loads of stuff out of the way to run a duster or hoover over it.
In the words of Annie Dillard, ‘Whatever takes up your space, takes up your time’.
Do you really love all those ornaments on your shelf or are they there because they’ve just built up over the years? Did you really notice how many you’ve got until you came to dust the shelf but thought better of it because you’d have to move everything?
Think carefully about what you have in your home and whether you love these things enough to warrant spending time looking after and cleaning them.
Think for a moment what you could be doing with that time instead?
Here are some suggestions for further reading so that you can assess exactly what your clutter is costing you!