Guest Blogger: How to Clean and Maintain your New Year’s Home

When you have a house, it probably never feels like the housework is never done. Oh, but when you have a big house, the feeling starts to turn into a very real and potentially overwhelming situation. Seemingly, once you get one room the way that you want it then it’s time to work on another one. This can lead to a never ending cycle. Luckily, there are some tips that you can apply that will make cleaning and maintaining your house a lot easier.

Clean your home for the New Year

Image via: Digs Digs

It’s basically all about developing a “house cleaning system” and we have five ways to help you do just that below:

Schedule it out.

Time goes by really fast, so when it comes to cleaning a big house, you don’t really want to “wing it”. It’s best if you have a schedule set up somewhere with designated days for each room. For instance, if Sunday is the day that you plan to vacuum, then perhaps make Wednesday the day that you clean your bathrooms and so on. Also, make sure that there is one more than one person doing the house chores; that way, no one will feel overcome by all that needs to be done.

Put everything in its proper place.

When you get home from a long day at work and the kids get home from sometimes an equally as long day at school, there can be a real temptation to leave shoes, coats and bags (and sometimes even mail) at the front door while telling yourself “I’ll get to it later.” Before you realize it, “later” is not a few minutes but a couple of days and now you have piles of things in the hallway or on the kitchen counter. To avoid this, make sure that everyone in the house knows to put those things up as soon as they get home. It makes keep the house in order much easier in the long run.

Do a few things daily.

It’s best if people make up their bed as soon as they get out of it in the morning. It’s a good idea to wash dishes (or put them into the dishwasher) daily; that way, there won’t be a pile up of them in the sink. It’s also smart to wipe down bathroom mirrors and the sink and to make sure that people clean out the bathtub right after the shower on a daily basis as well. Oh, and when it comes to pulling out things like toys, video games and magazines, you might want to have a couple of ottomans around the house so that those items can go into their “hidden storage compartments” once people are done using them.

Clean up the mess right after you make it.

The kitchen is probably the one room in the house where spills happen the most consistently; but if you have kids, things dropping, breaking and dripping are pretty much par for the course. You might have days when you’ll want to look to see just how much the maid service cost would run you, but you would save yourself the extra expense by simply making sure to clean up messes immediately after they happen.

Helpful tips for a clean home

Image via: Homedit

Play “look and toss” with your refrigerator.

There’s a pretty good chance that every time that you go into your fridge, there is something that has expired or spoiled. Make it a point to look for those kinds of items each time that you open the door and also make sure to designate “official throw out day” for the evening before the trash man comes. That will keep you from having to spend an entire Saturday or Sunday (or two) cleaning out your refrigerator. Happy cleaning!

For more home ideas on Stagetecture, click here.