It’s summer!! Wahoo!!!! Summer means longer days, popsicles, sunshine, and a change of schedule. While this change of schedule might not yield a change of pace, most of us tend to welcome it with arms wide open, knowing full well we’ll blink and it will be Labor Day weekend, and the craft stores will be pulling out the Thanksgiving decor already. (Why?! Why?!)
I want to savor every moment of summer which means efficiency takes priority when it comes to most of my decisions in regards to my “have-to’s” such as keeping up the home. I don’t want to spend a lot of time in my kitchen, so we eat simpler meals during the summer. I really don’t want to spend a lot of time cleaning, but with two fur balls, a crawling baby, two adults in the house, and a home business, not cleaning really isn’t an option.
The good news is that I’ve found that if I stick with a few tidy habits throughout my home, it does stay cleaner, which means I spend less time actually cleaning it and more time outside enjoying summer.
So here they are, Lindsay’s quick tips to a tidy home!
Kitchen
The heart of the home! Do all the dishes before you go to bed. If something needs to be soaked, soak it while you’re putting the kids to sleep, and come back to it before you go down yourself. Invest in SOS pads and a pair of gloves to save your nails. Then, run the dishwasher, so you wake up and every dish is clean. (Because there’s nothing worse than no clean coffee mugs!) Lastly, have a designated spot for “the stuff.” You know, all the stuff that hasn’t made it to its place yet. As much as we want to, we can’t always put everything in its place as soon as we’d like to, and it ends up living (and breeding) on top of our kitchen counters. Have a container–whether it’s a cute little bucket or a breakfast tray–that sits on your counter and keeps the stuff contained until you can move it to wherever it is that it belongs.
Bathrooms
Clear the counters off every night. In your master bath, clear them while you’re brushing your teeth. (And if it takes you two seconds, hoorah! Now do some lunges, superwoman!) After you’ve cleared them off, wipe them off, even if it’s just with a damp washcloth.
Laundry Room
Invest in laundry baskets, and if possible, have a laundry basket for every type of load you do. This might mean that your baskets are in separate rooms in your home, and that’s ok. We have baskets in our master bathroom, garage, and nursery. It saves me TONS of time sorting, and it keeps dirty laundry off of the floor which keeps my rooms tidy! Lastly, do a load of laundry every day to keep the laundry beast at bay.
Floors
Vacuum all carpets on Monday. I got this tip from my mom, and I love it! The house is going to be a disaster after the weekend, so why vacuum it during the weekend? This also forces you to pick up everything, which reigns in whatever chaos might have occurred over the weekend. After you vacuum, do your hard surfaces, and afterwards, treat yourself to an iced coffee. You deserve it!!
Trash
Empty all trash cans once a week. If you have a specific trash pickup day, then it makes the most sense to empty your trash cans the night before. If you don’t, pick a day. Might I recommend Monday to coincide with emptying your vacuum cleaner after you vacuum all the carpets? (Is there anyone else out there who thinks the feeling you get after emptying your vacuum cleaner is one of the best feelings??)
Bedrooms
Pick up everything before you go to bed. If you have a spot for everything, this makes picking things up a lot easier. I do like having a spot for the “the stuff” in each of our bedrooms though, because as much as I want everything going into its designated spot before I go to bed, that isn’t always realistic. BUT, if I at least have a contained holding spot to put it, I don’t wake up to a mess, and I can get to it when I can get to it. In our master, that spot is an upholstered chair in the corner.
Living Room
Invest in storage. This doesn’t need to be crazy. A basket for toys. A basket for blankets. A spot for the DVDs. Then, use the storage! Pick everything up and dump it in it’s spot before you settle in for a Big Bang Theory rerun with the hubs.
Pets
Our fur children. Bless us. If you have indoor pets, they probably have stuff. Keep their stuff to a minimum, and have a spot for their stuff. But most importantly, keep them groomed. If this means you do it yourself or you take them in to a professional, keeping them groomed keeps them cleaner which keeps your home cleaner which means you spend less time cleaning but just keeping tidy! It’s that simple.
Now go enjoy your pool time, you tidy-home-master!
Do you have any daily or weekly habits that keep your home tidy? I’d love to know! Please post them below in the comment section!
Lindsay
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Thank you for the awesome tips! Being a mother of three, I can use all of the advice I can get when it comes to keeping a tidy house! I especially love the idea for a laundry basket for each type of load. This summer I told my 3 & 5 year old that they were big enough to carry their laundry to the laundry room (we did have a basket in every bedroom). They helped me make labels out of construction paper for each basket (they literally cut & pasted together the colors that can go in each basket).… Read more »
Melissa, I LOVE both of those ideas! Growing up, we were taught to start doing our own laundry as soon as we could reach the setting knobs, but you are totally right! Even little ones are capable of carrying laundry baskets! I absolutely plan on getting my daughter involved with your color coding activity when she is old enough. Thank you for the tip!!
Maybe a list like this will help me stay on top of my chores. 🙂