When you have children and/or pets, keeping your home tidy can be difficult. Within minutes of the living room being tidied, there are toys out again, the rug has been kicked aside by the dog and the cushions that you nicely placed along the couch are all messed up – it’s a nightmare.
There are, however, a few things you can do to help you keep your home neat and tidy for what will seem like a longer period of time. Let’s begin!
1. Make your bed
This may seem straight forward, but making your bed almost as soon as you get up can set up your entire day. Your bed takes up a lot of space in your bedroom, meaning it can look extremely unattractive if it is not made properly. Leaving your bed messy on a morning will mean that you come home to an untidy bedroom in the evening and get into a messy bed when it’s time to go to sleep. With that in mind, wouldn’t it make good sense to take an extra 60 seconds each morning to straighten out your duvet, fluff your pillows and tuck the edges in.
Following this tip will help to ensure your bedroom is a much calmer environment to be in from the start of the day, right through until it’s time to go to bed.
2. Bathroom cleaning products
Rather than storing all bathroom cleaning products under the sink with all your other household cleaning items, try storing them in the bathroom itself. This takes away the chore of having to traipse to the kitchen when you realise the bathroom needs cleaning. If the products are there for you to use, you’ll feel more willing to give your bathroom a scrub when you notice the toilet or basin could use a clean.
Toothpaste marks in the bathroom sink can be really unattractive if left for a long time, but can be easily removed if your bathroom cleaning products are nearby!
3. Get rid of junk mail straight away
Allowing your junk mail to build up can be a real problem, so don’t let your junk mail build up your telephone table or hallway cabinet. Simply sort through it when you find a little pile on your floor, keeping what’s needed and binning/recycling what isn’t.
This quick tip will help to ensure you end up with little clusters of junk mail scattered about the entrance to your home. You could even consider some form of letter holder to organise your letters when you get them.
4. Do the dishes daily
There’s nothing worse than waking up to a huge pile of dishes in the morning from last night’s tea. A dishwasher can come in handy, but not all of us have space or funds available for a new dishwasher, so it’s important to keep on top of the dishes. If you don’t do them the night before, you’ll find yourself feeling depressed when you come home from work to them the following night. Next thing you know, you’ll need to cook again, and the mountain becomes even bigger. Washing up little and often will help to maintain your kitchen, providing you do each night when you have finished eating.
5. Clean the worktops
It takes seconds to wipe the worktops down after you have finished cooking and eating, yet this is one of the household duties that will often get neglected. Crumbs and food remnants left on the worktops is not only unsightly, but also very unhygienic as invisible bacteria can build up. Take the time to wipe the worktops down with an antibacterial spray each night and you will help to ensure your kitchen is clean and tidy all the time.
6. Tidy before bed
Before you go to bed each evening, take the time to do a quick tidy. No more than 2-5 minutes should be enough to straighten everything up, put any leftover cups in the sink and make sure everything is on order ready for a new day. Waking up the next day to a tidy home is a great feeling, helping you the start the day on a positive note.
7. Be strategic
Rather than going up and down the stairs a dozen times or back and forth between different rooms, get yourself a dedicated basket to carry stuff about. This can come in handy with kid’s toys, as they will usually find their way to weird and wonderful places throughout your home. Your new basket will help you to pick all things up in one go to take them back to their rightful home without zig zagging around the house over and over again.
8. Buy a portable vacuum
Portable vacuums can make one of the most tedious jobs around the home seem bearable. If you are someone that has kids and/or pets, you might find it difficult to keep your floors or carpets clean. Crumbs and pet hairs will mean you quite often have to hoover every day, but who would want to clart a big vacuum cleaner around the house every day. Instead, purchase a handheld vacuum, like a Dyson, and the chore of keeping the floors clean will become MUCH easier. Simply grab your handheld vaccum, take care of the messy bits, job done. What was once a time-consuming job, will now become much quicker and easier.
9. Teach the kids to tidy
Keeping the house clean and tidy when you live on your own is quite simple. When there are two of you to split the chores, it might be even easier still. But when you throw children into the mix, things become a lot tougher, as you probably already know. Once your children are at a suitable age (probably 6-7), teaching them to tidy up after themselves is entirely plausible. Trial it. They’re not allowed to play with another toy until they have put the first toy away. It might seem like a ball ache, but you’ll appreciate it in the long run when you have a squad of children tidying up after themselves.
10. Think about your storage options
One of the best ways to keep your home tidy is with practical storage solutions. Having one or several places where you can store a lot of things out of sight can do wonders for the appearance of your home. It can be difficult to tidy up when everything has its own dedicated place, but a large storage solution, like a
sliding wardrobe, can help you to keep everything neat and tidy in one place.
So there you have, our 10 top tips for tidier home in 2018. We hope you enjoyed reading and have fun putting some of these tips into practice.
