7 Quick Cleaning Habits For a Sparkling Home

Just because the cooler weather has set in here in the southern part of the world, does not mean we should be forgetting about cleaning. In fact, Autumn and Winter are probably a more important time to keep things clean. A tidy, fresh home keeps germs at bay. And we all know about germs right? We’ve heard SO much about them in the last 12 months. If you’ve followed the blog for a while, you will know I work off the farm as a teacher. I have limited time to do housework and have little inclination to do it on my days off. So here are 7 quick cleaning tips I use to keep our house tidy during the week. Doing these things keeps the clutter at bay and speeds up the cleaning I do later in the week . . . unless I get waylaid rearranging furniture. And let’s face it, that’s a huge possibility.

Quick Cleaning Habit #1: Scrub the Sink

I probably scrub the sink once a fortnight after I’ve packed the dishwasher. It takes a couple of minutes to sprinkle a mix of baking soda, borax and salt on the sink and use a bamboo scourer to get it looking shiny. I sprinkle, rub, rinse and then dry with a microfibre cloth. My go-to scrubbers are ones I buy from Etsy. They look pretty displayed on the sink and can be used for a number of purposes. They are also good for the environment as they contain no plastics and will break down over time.

Another type of scrub I’ve found works well to clean and shine the sink is the Rosemary and lemon scrub I made for my hands. I use this scrub on my hands and have exfoliated my body with it but when I used the scrub on the sink the result was amazing.

#2: Wipe down the Bench Tops

The second of the quick cleaning habits I’ve developed is to wipe the benches down a couple of times a day and dry with a tea towel. There’s nothing that makes a kitchen look messy more than a benchtop with crumbs and spills all over it. Even if the rest of the house is a mess, a clean, uncluttered benchtop goes a long way in giving the illusion of cleanliness. Most people wipe their benchtops down at least once a day. I use reusable kitchen wipes and warm water for my benches. I wipe them down after every meal. That way if we have unexpected visitors the kitchen looks clean and tidy.

Quick Cleaning Tip #3: Sweep the Floor

Now that we have white floors the dog hair is VERY apparent. I’m in a habit now of giving the floor a quick sweep a few times a week because of this. I usually do it in the afternoon when I come home from work and it only takes ten minutes. I could, of course, vacuum the floor but I honestly can’t be bothered getting the vacuum out and setting it up. So, the main clean for the week only happens once a week when I wash the floor too. What I would really love would be a robotic vacuum that would do the sweeping part for me. I never really realised how much dog hair Bonnie sheds until I saw it on the floor.

#4: Put Out Fresh Towels

The next of my cleaning tips is to put out fresh towels in the bathrooms and kitchen. I change the bath towels once a week, sometimes more. We use thick bath towels that don’t dry very well in the cooler months so I might swap them out because they are damp from the day before. It’s as easy as wiping myself dry after a shower and collecting the dirty towel with my dirty laundry. Hand towels and tea towels get changed two or three times a week. If I’ve used a tea towel to wipe down a bench, it goes into the laundry. I usually change the hand towels on my Thursday off and then again on a Sunday. That way we have fresh towels when visitors pop by on a weekend and clean ones for during the week. To make this even easier, I keep a pile of hand towels in the cabinet in the bathroom. It’s quick to take one out and toss the dirty one into the laundry.

Cleaning Tips #5: Do a Load of Laundry

There are only two of us at the farmhouse now but we still manage to have a lot of laundry. Okay. Gavin has a lot of dirty laundry (or thinks he does). I have discussed at length the fact I’ve actually taken items of clothing from the laundry basket, folded them and put them back in his pile because they weren’t dirty.

Anyway, one of my cleaning tips around laundry is to do a load as soon as I have enough of that type of thing. While I’m getting dinner ready when I get home from work, I put a load in the machine. This means the pile of dirty laundry is never too overwhelming and if people pop over unannounced I can put the basket in the spare room out of sight. Our current laundry is not complete, so having our dirty undies be the first thing people see is not my idea of a warm welcome. (Our laundry is in the entry hall and will eventually be enclosed so it can’t be seen.)

#6 Fold Laundry as Soon as It’s off the Line

This tip is a follow on from the last. You’ve done your one load and let it dry. Now fold it or hang it straight away. I hate ironing. I find if I fold and hang the cleaning washing immediately a lot of the wrinkles are eliminated. I’ve gone through the years where we had a mountain of clean stuff in the washing basket and the kids had to sort through to find something to wear which then had to be ironed because it had not been folded. I’m so glad I got out of that habit. It really was a waste of time!

#7 Load the Dishwasher Straight after Dinner

I’m putting my hand up with this one and saying sometimes we get lazy and don’t do this. But then I pay the price the next morning. The pile of dirty dishes always seems so much worse when they’ve been left on the counter overnight. It’s so depressing to walk down the hall into the kitchen and know the first thing you have to do that day is tidy up. It’s a much nicer feeling to enter a clean kitchen. Even when we have guests now, I always clean up as I go. The thought of having to wash dozens of glasses the next day is one I don’t want to have.

I hope you found my cleaning tips useful. I’d love to know what habits you’ve adopted that make your home run smoother. Let me know on socials!