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10 Ways to Make Cleaning More Fun So You Don’t Keep Dreading It

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10 Ways to Make Cleaning More Fun So You Don’t Keep Dreading It

10 WAYS TO MAKE CLEANING MORE FUN SO YOU DON’T KEEP DREADING IT

Cleaning can feel mundane and repetitive but it’s also necessary for a healthy, looked after home. Here are 10 ways to make cleaning more fun so you don’t keep dreading it!

WE ALL NEED TO CLEAN OUR HOME

Having a clean home is an important part of looking after our home space, creating a home environment that supports good physical and mental health.

I don’t particularly enjoy cleaning as part of my home-making role but it’s a way that I care for and show love to my home and my family that live in it.

Shifting my mindset and thinking about cleaning as a kind of love language has really changed my perspective on what would otherwise be a mundane and repetitive task. Especially a task that I’d rather forego for many other more appealing ways to spend my precious time!

We all need a clean home but getting to that point can be tough.

WHY CLEANING CAN BE TOUGH

It’s not just a question of cleaning being boring or routine and we shouldn’t assume that cleaning is a skill we can all easily acquire.

I don’t think we’re really even taught home-making or cleaning, it’s something we pick up as we go along, from watching others, trying it out ourselves and researching what we don’t know.

Cleaning can also be tough for other reasons too.

Maybe you:

10 ways to make cleaning more fun

CLEANING IS AN ONGOING TASK

One of the other reasons cleaning can be tough is because it’s not a case of once-and-done.

You’ll probably be familiar with how frustrating it can be to clean your home, only for your family to use the bathroom, make food in the kitchen, eat in the living room, put muddy footprints across your clean floor. It drives me crazy when this happens, but I long ago came to terms with the fact that my home will never be as clean as I would like! After all, our home is for living in, not to demonstrate my cleaning skills!

That being said, there are definitely some ways to make cleaning less of a chore and more of a pleasure.

As a few ideas you could:

But that’s not all… You could also make cleaning more fun so you don’t keep dreading it and putting it off!

10 WAYS TO MAKE CLEANING MORE FUN

Making cleaning more fun can help motivate you to tackle household chores with enthusiasm and ease. Here are some creative ways to add enjoyment to your cleaning routine. I hope they help if you struggle with motivating yourself to take care of your home.

1. Turn up the music

Create a cleaning playlist with your favourite upbeat songs. Music can energise you and make cleaning feel more enjoyable. Music affects our mood so put this to good use and choose your music wisely!

2. Dance while you clean

Turn cleaning into a dance party by grooving to the music as you work. Dancing while you clean can make the task feel less monotonous and more fun.

How to make cleaning more fun

3. Set cleaning challenges

Challenge yourself to complete cleaning tasks within a certain time limit or see how many tasks you can accomplish in a set amount of time. Adding a competitive element can make cleaning feel more exciting and brings out the competitive spirit in us.

4. Gamify your cleaning

Turn cleaning into a game by creating cleaning bingo or scavenger hunt cards. See if you can find and clean all the items on your list within a certain timeframe.

You could see how much cleaning you can get done before a song ends on your playlist, or dance your way around a room cleaning to the beat.

Perhaps you can call a friend and chat whilst your dusting, or ask a friend round to help you out.

You could try ‘body doubling’ with another person where they clean alongside you. It has the affect of anchoring you in the present moment and helps avoid getting distracted by other things.

5. Use fun cleaning tools

Invest in colourful or novelty cleaning tools that make cleaning more enjoyable. For example, you could use a fluffy duster in your favourite colour or a scrub brush shaped like an animal. These are also great for getting your kids to help you out too.

For myself, I like to put on some mop slippers when I’m cleaning the floors and they’re bright shocking pink and fun to look at!

10 ways to make cleaning more fun

6. Try multitasking

Combine cleaning with another enjoyable activity, such as listening to a podcast, audiobook, or your favourite TV show. This can make cleaning feel like less of a chore and more of a relaxing pastime.

Multitasking isn’t really good for our brains because every time we switch task we lose focus and it takes time to pick it up again. However, for an activity that you can pretty much do on autopilot (such as cleaning), multitasking might just make it more fun!

7. Reward yourself

Give yourself a reward for completing cleaning tasks. Treat yourself to a tasty snack, a refreshing drink, or some leisure time once you’ve finished cleaning. What treat would you look forward to?

I like to give myself short windows of time to clean and then have a break or do something different. Small bursts of cleaning feel more manageable and realistic than longer ones.

Maybe you could take advantage of some “microwave minutes” – those few minutes whilst the microwave is on to, for example, wipe down the front of your kitchen cabinets, or a “power hour” where you blitz the home and see how much you can get done in that hour. If you’re doing this, a tip I like is to start with putting a load of laundry on so that gets going and puts you in the mindset to clean!

8. Get creative with cleaning supplies

Experiment with homemade cleaning solutions or try out eco-friendly cleaning products with pleasant scents. Finding cleaning products that you enjoy using can make the task more enjoyable.

This is also a great way to promote better health and detox your home from all the chemicals that come with modern cleaners. I found a really aromatic natural grapefruit hand soap and some coconut shampoo and conditioner recently that I love the smell of. The same company have ranges of cleaning products and laundry detergent that I’ve just ordered and am excited to try out. I never thought I’d be excited to clean my bathroom or mop my kitchen floor!

9. Enlist help

Invite friends or family members to join you in a cleaning session. Working together can make cleaning more enjoyable and provide an opportunity for building team work.

Everyone in the home is responsible for making it messy and/or dirty so they too have a responsibility to clean and tidy it. Of course, there might be a division of labour if you or others also work and cleaning might fall to one partner more than the other, but that doesn’t mean one person has to do EVERYTHING, all of the time.

Even little kids can help out with very basic, simple chores. Not only does this teach them skills that will be useful in later life, but it also encourages them to take pride in and look after their home spaces.

How to make cleaning more fun

10. Visualise the end result

Imagine how great your home will look and feel once it’s clean and organised. Visualising the end result can help you stay motivated and make cleaning feel more rewarding.

  • Could you plan to invite some friends over so they can enjoy your newly cleaned, welcoming and inviting home?
  • Will it give you space to exercise, meditate, paint or draw?

Having a clear end result and incentive can help keep us motivated.

By incorporating these fun and creative ideas into your cleaning routine, you can make household chores much more enjoyable.

HOW TO OVERCOME THE MONOTONY OF CLEANING

Many of the ideas I’ve mentioned are ways to make cleaning more fun as many of us struggle with the day-to-day demands of managing our homes and the stuff in them.

In order to overcome the monotony of cleaning, I think it’s important to understand exactly what it is that we don’t like about it.

  • Is it just that with a change of perspective we could learn to love it more?
  • Is it by building in a regular daily cleaning habit that it doesn’t become this big ugly monster of a task that looms up on us each weekend?
  • Or, perhaps you have ADHD and need some creative solutions to overcome the tediousness and repetition of regular cleaning and which means cleaning poses challenges and gets put off or avoided as much as possible.
  • Perhaps you just have too much stuff and your hoarding is getting in the way of looking after your home in other ways too?
  • Maybe you struggle with cleaning and feel frustrated or that you’re a failure in some way? How messy or dirty your home might be, it is not a measure of your value or worth. The quote below from KC Davis, author of How to Keep House While Drowning, illustrates this perfectly…

“Being good or bad at them has nothing to do with being a good person, parent, man, woman, spouse, friend. Literally nothing. You are not a failure because you can’t keep up with laundry. Laundry is morally neutral.”

KC Davis

Whatever your struggle with cleaning may be, I hope the tips I’ve shared in this article will help make cleaning more fun and something to be dreaded less!

Let me know in the comments if you have any other tips to add! I’d love to hear from you.

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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!