When most single people or couples complain about having to keep their homes clean and tidy, many parents, or those with pets, can find themselves rolling their eyes. It’s not hard to see why, as even the most focused and attentive families can leave a home a little messier than usual based on their general movements throughout the day.
What matters, then, is not necessarily cleaning every single day, but being smart about how you use your home without having to worry or tiptoe around every corner. Of course, there are some quite obvious habits to keep on top of. Setting ground rules such as never letting anyone track mud throughout the carpet after walking outside is key. Letting a dog outside into the damp garden after a bath so they can roll around and immediately become dirty again is probably not the best option.
But from there, the possibilities afforded to us are relatively wide. In this post, we’ll discuss how to achieve some of this and more:
Offer Proper Organizational Options
One important consideration to make is that if your family has a few avenues by which it can keep tidy, then it most likely will. Making it as easy as possible for them to keep up with their daily duties makes it so that none of this has to fall on your shoulders, or that you only need to overview how they’re keeping hold of the space.
For instance, it might be that in your laundry room, you have a few baskets that are labelled for dark clothes, coloured clothes, and white clothes. This way, the separation can be performed easily. Then, if a basket is filled, you can ask them to put on a laundry load in the washing machine, using the available detergents and fabric conditioners that are available. Then, when it’s done, perhaps you’ll be able to dry it, iron it, and fold it. This cuts out 50% of the laundry gathering task, simply because you gave your family members the resources they needed to practice good organizational planning.
Of course, your capabilities here can be defined in a few ways. Offering a few storage baskets in their bedroom, or hanging storage containers, encourages them to avoid the messy room so stereotypical of teenager spaces and instead learn to have pride in that area. You may also find that plants and greenery can be a good way of helping rooms seem airy and light, convincing your son-who-loves-gaming to open his curtains and allow some ventilation and sunlight in. It’s the little things that add up over time.
Consider Your Upholstery
It’s a good idea to consider the upholstery in the space and how it can protect your home from damage or dirt. For instance, seeing the top benefits of performance fabric can enable you to resist wear and tear while cleaning the furniture coated with it easily.
This could allow you to ensure both indoor and outdoor seating is properly managed, without having to worry too much about over-cleaning or defending it. This can be a true boon if you have pets to deal with, because sometimes they may need to be discouraged from jumping on the sofas, and the only way they learn that is if they try to do so in the first place.
Upholstery can also be a big consideration as it relates to the condition of all furniture pieces. You may find that repairing, repainting and redrawing designs can enable an older piece of furniture to retain its value and presence for the present and future. For instance, painting over your table and varnishing it can allow for a new, brighter aesthetic while still ensuring a fixture feels new and enjoyable.
Upholstery like this helps the space look and feel cleaner, and more relevant to today. It also allows you to teach your family the virtue of taking pride in their space, from now into the future.
Hidden Vs. Present Storage
The hidden vs. present storage of your room can provide much in the way of decorating your space while also ensuring it remains as clean and tidy as possible. Think of your kitchen space and cabinets. What kind of appliances are you happy to have displayed on the kitchen surface (such as a toaster), and what may be held in the cupboard for now? If you use a blender once a week or so, then it might be more valuable hidden inside the cupboard. Your air fryer, however, might take pride of place on the counter.
This kind of storage can also relate to the goods you keep hold of as part of your cooking inventory. Flours, baking goods, herbs and spices may be proudly displayed in an overhead rack, or shelving. But perhaps the larger bowls, whisks, and other utensils can be placed within the cupboard so they don’t overcrowd the space, helping you dust and polish both shelving units more easily without having to move large implements too often.
This kind of philosophy can apply to many rooms in your house. When you avoid cluttering display spaces, they become so much easier to clean. And of course, the internals of cupboards and cabinets do require cleaning, but less often than the open and exposed areas.
Automated Cleaning Assistants
There are many worthwhile automated cleaning assistants out there, those that make a major difference in keeping the floors in good condition over the week. The most popular of these is the Roomba of course, but there are many other brands that offer smartphone integration, and can even be controlled by voice assistants.
Automated cleaning assistants can even come with mop functionalities as well as the vacuum addition, allowing you to clean laminate flooring with ease. These require an initial investment, of course, and the changing of filters and the means to recharge batteries, but over time, they can save you plenty of time in keeping the floor clean and capable. Don’t be afraid to get started with them - they’re tremendously useful to use.
Air Purifiers
Air purifiers make a major difference in how comforting your home feels. They can condition and remove pollutants from your breathable space, often replacing the air in the room twice over in the space of an hour.
Some air purifiers also come with negative ionisers, which are known to improve our sense of alertness by discharging the positive ions in the air, often generated by electronic devices in your home. Air purifiers can be especially worthwhile in the summer heat, where intensive heatwaves can sometimes cause trouble.
This, combined with a worthy fan and ventilation, help a home feel nicer to occupy regardless of how tidy it currently is. There’s a lot of worth to be had here.
Enlisting Help
Enlisting the help of those in your family is essential to keep your home clean. They should take control of their own spaces, and be responsible for that. You can also ask your teenagers to clean the bathroom every other week, or help out with the minor chores of the household. This helps them take their fair share of work and prevents it from resting all on your shoulders.
Of course, this might require some disciplining, but overall, the effort is worth it. This way, when they head off to university or rent an apartment of their own, the lessons they learn now will have been drilled into them, and they’ll take care of their space.
With this advice, we believe you’ll keep your home cleaner, even with a family to deal with.
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