Three Ways to Keep Your House Clean This Summer
June 21st has come and gone, and that means that the summer has officially arrived! For many families, summer is the most enjoyable time of the year. The kids are home, the days are longer, and the pools are open. All of this excitement is sure to keep things interesting, but it also makes it more likely that your home is going to become messier. When guests visit your house for an event which you are hosting, you do not want them to ask themselves how your house came to be so littered with junk. Here are three tips for making sure that your house stays clean this summer.
Stick to a Schedule
For better or worse, people are creatures of habit. We often do things at a certain time of the day or week simply because it is how we normally operate. One of the keys to an attractive home is to make sure that these habits are cleanly and not dirty. Consider assigning certain tasks to the family on a certain day of the week. For example, you can take care of the bathroom every Monday and vacuum the bedrooms on Fridays. Don’t overwhelm yourself or your family by trying to take care of everything in a single day. If you break it up into smaller pieces, the job will be less daunting.
Another important method to keep a cleaning schedule is to actually write the weekly tasks down on your calendar or scheduler. If we actually schedule the task, it will become more “real” to us and we will actually be motivated to carry it out. Whenever we tell ourselves that we will clean up “when it gets bad,” the job often fails to get done entirely, since vague abstractions do not motivate anyone. Even if we do eventually clean up the house after it “gets bad,” the task will be much more difficult than it would have been had we maintained a weekly cleaning schedule. All in all, a weekly cleaning routine will make things significantly less overwhelming for your family.
Delegate Tasks to Your Family
Your cleaning schedule does not just have to be for yourself. In fact, the best way to keep the home clean is by having each person in the family participate in maintaining the household. Homes, after all, are a team effort. It would be almost impossible for one person to do absolutely all of the home’s cleaning. Division of labor between the household lightens the load and results in a much cleaner house. Split things up in such a way that the best person possible for each job is given it. If one member of the family desires to take care of one particular chore then, by all means, let them have it.
Another way to delegate tasks to the whole family is to encourage each person to take care of tasks more independently. The time taken to do many cleaning chores would be substantially trimmed if each family member took the initiative to clean things which they dirtied by themselves. For example, dishes often pile up and a single family member has to take care of them. If family members independently washed their own dishes, then the need for a chore devoted to washing dishes would be reduced and perhaps even eliminated entirely. Similarly, should an individual mess up the carpet on their own somehow, then they should know to take care of it themselves and not just leave it for the person who vacuums. It is much easier for one person to address an isolated problem than it is to take care of a bunch of problems at the same time, so keep your family as involved in the cleaning process as you are!
Find Ways to Reduce Clutter
Clutter is always a thorn in the side for everyone who wants to keep their home presentable. As each year goes by, we accumulate more and more stuff and it becomes more difficult to take the time to organize things. Big families are particularly prone to this problem since it is more difficult for parents to keep up with all the new things that their children bring into the house and lay down somewhere where it doesn’t belong. Still, even in a family of two or three, it is easy to let things pile up. Fortunately, there are some ways that you can stave off this problem and keep your home organized and tidy.
The easiest way to address clutter is to prevent it from accumulating in the first place. Reduce impulse buys, which add unexpected things to your lives and over time make organization significantly more difficult. Often times, we do not even need or particularly want the things that we pay for spur-of-the-moment. Who hasn’t, for example, bought a book or a movie that looked interesting at the store which proceeded to be ignored? If your home already has an unbearable amount of clutter, you can consider having a yard sale to give some of your unused stuff to a new home while also making money. The things that you cannot sell can be taken to the thrift store or a Goodwill. Some of the most common clutter which you should look out for are old clothes which do not fit anyone, out-of-date electronics / chargers, and anything which you do not find useful anymore.
Keeping your home clean is a daunting task, but it gives your home a tidy and presentable character which everyone needs, especially in the summertime. These tips are a great way to make sure that your home is the talk of the neighborhood for all of the right reasons. Sticking to a good cleaning schedule, keeping your family involved, and finding ways to cut clutter are sure ways to give the interior of your house the polish that it deserves. Keeping a home clean is not just a good way to impress people; it installs proper habits in your whole family and provides an incentive to responsibly care for your property. As the summertime heats up, do more than live in your home. Make it one that you are proud to live in.
