Housework Made Easier
Use a product like Mop and Glo and a simple sponge mop to clean your kitchen and bathroom floors. Start at the end of the farthest from the sink, squirt a little of the cleaner on the floor and mop it with the damp mop. Rinse the mop in the sink as often as you need to. When you’re done, put on clean socks and take careful, giant tiptoe-ing steps out of the room so you don’t slip on the wet floor. It’s much easier than using a rope mop and a bucket of soapy water. You can also use a spray cleaner or a cleaner like Pine-Sol or Lysol, diluted with water and poured in a spray bottle, and do the same thing. Don’t use Armor-All. It makes the floor nice and shiny but it really hurts when you slip and fall on it, which you’ll be doing for the next couple days every time you forget and walk through the room in your socks.
Wipe up spills when they happen, or something will get stuck to it and you’ll end up playing guess-what-the-blob-is-that-won’t-come-clean.
Froot Loops somehow convert to a concrete-like substance when stuck to walls and ceilings. Clean all wayward cereal off surfaces as quickly as possible. If you don’t, your best bet for getting it off is a putty knife.
Clean the tub while you’re in the shower. Unless it’s really gross, you can just wipe it down with a wet cloth while you’re letting your conditioner soak in.
Use an old toothbrush to scrub around your faucets. You can use a bit of cleanser if you like, or just water. It only takes a few seconds, and you can do it while you’re swishing your mouthwash.
Use the toilet brush to clean not just the bowl, but the base of the toilet and around the floor. If you have little boys you’ll need to do this quite a bit.
Don’t vacuum under everything every day. Nobody looks under the couch anyway. Just do a quick run around the room, get what you can see and it makes the room look much cleaner instantly.
Give a little kid a brightly colored feather duster. He’ll have everything within reach dusted in record time…including you. You didn’t know the top of your head needed dusted till the kid asked you to bend over, did you?
Put on your favorite music to get you motivated to move and clean. For some reason it’s easier to polish furniture while you’re shaking your booty.
If your kids are old enough, they should have chores and help with the housework. Try having a clean-up contest-tell the kids to help you out, and if you finish by a certain time they’ll be rewarded with a trip to the park or a movie rental. Make sure you give yourself enough time to get done-the point isn’t to push everyone to rush and get it done, it’s to get everyone to pitch in. Kids just tend to like the challenge of the contest.
Fold your clothes as they come out of the dryer. I like to sit in the middle of the warm laundry and fold it while I watch TV, but if it needs done super quick, it works a lot better when I fold it straight from the dryer and put it away.
Try and do the outdoor chores on a really nice day. The great weather makes it a lot more enjoyable to be outside, even if you do have to be working.
The biggest thing that makes housework easier (and the thing I’m the worst at) is cleaning up as you go. If you make a mess, clean it up right away and you’ll spend much less time doing the dreaded Big Clean.
