Cleaning our homes is something we all need to do. However, as many of us know, it can feel impossible to fit cleaning around our busy lives. Whether you work full time while raising a family, have more than one job, or do anything else that doesn’t leave you with much free time, how do you squeeze in housework? You could simply hire a domestic cleaning service in your local area, but if it’s not a feasible option for you then we have some advice for you.
Well, here are 7 tips for how to clean your home when you have a busy schedule.
How Do I Clean My Home with a Busy Schedule?
1. Break Jobs Down
The most important tip is to break larger jobs down into smaller bits. Doing this means you can fit them around other things. For example, you could load the dishwasher while cooking dinner, or tidy the living room or iron while watching TV.
This might be an obvious tip, but breaking bigger jobs down into smaller parts makes everything feel more achievable.
2. Get Others Involved
Another useful tip is to get other people involved in the cleaning process. For example, you can task kids with tidying their own rooms, putting clothes in the washing basket, or unloading the dishwasher.
On the other hand, if you’re a busy student, create a cleaning rota for you and your housemates, so everyone does their part.
3. Prioritise the Important Things
It’s not the end of the world if the hoovering gets missed every now and then. But you can’t really ignore jobs like washing dishes and doing the laundry. If you don’t have much time to clean, think about what jobs are most important and ensure these get done.
Once you know what’s most important, you can think about when you can fit in the less important jobs. For example, dusting can be pushed to a fortnightly job if necessary, leaving you with a bit more time for the important things.
4. Set a Timer and See What You Can Do
Say you’ve got a spare 20 minutes in your daily schedule. Pick a room, set a timer, and see how much you can get done. You’d be surprised what jobs you can power through if you know you need to finish by a certain time.
5. Clean Little and Often
This builds on the first tip, but a cleaner home is easier to clean. It might sound obvious, but if you do house-cleaning jobs little and often, you won’t have to spend ages doing a mammoth clean.
Sure, you might not have time to quickly hoover the house every day, but this is where prioritising comes in. For example, wipe the toilet down every 2 days or so. Then, when it comes time for the big clean, there’s actually very little you need to do. You should be able to have a sparkling toilet in as little as a minute.
6. Write a Schedule
Another tip to build on this idea of little and often is to write up a schedule. This helps for the bigger jobs like hoovering, but can help you track smaller jobs too. Set up a weekly checklist of everything that needs doing, such as hoovering, changing sheets, laundry, etc.
Then, when you’ve done the job, tick it off. This way, if you’ve squeezed in something, you won’t forget you’ve done it.
7. Focus on Putting Things Away
Get in the habit of putting things away when you’re done with them – and make sure everyone else does the same. Prevention is the best way to keep cleaning time down, after all.
A good tip is that, when you’re about to leave a room, look around to see what doesn’t belong. Put it away before you leave, and you’ll be most of the way to cleaning the room.
Final Thoughts
The bottom line is that cleaning on a busy schedule means doing it little and often. Even if you can only hoover one room at a time, or you dust once a month, something is always better than nothing.
