When you live in an apartment, things can pile up quickly, and clutter can make a place look messy. Everyone knows life gets busy, and it becomes easy to neglect regular cleaning.
There are several essential cleaning habits that you can cultivate to keep your apartment looking spic and span.
This article lays out seven of these that you can incorporate into your weekly cleaning schedule. Get ready to breathe easier without working any harder.
1. Have a Floor Cleaning Day
When you dedicate a day to vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping, you ensure that your floors never get sticky or dusty.
You may still need to do a quick spot clean or sweep up some spilled cereal from time to time. But a designated floor day means that the ground you walk on is always squeaky clean.
If you want to get really thorough with your mopping, check out How to Clean a Floor. Using a second bucket for clean rinse water is a game-changer!
2. Clean As You Go
Right away, you need to ditch the habit of dumping things where they don’t belong. Instead of leaving behind a mess with every activity, you do, make a habit of cleaning up after yourself as you go.
Rather than leaving every toiletry you use in the bathroom on the counters, put each item away after you use it.
Instead of allowing dirty dishes to pile up in places they don’t belong, place them in the sink after you use them. Better yet, rinse them and put them in the dishwasher.
Don’t allow a pile of papers to grow on your entrance table. Sort your mail and other documents. They either go to the trash, a file folder, or to display on your fridge or command center.
3. Use the Five Minute Bedtime Cleaning Routine
Every night before you head to bed, spend a quick five to ten minutes walking through each room in your apartment. With the goal of quickly putting away or cleaning up anything that you encounter.
Part of this process should be to fill and start the dishwasher and wipe down the counters.
Bring a couple of bags with you — one for trash that you find and one for items that need put away.
When you’ve finished with your walkthrough, throw the bag of trash away, of course, and empty the other bag by putting all items where they belong.
This will go a long way in helping to keep the mess to a minimum even when you are too busy to do a deep cleaning.
4. Do One Load of Laundry Every Day
One load of dirty laundry can quickly turn into a mountain while you aren’t looking. The best way to ensure that your laundry doesn’t get out of hand is by doing one load every day.
If you don’t have one full load to do every day — good for you! But don’t wait until the end of the week to do your laundry, or you could end up spending all day catching up on it.
It’s important to remember to not only wash and dry them but also fold them and put them away.
5. Let It (Clutter) Go
The quickest way to a dirty apartment is a bunch of stuff that you don’t need lying around, getting in the way, and spilling out into your living areas.
It’s tempting to hold onto everything you accumulate with the mentality that you might use them “one day.” Choose to get rid of the clutter instead to help your apartment stay clean
Check all corners and drawers for these items that you never use and either donate them, recycle them, or trash them.
One trick to tell if something is useful or clutter, keep track of how many times you have picked it up and moved it without using it. If you feel like you’ve been merely moving it from place to place, it’s time to get rid of it.
6. Preemptive Cleaning Habits
You can help your cleaning to be quick and painless by learning some essential habits that you can do in conjunction with your daily chores.
These habits include spraying down the shower after each use and quickly rinse it. This will prevent unsightly buildup that is difficult to clean.
You can also take the time it takes to brew your morning coffee to empty out the dishwasher that you turned on the night before.
When you are watching your favorite sitcom at night, take commercial breaks to wipe down your coffee table and declutter your side tables.
7. Deep Clean on the Weekend
With the extra time you have on the weekend, take a couple of hours to do a deeper cleaning. If you have used the first six tips on this list, your deep cleaning day will be much easier.
This day you should start in one room and work your way through the house, cleaning from top to bottom.
Start with dusting and wiping all hard surfaces. Check the wall and windows to see if they need cleaning. Then move onto mopping, vacuuming, and sweeping.
Disinfect the light switches and fluff any pillows. When you tidy up on the weekend, you can start your week with a clean house — helping you stay organized and productive.
Are you interested in DIY projects?
Then you might enjoy making your own homemade cleaning solutions. Made from ingredients you may already stock in your pantry!
Conclusion
Put a plan in place to nurture some (or all seven!) of these useful habits. These secrets will help you keep your apartment so clean, that you won’t have to find the time to scrub your home from top to bottom.
Your apartment will never be what anyone would deem “a mess.”
A clean home is a more peaceful and stress-free environment. Not only will you feel more comfortable, but your tidy home helps to keep you free from sicknesses and allergies.
Author
Dominique Daniels is the Business Manager at Broadstone River House. With over five years of property management experience, she begins and ends each day loving what she does. She finds joy in helping current and future residents and makes Broadstone River House a place everyone loves to call home.
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