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I hate cleaning, but I LOVE that satisfying feeling of having cleaned. There’s nothing better than knowing a room is really clean and sparkling and everything feels ordered and tidy. I really love finding quicker ways to do things; things that make my life a bit easier and make the time I have to spend cleaning a bit shorter. I want to be playing with my daughter or reading super important tweets on Twitter, not sweeping the kitchen floor again.
With the summer having come to an end you might be thinking about doing a big house clean (an Autumn clean?) at the same time as you put all those pretty summery clothes away (*sob*). If so, I have a few tips for you that I have collected that will hopefully make your life a bit easier, or your house cleaner, at least.
– Use rubber gloves to remove cat and dog hairs from settees, curtains, cushions and anywhere else you find them. Except for the actual cat or dog. Put the rubber gloves on and wipe over the hairs.
– Keep cleaning products where you need them, not just in one place. So that if you do decide to spontaneously clean the bathroom you don’t have to go down to the kitchen to get everything you need where you suddenly decide you must have a cup of tea, the child wants a snack, so does the cat and so does the woman across the roads best friends son and you completely forget about cleaning the bathroom.
– Keep the bin bag roll in the bin beneath the bag that is being used so that you can quickly put in a new bag once you’ve emptied it. Particularly any upstairs bins so you don’t have to remember to take a new one up with you.
– Keep old toothbrushes to clean around taps and to get to all the tight little bits around sinks and plug holes.
Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash
– Use an old sock or two as a duster for things like the bannister or a blind – put it on your hand and wipe over each part so that you can get at all the little bits easily.
– If you break a glass (one of my many skills), get a piece of bread and put it over the area and it will pick up the little pieces!
– Cleaning wipes (or baby wipes!) are good for doing a quick clean in between the deep cleans or when your relatives/friends have just invited themselves round and you haven’t cleaned for months days. Keep some in the kitchen and some in the bathroom, so that you can just pretend you’re taking a long time in the loo. Better that than a dirty bathroom, right?
– Apple cider vinegar is great to clean ev-ery-thing. I use it diluted with water instead of a shop-bought anti-bacterial cleaner to clean all surfaces, the floor, the bathroom; everything AND the kitchen sink. Apple cider vinegar is non-toxic, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal so it’s perfect for cleaning. I also use it to wash vegetables, for cleaning windows, as fabric conditioner, and to neutralise smells. Oh and I also sometimes drink it. But that’s a whole other story blog post.
– Get yourself a lightweight hoover if you can so that you can quickly hoover a few times a week and jobs like hoovering the stairs don’t seem like such a mammoth task; use it in between doing a full hoover once a week or so if you need to. I have a cordless Dyson Animal and it is absolutely brilliant – it makes it so much easier to just give everywhere a quick go over. Plus I love that I can use it to get all of the cobwebs on the ceilings really easily too. It’s also a good idea to give your carpets a much deeper steam clean every so often from professional carpet cleaners such as ProLux Carpet Cleaning, to really get them all looking like new again.
– Use one of those scrapey things that are supposed to be for removing paint from glass, to clean the oven door; instead of scrubbing and scrubbing at it you can just sit there and scrape it off much more easily.
If you rent your house and you’re moving out, then it’s obviously important to do a deep clean of the entire house, in which case it might be a good idea to get someone to do your end of tenancy cleaning for you. Then you can concentrate on all of your packing and moving and you don’t have to worry about missing anything. You don’t need to worry about having cleaners in your home during Covid either, as professional cleaners will likely use disposable gloves like Unigloves to maintain hygeine and they will follow strict procedures to keep everyone safe.
And if you are struggling to find the motivation to get started with your cleaning, remember: housework burns lots of calories! So get cleaning…. and then have a big glass of wine to congratulate yourself for all that hard work!
Have you got any super cleaning tips to make all of our lives that little bit easier? Please share in the comments; I need to know!
This is a collaborative post.
Welcome to Birds and Lilies! I'm Lou: mother, blogger and freelance writer. This is my lifestyle blog, where I talk about motherhood, infertility and IVF, beauty, my love for food and wine, as well as my thoughts about stuff, and our real-life and travel adventures.
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