10 Ways to Keep Your Home Clean Even With a Busy Schedule

Inside: Discover ten ways to keep your home clean with a busy schedule. Get your house in order by implementing these strategies.

A guest post by Cora Gold

Everybody loves a spotless house, but it doesn’t always feel achievable. 

When you work all day and have kids or pets making constant messes, you may feel like a clean and organized home is impossible.

However, there are ways to make cleaning quicker and easier.

When you have a lot going on cleaning your home requires a strategy, so use these tips to keep your home clean with a busy schedule.

10 Ways to Keep Your Home Clean With a Busy Schedule

Use these tips to keep your home clean with a busy schedule even if you aren’t feeling particularly motivated to clean.

1. Control Dirt and Dust

Keeping dirt and dust outside is half the job. The problem is it’s easier said than done.

Dust and dirt come from different sources and enter your home in a variety of ways.

Dirt is earth minus the minerals, nutrients, and living organisms present in the soil. Whereas dust consists of dead skin, hair strands, textile fibers, fragments of dead bugs, pet dander, and pollen. It also includes microplastic and other tiny particles that float in the air and move between rooms.

The best way to keep these pollutants in check is to identify and neutralize their sources. Beautify your yard with plenty of plants to filter the outside air and trap large volumes of particulate matter. Although trees only temporarily retain particulates, vegetation can hold them until precipitation dissolves or washes them away.

Create a mud room or set up a footwear-changing nook by the entryway. Taking your shoes off when you come inside is a great habit to have at home and placing doormats also help collect dirt.

If you have pets, wipe and dry their coats and paws at the door. Make a habit of brushing your little companions outside when possible to lessen fallen fur indoors.

Running your range hood or exhaust fan when frying or sautéing can trap and prevent grease particles from building up on surfaces. These fixtures get dirty and sacrifice themselves to keep other areas mess-free.

Emptying your bagless vacuum canister directly into your outside trash can is ideal. Otherwise, the collected particles can find their way back into the air and dirty the surfaces they land on again.

2. Curb Your Consumption

The less you own, the fewer items you have to clean and organize. Embracing minimalism can solve so many of your problems.

If you consider yourself materialistic, going minimalist can be a long journey. Still, examining your purchases and being more intentional with shopping is a good start.

Buying just what you need should prevent your possessions from growing.

Then, sort your belongings and determine which ones to keep and what to sell, donate or toss. It is possible to declutter quickly when you stay focused on the end goal. And once it’s done and you combine it with curbing what you buy it will be easier to maintain your space. 

3. Keep Everything Organized

Once you’ve cleared the clutter from your home, making sure everything is organized and put away will help make it easier to clean.

There are a variety of room organization ideas you can implement in your space. The goal is for every item to have a home so that it is easy to put away and locate when you need it later.

It’s also helpful to make good use of your space by looking for storage solutions that work in your home. That could mean using racks, drawer organizers, or under-the-bed storage bins.

The key is to create sustainable organization systems in your home that are simple and easy for you and your family members to maintain.

4. Declutter Immediately

If you’re not careful, clutter can accumulate fast, making cleanups more stressful and time-consuming than they should be.

Developing decluttering habits in your home will help prevent clutter from accumulating in the first place.

Spruce up your home while the mess is manageable so your place doesn’t go from slightly disorderly to absolutely chaotic.

Keep a few bins or baskets out to make decluttering easier. When you come across an item you no longer love or use, drop it in a collection container. Once it gets full, donate it.

5. Use the Self-Cleaning Feature

Some people enjoy the satisfaction that comes from cleaning a filthy kitchen appliance. In contrast, most consider it an obligation and aren’t thrilled to have to put in the effort. The wonderful thing is some appliances have the ability to clean themselves.

Self-cleaning is a common oven cycle, turning gunk into an ashy powder you can painlessly wipe clean.

Although not all dishwashers boast a similar feature, most have filters designed to catch food scraps and pulverize them using a grinder or an ultrathin mesh.

Washers are no different — many models have a cycle optimized for removing dirt and biofilm.

While you may occasionally have to finish the job, self-cleaning appliances spare you considerable elbow grease and help conserve your bandwidth for other activities.

6. Set Regular Schedules

Squeezing cleaning into your calendar when you have a full plate requires disciplined time management. Categorize areas and items based on priority to know which ones to clean weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually (you can use the 6/10 rule to help you do that).

Afterward, estimate how fast you can finish tasks. Do the math to see how much time you must dedicate per cleaning session.

Time yourself to track your progress. Collect data through your logs to determine whether you misjudge the difficulty or complexity of the tasks. Fine-tune your schedules accordingly to make them more realistic. 

Although it takes time for dynamic cleaning schedules to become a habit, stick to them to build cleaning routines. They can add structure to home cleaning, allowing you to accomplish tasks with little thought and less stress.

7. Develop a System

Determine which cleaning practices work best for you. Try all hacks available and adopt those you find helpful.

For instance, using natural disinfectants, such as lemon juice and vinegar, instead of harsh chemicals can make your life easier.

They don’t emit harmful fumes that you must air out. Plus, you can use these kitchen staples anytime without fear of jeopardizing someone’s health.

Using the right cleaning tools can save you more time and help make cleaning easier.

8. Make It a Team Activity

Family members of all ages can help contribute to cleaning the home. Split tasks among your spouse and kids based on age and abilities.

This can help everyone help take responsibility for the cleanliness of the home, rather than leaving it all to one person.

Additionally, having children do chores is beneficial for their development. It’s a great life skill to start teaching them when they’re young to prepare them for adulthood.

9. Avoid Aiming for Perfection

You can’t tidy up your space entirely and keep it spotless 100% of the time. Striving for flawlessness is a lost cause, for it can lead to procrastination and decreased productivity.

The sooner you stop trying to be a perfectionist, the better you can manage this chore. Determine an acceptable level of cleanliness and target it per cleaning session.

Aiming for imperfect simplicity in your home is a great goal and it will help you to be able to relax and enjoy your space without adding unrealistic expectations and stress.

10. Clean Every Day

If you’re trying to save time, cleaning every day may sound counterintuitive. However, saving everything for the weekend means having a mountain of work to juggle during your precious days off. 

Instead, create daily cleaning habits to maintain your space. This doesn’t mean doing a daily deep clean, however.

Have a list of tasks you can do in 20 minutes or less each night before bed. Focus your routine on specific problem areas, like tabletops that attract clutter or living rooms left in disarray at the end of the day.

This could include: 

• Wipe down kitchen counters and sink
• Load or unload the dishwasher, or hand wash anything left in the sink
• Clear everything off the dining room table
• Reset and organize your home office
• Tidy living room, replace cushions, put toys away, vacuum, collect loose items 
• Organize the entryway or mudroom to be ready for your morning routine 
• Tidy up the bedroom, putting away anything you used and left out throughout the day

You don’t need to do everything every day. Just accomplish the things that will make the biggest impact in a small window of time. Then on the weekend, you can focus on bigger projects as needed.

Strategic Ways to Keep Your Home Clean With a Busy Schedule

Life can get busy at times, but using these strategies can help you get your home clean more quickly and with less ongoing effort. Although home cleaning may seem like a chore, these tips make it less exhausting and more achievable no matter how much you have going on.

What are your favorite ways to keep your home clean with a busy schedule? Share them in the comments section below!

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