You want your house to be clean but you have no time to get the chores done!
Once you have children, keeping your house clean feels like an impossible task. When your kids are babies they cry until you hold them, leaving you with no choice but to give up on anything else you were trying to do.
Once they are toddlers, they demand your attention all of the time. They do not accept no for an answer and in the end it’s just easier to give in and focus all of your energy on them.
I totally understand this, cleaning when you have kids is hard. If you’re anything like me, having a clean and tidy house is pretty important to you! You want to spend time with your kids and be a good parent, but you would also like a house that looks more like a home and less like a tip.
I’ve put together a list of brilliant hacks for cleaning your house when you absolutely hate cleaning.
This article contains affiliate links.
1. Just move one thing
Let’s start off simple with the ultimate step you can take to have clean home when you have zero time. That is to just start with one thing.
Sometimes mess can feel so overwhelming or have become no normalised that we do nothing in the face of it.
So change that habit, and make it a point to do something, anything, when you walk into and out of any room.
Take the laundry from the washing machine to hang it up outside. Put away the dishes.
2. One-minute habits
This leads me on to my next tip which is to make use of small windows of time. There are plenty of jobs that can be done in a minute or less.
That includes picking up shoes your kids have left strewn through the hallway, putting on a load of dirty laundry and rinsing your coffee mug and putting it in the dishwasher.
Whenever you walk into a room of your home, look for a quick win you can achieve in just one-minute when it comes to tidying up.
3. Declutter
A huge part of making cleaning easier for you is to put systems in place.
One of the best ways you can speed up the tidying process is by making sure you have space for all your stuff in the storage you own. And that means you need to declutter regularly.
With kids, work and life in general, we tend to accumulate a whole lot of stuff as we go. Try to get in the habit of regularly putting stuff aside to donate or sell. I always have a bag of items to be donated or sold online, and I just add to it throughout the course of a month or two before getting rid of it all in one go.
Stuff you can declutter today includes:
- Clothes you haven’t worn in over a year.
- Kids’ toys they haven’t touched in over a year (if they are sentimental then put them into storage)
- Books – be realistic, will you read it again?
- Paperwork – this can clutter up kitchen counters and drawers so be ruthless
4. Use a microfibre mitt
It’s basically a cloth that you wear on your hand like a glove. But it makes dusting your home so much faster. And it’s great if you have blinds.
The mitts I use are intended for car cleaning but they have made cleaning my home easier.
I just pop it on my hand and spray either my diluted Zoflora mix or some dusting solution on to it, then wipe things such as our TV stand, shelves and our wooden blinds. It’s also brilliant for the staircase and banisters.
If you’re in a real hurry, you don’t even need to use a cleaning solution. Just use the cloths to wipe down surfaces and trap dust.
You can also get microfibre cloths on a wand, which are great for reaching high spots such as the tops of doors and window blinds.
5. Grab a basket
Do you find that things like clothes, toys and hairbrushes end up in the most random places in your home?
I use our laundry basket and go from room to room, picking up the stuff that doesn’t belong in that place. I then sort it out into piles and put them where they belong.
You can try working around a room clockwise, so that you aren’t darting back and forth.
The other great thing about the clockwise method is that you can look back and see that you’re making progress as you clean the room!
6. Clear the sides before wiping
It feels tedious picking everything up from the side you’re about to wipe and putting it on the floor, but it’s way faster than shifting everything out of your way as you try to wipe.
As you put things back on the side in their right place, give them a quick wipe with your cloth, or mitt, too.
7. Keep your cleaning products clean
A dirty mop or brush is not going to be efficient at cleaning.
I love washable cloths for wiping down my kitchen and bathroom surfaces and tiles, as they can go into the washing machine at 40C every so often. Easy.
My mop features a removable pad that can be washed at 60C. I make sure to do it weekly as I tend to mop every day.
8. Put a load of washing on in the morning
Load the washing machine up as you collect washing throughout the day, then first thing in the morning when you wake up put it on. Try to do this every day, if you create as much washing as I do!
9. Do the 10-minute challenge
Time is tight when you’re busy with kids, work, life in general. However try to find 10 minutes in your day every now and then. During that 10 minutes, focus on just one area or room. For example, vacuuming all carpets or cleaning one bathroom.
This system can help you to stop dashing from room to room in a blind panic trying to do 50 different jobs at once, which isn’t efficient and always leaves me stressed out!
10. Create a list
This links nicely to the previous item. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the housework tasks and are not sure how you will get it done, break everything down into a list and tackle it one item at a time.
You’ll find it easier to separate specific tasks, rather than rooms. For example, dust the house all in one go and vacuum in another segment of time. This way you have the tools you need in your hand already as you go about getting stuff done.
Want the list to be done for you? Check out my cleaning planner, which features checklists to help you keep on top of the housework.
11. Air the house
Mould and bad smells thrive in a house with poor ventilation. Try to crack open a window, especially in the bathroom after using the shower or tub, every single day.
I even do this in winter to get some air into the house and it really helps to get rid of musty smells.
12. Clean your microwave fast
You do not have to scrub your microwave. Just do this:
- Fill a coffee mug with half water and half vinegar or lemon juice (or half a lemon if you have one)
- Microwave on high for five minutes.
- Remove and wipe down the inside of the microwave
13. Get the right cleaning products
I’ve found that having the right products in the house makes a huge difference. I always make sure I have the following:
Soda crystals – I’ve made a video about how to clean with them here.
Bicarbonate of soda – I’ve got another video for bicarb cleaning right here:
Multipurpose cleaning spray
White vinegar
Bleach
Zoflora
Method kitchen cleaner
With these products I can get ride of any marks and grime in my house. Soda crystals are fantastic for clearing blocked drains, and I also use them to create a solution to soak laundry with heavy staining. Bicarbonate of soda is fab for absorbing bad smells, and lifting stains from fabric. White vinegar and bleach is what I use the most to get rid of hard water stains in my toilets.
Zoflora is fantastic for disinfecting and creating a lovely smell in your home. I use a diluted solution to spray on our hallway rug to lift that area of the house. I also pour Zoflora down the loo (with no other chemicals there to avoid bad fumes) to make the bathrooms smell good. I clean my floors with a mixture of Zoflora, dish soap and water in a spray bottle. It’s brilliant!
14. Work with your kids
You really need to pick your moments for cleaning when it comes to kids. Little ones can need a lot of your attention at times, so you cannot always expect them to allow you to get on with cleaning.
Find a time when your kids are distracted, or get them involved with cleaning by challenging them to pick up as many toys as possible. You could give them a toy basket each and ask them to fill them with toys from the floor that need putting away.
Your kids could also be given microfibre cloths to do some dusting. My kids love to sweep the floors!
Check out my post about how to keep your house clean with small kids around.
15. Get smart with cleaning hacks
If you have some major hard water stains to deal with, or a stinky plughole in your kitchen, you need to get smart with your cleaning hacks so that you’re not spending ages dealing with just one cleaning job.
I have an entire list featuring amazing cleaning hacks.
16. The best routine for you
There are lots of different cleaning routines out there! Some may work for you and others may not.
Aim to spend just 30 minutes per day, with a focus on a different room each day.
For me personally, I have daily chores and then one big clean I do once a week.
My daily cleaning routine consists of:
- Emptying dishwasher
- Putting on a load of washing
- Put away toys before kids go to bed
- Wipe down kitchen surfaces
- Load dishwasher and switch on before bedtime
Weekly chores:
- Put away clean laundry
- Vacuum
- Mop floors
- Dust
- Change beds
- Clean bathrooms
This method works well for me because I get one day a week where the kids are out of the house. On this day I can focus on the housework for an entire morning and blitz the weekly jobs.
My daily cleaning routine is done throughout the day in tiny increments.
17. Work from the top down
Dust before you vacuum so that you do not have to go over the floors again once you’ve knocked dust bunnies to the floor while dusting.
Find a systematic way to go through a room so you are using your time efficiently.
And you can apply that to the whole house, for example decide that you will work on tidying the upstairs really thoroughly before moving on elsewhere.
18. Prioritise the busiest rooms
If you only have time for one or two rooms then focus on the ones that are the messiest. That is likely to be the kitchen and the living room, or maybe the kids’ playroom.
Focus on doing at least five minutes of cleaning and tidying in those rooms every day.
This will be made much easier when you declutter and have adequate storage in those rooms for the things that you use the most.
19. Tackle the dumping grounds
We all have dumping grounds in our home where we just throw stuff with the intention of “dealing with it later”.
Those dumping grounds tend to grow in size over time until they get pretty overwhelming and contribute to the home looking cluttered. Plus it makes the room hard to clean.
So deal with your dumping ground, whether it’s a pile of paperwork on the counter in the kitchen or a pile of old clothes in your spare room.
