The Professional Woman’s Guide to Household Cleaning
When it comes to household cleaning, it’s all too easy to imagine yourself scrubbing viciously at grime and filth on your hands and weary knees. And it’s highly likely that all of us have just contemplated hiring a professional household cleaner at one point of another — just to remove the need to try and include this time-intensive responsibility into your already jam-packed work week.
While we may have seen prior generations of homemakers complete a barrage of domestic chores all in the span of one day, we know that this phenomenon just isn’t feasible for working women today. So how do you stay on top of your household cleaning schedule whilst still ensuring that you have all the downtime you deserve?
We’ll be answering just this question today by outlining some helpful tips on how you can keep your home cleaner for longer from Monday morning and all the way through to Sunday night.
Vacuum Floors and Furniture Regularly
When setting household cleaning tasks, we likely all think of doing a big weekly clean. But pulling out your vacuum cleaners twice or even three times a week may actually be preferable to some rather than doing one massive property-wide clean.
In fact, you could even vacuum different rooms on different days, allowing you to only vacuum for shorter periods of time. Vacuuming select areas on any given day can also help you enjoy cleaner interior spaces for longer periods of time, as you’re not vacuuming just once a week and letting a week’s worth of dust, lint, and other debris build up on your floors.
If you have pets, vacuuming more than once a week can also help with fluff control, alongside greatly improving the air quality in your home. But of course, it’s not just animal dander that adds to messy floors and stale air in our homes. It may come as a surprise but, alongside a fair amount of fur, you’d be amazed how much skin we lose and the dust that can accumulate from our own shedding.
Create a Cleaning Schedule
As a professional woman, it’s highly likely that you have to practice prioritising on a daily basis. Thankfully, by having a system in place when it comes to rote responsibilities like household cleaning, you won’t become overwhelmed and will be less likely to find yourself trying to complete a huge workload in one hit. Keeping a well-designed personal cleaning system can also allow you to allocate more of your time to doing certain tasks.
If you’re a bit uncertain about where to begin, we recommend mapping out your schedule by outlining the different scope of household cleaning chore items. For example, you can vacuum daily but then scrub your shower once a week. Knowing the frequency at which jobs must be completed and the estimated time required to complete those jobs, can help you fit them into your work week with greater confidence and agency.
Deep Clean, Then Maintain
Once you have a regular or scheduled system for your household cleaning, you can turn the big mountain of mess into more manageable maintenance items. But the best way to build this strong foundation is by conducting a deep clean on weekends, and then maintaining that cleanliness during the week with a day-by-day roster of to-do items.
When you first start, opt for a weekend or another day when you don’t have many plans, and start the deep clean. We recommend laying out your deep cleaning schedule on a sheet of paper, before pinning it up in a place where you will be able to see it regularly – like on your fridge or on a pin board.
From here, you can divide your routine to-do items into days of the week (i.e. Monday being the bedroom tasks, while Tuesday is the bathrooms, etc.). Here’s what you can expect this system to look like:
Eg. Monday – Bedrooms
- Vacuum the floors and clean sheets
- Dust the shelves and dresser
- Organise your wardrobe closet.
Be sure to keep this practice consistent. That way, you can make staying on top of your household cleaning as effortless an endeavour as making a cup of coffee every morning.
Declutter Regularly
Another great way to keep a clean home is to declutter regularly. This means ensuring that everything has its own space, and that your coffee table, dining table, and kitchen counter space isn’t periodically just covered in an assortment of random knickknacks and homewares.
Your decluttering rituals should also include clearing out kitchen cupboards and pantry spaces, as well as bathroom cabinets, bedroom drawers, and all the deep nooks and crannies of your closet space. Removing the temptation of just shoving clutter into spaces where they can be sight unseen can help you maintain a healthy mindset when it comes to cleaning and curating your home space.
And while you’re at it, be sure to declutter by assessing your wardrobe items as well. While it can be good to keep clothing that you love and wear regularly, it’s also wise to think about what could be donated, recycled or just discarded.
The same can be said for how you go about cleaning your house. Make sure to pick up items as you go through each area and room and sort them into stacks. This can be divided into what you intend to keep, that which you will donate and which to discard. Anything unused or not worn within a year, you could consider donating, depending on condition.
Not only will this make your house tidier and more clean, but you will be amazed at what a clean environment does for one’s psychological state.
Use Tech to Keep on Top of Your Cleaning Schedule
Finally, don’t be afraid to rely on technology to help you fill in the gaps when staying on top of your household cleaning routine. From robotic vacuums who can be programmed to do the job while you’re at work, to cleaning apps that can help you to set reminders on when to do certain chores, there are an abundance of tech tools out there that can help you streamline your cleaning to-do list, allowing you to dedicate more time to your family and leisurely pursuits.
And for all your working mums out there, you have our permission to see your kids and hubby as an extension of the tech tools that are available to you! Don’t hesitate to lean on your family and other members of your household for support.
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If you’re able to follow all the tips and tricks outlined above, keeping your home neat and tidy all throughout a busy work week should begin to feel like a walk in the park. Just be patient with yourself as you hone these organisational skills and develop a strong and intuitive cleaning routine. With a little trial and error, you should find that staying on top of your household cleaning to-do list does become a rote affair.
