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Not sure if your cleaning routine could be improved? Or do you find yourself often lacking the motivation to clean? Then check out these seven key benefits you should expect from a good cleaning routine.
1. Good routines should be flexible and adaptable.
A good cleaning routine should be flexible and adaptable yet still structured enough that you’ll be able to stay on top of things.
Tips for Gaining More Flexibility In Your Routine:
- Try writing out everything that needs to be done in your house, sort of like a master cleaning list.
- Try to go room-by-room. Going room-by-room and creating a list for each space will help your break things down. This often entails listing everything that needs to be done throughout the year or even on a daily basis.
- You can figure out the timing for everything once your list is finished or even mix and match or grab as you go and/or feel up to doing.
- For instance, in the living room, you may clean things like windows monthly or carpet clean every quarter.
- Make sure to visually look at the room. Looking at the room to list everything that needs to be cleaned (i.e., window treatments, windows, devices, knickknacks, furniture) will help you to create a thorough master list for that specific area or project.
2. You’ll be able to stay consistent.
A good cleaning routine is something you’ll be able to stay consistent with long-term.
Tips for Staying Consistent with Cleaning:
- It helps to figure out your weaknesses and challenges before you create your cleaning routines or chores list.
- Becoming consistent with cleaning may mean you need to make it more enjoyable for yourself, whether by playing music or an audiobook or rewarding yourself in small ways after the fact.
- Consistency can often mean finding the right cleaning method or approach.
- If your current routine isn’t working for you, then you may need to switch things up with different methods, scheduling, etc.
- Developing consistent routines may also require doing things in a consistent fashion in order to get faster, better, and more practiced at it.
- Example: doing similar or like tasks in the morning, or even cleaning in the same direction or fashion each time (i.e., top to bottom, clockwise around the room, etc.)
- Example #2: Doing certain chores that need to be done more often on specific days of the week or month.
- Consistency can be gained by stacking similar chores together.
- Example: Vacuuming after weekly dusting, emptying the fridge before you grocery shop.
- You can find our post covering these points and more here (new tab).
3. They should be manageable.
Good cleaning routines are manageable. If you’re finding yourself exhausted during cleaning sessions or feel you can’t keep up, it may be time to rethink what you’re doing and try something different.
Tips for Keeping Cleaning Tasks Manageable:
- Break down tasks or to-do lists into smaller ones, such as splitting things up into tasks that you might do seasonally, monthly, yearly, or daily.
- You may find that you actually prefer to break those tasks or lists up even further, such as by adding an evening and morning routine rather setting aside random chunks of time each day to clean throughout the week.
- Sometimes making things more manageable can involve needing to declutter, which can find year-round tips in our post, 18 Critical Signs It’s Time to Declutter Your Home.
4. They should make things easier for you.
A good cleaning routine should make things easier, not harder on you. If you find yourself struggling because of there being a lot of effort or deep cleaning involved, then you may need to reassess your methodology or even the frequency of cleaning.
Tips for Making Cleaning Routines Easier:
- If you typically clean for long periods of time, or if it feels as though you can never seem to catch up with your cleaning, then you may want to consider making a few tweaks or experimenting.
- Experimentation may mean trying out different approaches, scheduling, and/or various cleaning methods.
- In some instances, such as when performing spring or seasonal deep cleanings, you may find it easier to split things up bi-annually, every other quarter, or even every other month, depending on the nature of the project, chore, or task.
- One example of this would be to focus on the exterior side of things (i.e., cabinet doors, doors, baseboards, and anything else sitting out in the open) once or twice a year. You can then focus on the interior side of things during the other two seasons of the year or alternate accordingly. Interior tasks might include decluttering and organizing the inside of cabinets, closest, and drawers.
- Learn to problem-solve. Ask yourself how you could make _____ task easier for yourself.
5. Well-rounded routines should work around you and your life.
A good cleaning routine should work around you and others in your household, rather than you having to work around your cleaning routine.
Tips for Customizing Your Routines:
- If you’re constantly spending hours each doing weekly cleaning, it may be time to revamp your cleaning routine.
- Maintenance cleaning and smaller routines to break up bigger tasks can be an excellent way to make your cleaning effort more manageable and less time-consuming.
6. A good cleaning routine can take practice.
Having a good cleaning routine can take a little practice in order to see the benefits of it. Practicing may also allow your o better fine-tune whatever methods or routines you might be using.
Tips for Fine-Tuning Your Cleaning Routine or Methodology:
- Treat cleaning as you would any job and the duties involved. You may be a bit rusty at first, but as you continue to practice and see what approaches works best, the better you’ll get at it.
- Cleaning can be a lot like brushing our teeth or another similar task. It’s not always fun and can even feel tedious, but staying on top of it can be far more beneficial than not doing so.
- Practicing cleaning and having a consistent routine will also mean that the more often you do it, the more used to it you’ll become and the less tedious it will start to feel.
- In fact, over time, you may find that not staying on top of your routine will bother you more than not doing it.
7. They should allow you to maximize efficiency while reducing time and effort.
A good, well-rounded cleaning routine should allow you to maximize how efficiently you clean and how well your household runs.
Tips for Reducing Cleaning Time and Effort:
- Rather than taking too long or feeling overwhelmed by your cleaning session, your routine should allow you to get the job done but in a quick, manageable, and flexible fashion.
- For instance, rather than deep cleaning off and on throughout the year, you can aim to do maintenance cleaning, which essentially means to clean before things get too dirty.
- Maintenance cleaning usually takes a fraction of the time since there’s less mess or effort to deal with in general. Your space will stay cleaner long-term and will likely be easier to clean more thoroughly later.
Conclusion
In this post, we discussed seven points on what to expect from a good cleaning routine.
Good Cleaning Routines Should:
- Be flexible and adaptable.
- Help you stay consistent with your cleaning efforts.
- Be manageable.
- Make things easier on you instead of harder.
- Take some practice and experimentation to get the best match.
- Maximize the efficiency of your cleaning session and make things faster and easier to do.
We hope you found this post useful. Stay tuned for more tips and how-to guides for creating and maintaining good cleaning routines. And feel free to check out some related topics below or with the links listed above.
Happy Cleaning! 🙂
Do you have a cleaning routine or tips to share? Let us know in the comments below. Happy Cleaning!
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2 Comments
Thanks for the tips ! I agree that cleaning should be made manageable so we would be more motivated to clean the next time:)
So glad I could help. Thanks for dropping by! 🙂