As locals, we know exactly how dirty an Oxford home can get, especially after the holidays. All the fun you’ve had definitely resulted in skipping some of the home chores and by now, you’re probably facing cleaning work enough to fill your spare time for the next few weeks.
Worry not, as we’re here to help make a giant pile of work feel like a breezy task. The trick is to introduce a little bit of cleaning into each day. Or, as cleaners like to say, ‘add a couple of things to your New Year’s Resolutions’ in order to get a sparkling home with minimum effort.
Here’s what we suggest:
Making the Bed First Thing in the Morning
Making the Bed First Thing in the MorningNow, this won’t help you with the cleaning of your home per se, but it will set the mood for the day. Making the bed will trick you into being productive and will give you a great start, motivating you to tackle more. It’s all about the chain reaction. And you know more than anyone how useful is that extra motivation when it comes to cleaning.
Cleaning a Drawer a day Keeps the Mess Away from Your Home
Now that you feel all pumped up a ready to clean the entire world, as professional cleaners, we suggest you start small and preserve your energy: clean a single drawer.
That’s right. Remember, your goal is not to reach the scope of a professional one-off clean, you aim for the long-term results. So it’s very important to not tire yourself up on the first day and start dreading your life because of all the cleaning you have to do.
Instead, by clearing up just a single drawer a day you’ll feel it wasn’t that terrible and tiring, and you’ll be more inclined to repeat the process tomorrow. And once you’re done with the drawers, you can move to the next thing.
Washing Dishes Right After a Meal
This is a basic thing which people often overlook, especially after so many delicious meals around the holidays. By now, you’ve probably forgotten how to wash dishes in the first place, right? The worst thing about not doing the dishes straight away is that you’ll have to do twice the work later. What a bad deal! So if you want to avoid all that, don’t wait to have enough dirty dishes to run a dishwasher and instead introduce the habit of washing your dishes after you’ve had a meal. It’s not that hard and it makes you feel wonderful and accomplished adult human being.
Clean These Germy Places in Your Home
Washing hands is a lost cause if places you touch frequently are full of germs. Things like light switches, door knobs, electronic devices and cabinet handles get a lot of bacteria and almost no cleaning. So to fix that, we suggest you start a quick daily wiping of the mentioned objects. You can do that either with disinfectant wipes or by creating a mild spray by mixing your preferred disinfectant with water in a spray bottle.
Swiping the Countertops After Each Use
The secret ingredient of a clean home is polished countertops. Doesn’t sound impressive, yes, but makes a great impact. This is why the one-off cleaners suggest including it as a daily task instead of leaving it for the weekend. Swiping the countertops is quick if you do it daily but if you postpone, you might need to clean some dry stains and spillages later which is not even remotely fun. Additionally, by cleaning the area daily, you’ll help contain the mess and avoid clutter.
Don’t Wait for the Spring Cleaning to Declutter
Speaking of clutter, did you know that waiting for your annual spring cleaning is a big mistake? And no, we don’t suggest you deliberately avoid cleaning up until then, we just mean you don’t start decluttering from now. Spring cleaning can become an easy task if you start small and you start today.
All of the above tips are great to help you gradually reduce clutter but we’re dead sure you can come up with one or two additional tasks to add to your yearly cleaning resolutions. After all, you know best the weak spots in your cleaning routine. So what are you waiting for? 2019, here we come!