housework hacks: how to have a tidy house without the effort

A house only has to look tidy for it to be tidy. Even if your vacuum cleaner is covered in cobwebs and the shelves haven’t seen a duster in months, you can still easily and quickly give the impression of maintaining a clean and tidy house, between cleans.

If you have visitors dropping by and you need to do a mad dash to tidy, or just if you hate having a messy house but don’t have time or energy to clean just at the moment, there are a few things that you can do to have a presentable home that you’re happy to live in, without spending hours cleaning.

1. Unclutter

Minimising clutter makes a room look tidy and spacious and is easier to maintain. While I’m not suggesting you get rid of your favourite knick-knacks, keep items on the coffee table, dining table, shelves, stands etc to a minimum. Avoid collecting things in the lounge room like weeks of newspapers, junk mail, magazines etc. Recycle or store as soon as these have been read.

2. Have a place for everything

It can take just minutes to put everything away and have a tidy house, if every item has it’s own home. Often the things that get left out are things that we don’t know what to do with or it’s too hard to put them away. For often used items, make storage solutions as easy as possible so that returning them to their place isn’t a hassle.

Have somewhere that is a temporary container for those things that don’t have a place of their own yet, or are too hard to put them back in their right home, or you want to get them out again soon. A drawer, cupboard, box or basket work well for this purpose.

3. Tidy a little, often

Rather than having ‘a big clean up’ every week or going into a panic when visitors call, take a minute or two to tidy a little each day. This can be as simple as putting the junk mail straight into the recycling rather than letting it pile up in the lounge, or putting a dirty glass in the sink rather than leaving it lying around. With only a second or two of effort, your house remains looking spick and span.

When you are doing everyday chores, spend an extra minute or two on the chore. For example, rather than bringing the washing in in a crumpled pile, fold and stack it neatly in the basket. You may have a pile of ironing sitting in the room and you may not get round to doing the ironing for another 3 weeks, but it looks neat and tidy (and coming from someone who provided an ironing service, it makes ironing so much easier and quicker when it’s neatly folded).

4. Train the tribe

If you know the trick to training the tribe, then please tell me. You’ve got the clothes basket, it’s in the most convenient place in the house, things can’t get simpler, but undies still get left on the floor! Keeping the house tidy is the job of everyone in the house, not just one person. If your systems aren’t working, ask other members of the family for their solutions to keeping things tidy, hopefully if they take ownership, it just might happen.

5. Keep a basket handy for stuff

This is especially good for kid’s toys. Something easy that you can throw everything in in a moments notice and contain the mess, rather than having the toys all over the floor. This is also useful for work papers or crafting projects that are taking up space and need to be put away quickly, without being ‘packed away’.

While we don’t have the problem of kids toys, we have a cat who just loves getting all his toys out every night an leaving them all over the lounge room floor. It takes only a couple of seconds to kick them back into ‘their spot’ behind the couch.

A basket for items that need relocating is handy also. If you need to tidy in a hurry, rather than running back and forth putting things away, you can collect everything that goes up stairs, for example, and take it all up at once.

6. Do the tasks that have the highest impact

If you need to have the house tidy in a hurry, do the tasks that give the highest impact, like tidying clutter. Pick up things off the floor, tables, couches and surfaces, arrange the lounge pillows, give the toilet a quick spray of air freshener and the sink a quick wipe over.

If you have a pile of dishes in the kitchen, stack what you can and wash only the the things that don’t stack well like pots and pans. A stack of rinsed plates looks tidy, even if you haven’t washed up in a week.

7. Stack the dishes and wipe benches

If you have a dishwasher then keeping the kitchen clean is easy, just throw everything in the dishwasher. Otherwise rinse crockery and stack it neatly. Even though the washing up hasn’t been done, it gives the kitchen a clean look.

Wipe food off the benches, wash cups, pots and pans and cutlery if there is time or just stack them too, hang the towels and your kitchen can be spick and span in under 5 minutes.

8. Give the place a fresh smell

Open the windows to let in fresh air and light and give the front door a wipe with a little lavender oil or spray the room with a tiny bit of air freshener. A fresh smelling house gives the impression of a clean house, even if it hasn’t seen a vacuum cleaner for months.

9. Keep a cloth in the bathroom for a quick wipe over

For a quick (3 minute) bathroom tidy, the same ideas apply. Tidy up clutter (wet towels, clothes, hair brushes etc), and give the sink, mirror and any bath ring a quick wipe with a cloth kept in the room for that purpose. Plain water will clean just fine, or you could keep a bottle of cleaner or bicarb in the bathroom to make cleaning easier and more convenient.

10. Shut the door

Shut off areas of the house that visitors won’t need access to or you just can’t stand looking at, like bedrooms. I love a made bed, but other priorities come first, and quite often our bed goes unmade. And at this time of the year with the heat as it is, I don’t even bother with quilts and covers etc that we just kick off, just the sheet, so it never looks “made”. Other people never have to know.

11. Delegate

A household isn’t a one man band. To keep the place looking tidy, train the tribe and delegate tasks, especially if you’re in a hurry to get the place clean before visitors arrive.

12. Be at peace with the mess

At the end of the day, if friends and family can’t handle your house when it’s messy, then they don’t have to come over. There are more important things in life than keeping the house spick and span all the time.

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Have you read these posts?

1. tip tuesday – quick tidy strategy
2. Housework, Time Management And Efficiency
3. Putting A Value On Housework
4. moving house on a budget
5. Can You Afford to Buy a House?