5 WAYS TO MAKE HOUSEWORK QUICKER AND EASIER

Who loves housework? I’m sure not many of us. Yet, if you’ve got a home 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

Here are 5 ways to make housework quicker and easier. Let’s save time on chores and give you more time (and freedom and energy) for getting on with the rest of life!

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 haven’t changed the bedding for weeks?

Every home, even simple and minimalist homes, 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 of household routines and tips to get started, check out my post on 10 simple household routines to help you keep a clean home without the fuss!

ACTION POINT: There’s also a free workbook to help you set up routines in your own home that will really make difference. Pop your details in the box at the end of this article 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 10-15 minutes per day, even a dedicated ‘Power Hour’ if you have time every now and then. 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 home. 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 of the downstairs, rather than as you do each individual room. Or maybe doing all the toilets in the home 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.

You might like this article from Porch.com on how to clean your home effectively. It includes a helpful cleaning checklist which will help you create a cleaning rota for your own home.

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 home. Include things like washing the dishes, sorting and 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.

Above all, make cleaning fun and you’re more likely to get some help with it!

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!

Alternatively, you could keep cleaning supplies for particular rooms in that specific room. For example, I keep a set of bathroom cleaning products in my bathroom so that if I have a spare few minutes then I can grab them and clean my bathroom really quickly. I don’t have to go searching for them which will take up time and likely put me off! Think about how and where you clean and then set up your supplies accordingly.

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, clutter-free and more organised home. This is also helpful if you’re struggling with ill health, are an introvert or are highly sensitive to your surroundings, so it’s just about finding a way to balance your needs alongside those of your family 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.

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, the benefits that a decluttered home might bring you and whether you love these things enough to warrant spending time looking after and cleaning them.

ACTION POINT: Read more about the benefits of decluttering your home.

‘Whatever takes up your space, takes up your time.’

Annie Dillard

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!

• 20 reasons to own less stuff
• 10 reasons to declutter your home
• Why declutter instead of organise
• 6 tips to help you declutter
• Types of clutter and how to deal with them

MORE ON THIS TOPIC

Here are some more articles and resources which might help make housework quicker and easier:

• 32 Practical Ways to Declutter Your Life Today – Sometimes life is busy and complicated. It feels even more difficult to try to simplify when we can’t press the pause button on that life and work out what to simplify, let alone how to do it. Here are 32 practical ways to declutter your life today if you’re craving more time, space and ease in your every day.
• How to Help Kids and Teenagers Declutter and Keep Their Room Clean and Tidy – For those of you with older kids and teenagers, you may be familiar with the struggle to keep them motivated. This is even more difficult when you’re trying to motivate and encourage them to help around the home and clear up after themselves! If this resonates with you, here are some tips on how to help kids and teenagers declutter and keep their room clean and tidy.
• ADHD Cleaning Tips: Gentle, Practical Ways to Help Keep a Clean and Tidy Home With ADHD – Many of us love to have a clean and tidy home but struggle how to make this happen. It can be even more difficult if you have the extra challenges of ADHD. In this article you’ll find some ADHD cleaning tips and gentle, practical ways to help you towards keeping a clean and tidy home with ADHD.
• The Mental Health Benefits of Spring Cleaning – Spring is a season of new growth, freshness and transition. In this post we reset the button on your home, life and self-care and explore the mental health benefits of spring cleaning.
• Simplify Your Home – Simplify Your Home is a complete decluttering guide and checklists to help you declutter your home, the simple and strategic way.
• 8 Ways to Make Spring Cleaning Easier and Less Overwhelming – Spring cleaning is a great way to clear our homes of dust and grime. In this article I’m sharing 8 ways to make spring cleaning easier and less overwhelming, more effective and fun!

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I’m Antonia and on this blog I share practical inspiration to simplify your home, time and life. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest! You can also subscribe to Balance Through Simplicity and receive regular simplicity tips straight to your inbox for free. Make sure you never miss an article plus you’ll get a copy of my free Declutter Starter Kit as a welcome gift!