If you live in a giant palace with a whole staff of housecleaners, this post is not for you. However, if you are a Regular Joe (or Regular Joan) that has to clean up their own messes (and probably the messes of others too), then you’ve come to the right place. Now, I do know a few people that genuinely enjoy cleaning their house.
While I understand how it can be a therapeutic thing to watch something go from dirty to clean, I would always rather skip the actual cleaning part and just have it go right to the “it’s-already-clean” stage without any help or interference from me.
That being said, clean doesn’t just happen by itself though, now does it? I tend to do the procrastination method of cleaning where it’s a pretty big mess until the night before there is a party, event, or my husband comes home from a long trip.
For some reason he prefers walking into the house vs. wading into the house. Weird, I know. So when a job that I don’t really want to do anyway now involves cleaning the entire house all at once, well, it’s no surprise that it takes forever.
Emma said recently she knew someone who kept their house clean by only cleaning for 15 minutes a day, and I was certainly intrigued to try the mini cleaning solution. After I thought about it for a while, I came up with a process to make it work for my house too!
Related: Everything You Need to Organize Your Home (Room by Room)
Estimate your efficiency: First, you’ll need to gauge what you can actually clean in 15 minutes. It might be helpful for the first couple of days to spend time each night cleaning for 15 minutes and see what actually gets done.
You might be surprised at how much you can get accomplished, and you’ll want to adjust your list accordingly.
Decide if you want to do light maintenance or deep cleaning: It’s kind of your call whether you want to spend the time doing “light” or “heavy” cleaning during your 15 minutes.
Light cleaning would be things like dusting, putting away clutter, or easy vacuuming, while heavy cleaning would be chores that involve lots of scrubbing or need large pieces of furniture moved to get underneath.
Some rooms like the bathroom or kitchen may have more of the heavy cleaning (scrubbing out the tub or drip pans), so you might want to have both a light and a heavy cleaning day for those rooms.
Make a cleaning supply basket: I think a lot of people are like me and have their cleaning supplies spread all throughout their house.
Some supplies are in the garage, some are under the kitchen sink, some in the bathroom…so if you only have a 15 minute window to clean, you probably don’t want to spend it running from cabinet to cabinet trying to find the mirror cleaner.
Make a little basket of your most commonly used cleaning products, and then you’ll have everything you need already bundled together when you start.
Keep a cleaning calendar or chart: There’s something about having a “to-do” item written down in plain sight that makes the probability of it actually getting done go way up. Once you get an estimated cleaning schedule together, write each area on the appropriate cleaning days and keep it where you’ll see it often.
Like I said, it may take you a few weeks of adjusting before you get a schedule that works. It’s kind of like when we first started a written financial budget and it took a few monthly rotations before we figured out the right amounts for certain categories.
Sorry, but you can’t count your must-do-everyday cleaning routines: Unfortunately, you shouldn’t count the 20 minutes you just spent cleaning up after dinner towards this cleaning challenge.
If you’re like me and love taking advantage of the privilege of eating several times a day, you’ll constantly have to keep up with those messes and you’ll never get to anything else in your 15 minutes of cleaning.
The same goes for other habitual cleaning categories like pet chores that have to happen everyday. I don’t think the kitties (or us) would like it if we only got around to their litter box every 8th day. Gross.
Share the list! Unless you live alone and your pets don’t have opposable thumbs, there are probably other people (like significant others, roommates, or kids) that can help with the cleaning challenge too. Imagine how much more can get done if two people are doing this every day!
In case math wasn’t your strong subject in school, the answer is “double the cleaning.”
I know it can be tough to rope people into helping clean up, but if you set a timer for only 15 minutes, well, it doesn’t sound like a very huge commitment and your chances of group participation goes way up.
Of course, depending on your house or apartment size, the number of days it takes for your rotation to start over again will vary, but I’m really excited to get my cleaning rotation established and going strong.
I do love my house best right before guests come over for a party when everything feels so clean and neat, so I would love to get as much of that feeling everyday as possible.
What are you waiting for? Get out your feather dusters and get cleaning! xo. Laura
Thanks for these helpful tips. Considering that our place is always in a mess, these tips will come in handy for sure!
I would love to know what brand and color the walls are in that kitchen. It’s such a great color
Deep cleaning house is something that we do when we decide to thoroughly clean every little portion of our house. It is absolutely necessary for us to deep clean home at least three times in an year to make it as beautiful and clean as we want it to be. It is more than just the normal dusting and sweeping of the house that we do every day; home deep cleaning involves many little things. It is easy to get confused and to miss out on one of those little things while we tackle the big problem. So, to help you tackle these things in a more organized way here are few steps that we should follow while deep cleaning house.Target this main area like kitchen, bathroom, sofa and carpet electrical appliances and furniture
Thank you for sharing this helpful cleaning tips and other cleaning services that you’ve shared. I am actually looking for the best cleaning services for my abattoir business. I would love to hire a cleaning company who are providing a quality yet affordable cleaning services for my growing business. Thanks!
Would you mind sharing the paint color that you have on your walls? I love it!
You’re right: having a cleaning calendar would help a lot. I had no idea how much there is to do when you’re in your own apartment! Is there any way you’ve found to store cleaning supplies effectively? Thanks for sharing your tips with us! http://www.allstarcleaninginc.ca/en/
This was right on time. I am very busy and often get behind on my cleaning. This seems to be a bit more realistic than the one big cleaning day a week!
I LOVE the color of your kitchen! I am right in the middle of a home remodel and I’d love to design my kitchen like yours. Do you know what color paint that is? Are there any more photos of the rest of the kitchen? I’d really appreciate it!
lilgeorgiapeach.blogspot.com
Nice blog, I am gonna bookmark this! Thanks !
This article is simply amazing. Thanks so much for sharing!
great idea! I’ll give it a try!
I hate cleaning [I grew up with a maid,what can I say *sigh*] and when I first was living with my husband we had a one bedroom apartment in Virginia Beach, VA. I wasn’t working, and had it all down to a fine routine. We would get up, he would put on a pot of coffee and do his normal morning stuff. I would crawl out of bed about an hour later. Into the bathroom for the start of my day, then into the kitchen to grab breakfast. Take the dishes out of the dishwasher and put away. Go and sit and have coffee and watch something on TV. Good time to fluff and fold the laundry. Go put laundry away, make the bed, pop any new laundry into the washing machine in the kitchen. Put breakfast dishes into dishwasher. Have another cup of coffee and watch something on TV. Run vacuum around the apartment. Quick damp mop of the kitchen, entry and bathroom. Clean bathroom. Take shower. Back to living room for more coffee and TV until time to make lunch. More coffee and tv until time to start making dinner. I think any given task probably took 10 minutes or fewer.
I love having a clean house but struggle with maintaining!
Kari
www.sweetteasweetie.com
You have such a beautiful house! I’ll definitely try this, thank you for the inspiration.
Kindness is the best accessory,
Rebecca – http://RebeccaKelsey.com
i love this idea!
xx nikki
www.dream-in-neon.com
I would love to know what brand and color the walls are in that kitchen. It’s such a great color
What does your calendar look like? I love this idea, but I feel like I always come up with 20 things instead of one and end up getting overwhelmed before I even start. Would love a little more inspiration:)
Amazing idea! And your kitchen is beautiful! I loved the candy colors!
Tks for sharing. I’ll try with my boyfriend 🙂
Xo, Deborah
Good post Laura! There’s this method called flylady http://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/
With lots of great tips too.
Pink clips were from Michaels that I made into magnets, I think the board is Martha Stewart, stools were Blu Dot for Target, basket was Target, and mail folder was a DIY:
https://abeautifulmess.com/2014/02/magnetized-mail-holder-diy.html
Hope that helps!
Laura 🙂