13 Handy Tips To Keep Your House Clean And Tidy For The Busy Working Adults

“I’ll clean this later.” How many times have we told ourselves this, but procrastinate and realise that nothing gets done by the end of the day?

You’re not alone. The irony lies in which we want our nicely renovated house to remain clean, but is a little too tired to do the chores.

Cleaning can be a chore, but it doesn’t always have to be hard. If you delay cleaning the house, you’ll end up with mountains of dirty laundry, stacked dishes, stains and dust to clean. At this point, cleaning seems insurmountable. 

Trust us, you wouldn’t want to find yourself at this stage. This is especially so if you’re living in a smaller apartment, and all the mess tends to be visible.

How can you solve this dilemma? Living in a clean and tidy house is not as difficult as it seems!

What habits and mindsets make cleaning hard for you? How can you overcome these difficulties? Find out more.

Why Is It Important To Keep The House Clean & Tidy?

Here are the top reasons for maintaining cleanliness and order in your home:

1. No Dust Mites

Wherever there’s dust in your house, you can count on these dust microscopic arachnids to eat it. Dust mites and their faeces are highly allergenic.

2. No Mould

Persistent stains and moisture in your home lead to mould, which can ruin your lungs as well as your health, considering that many people are allergic to mould.

3. Fewer Injuries

It’s very likely to get hurt in a house with toys lying around or with a slippery floor.

4. No Pests

A few bread crumbs on your kitchen floor never hurt anybody, right? Well, not if you love ants, bugs or mice. Keep your house clean or you’ll turn it into a pet haven. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself running around the house in exasperation, trying to get rid of these pests. We wouldn’t want that!

5. Better Sleep Quality

Allergens like dust mites, the clutter around you, and the stress of having to clean your house might cause you to have trouble sleeping.

6. Increased Happiness

Articles published show that the environment influences your happiness and productivity. A clean house allows you to thrive, while a cluttered, messy one triggers a bad mood.

7. More time 

Each time you have to search for something in your messy house, you lose precious time you could spend doing something else. It’s not just about lost time; it’s also about the frustration and stress you experience when you have to interrupt your thing to search for something or to make room for your work.

8. More friends 

Let’s face it – you might be a little embarrassed to ask your friends over when your house isn’t in top shape. The consequence is you can lose some important friendships, which decrease your overall life quality.

13 Doable Tips To Keep The House Clean

Are you convinced about the importance of keeping your house clean? The answer may be yes, but it’s easier said than done, right?

You need the right strategies or, otherwise, you can easily fall off tracks with your cleanliness.

1. Make Your Bed

Start every day by making your bed. It doesn’t take more than five minutes and it will put you in a better mood for the rest of the day. Research shows that this simple task puts you in the right mindset and increases your productivity for your other tasks.

The reason is that making your bed is an easy task to accomplish, and so it’s an easy way to trigger a fast dopamine surge. Dopamine is the reward hormone, your brain secretes every time you tackle a problem. Dopamine helps you start your day productively.

Besides, making your bed is about creating habits that will help you keep your whole house clean. It teaches you to deal with mess immediately, instead of procrastinating.

2. Make Every Day Laundry Day 

If you have a lot of laundry, don’t postpone it for a separate day in the week. Once you’ve made your bed, put some laundry in the washing machine. The washer and dryer will do their job while you’re working or running errands.

Once you’re back home in the evening, take a few minutes to fold your laundry, so everything is nice and clean.

If you don’t feel at ease with letting your machine run while you’re away, at least put your laundry inside the machine, and turn it on when you get back home. 

3. Eliminate “Perfect” from Your Vocabulary

There is no such thing as perfect, not even when we’re talking about keeping things clean. That’s a good thing. Some studies show that excessive cleanliness weakens your immune system and makes you prone to allergies, asthma, or even cancer. The reverse of the medal is having a messy, dirty home that also puts you at risk for injuries or disease.

As always, the best way is taking the middle road. If your house is at least 80% clean, you did a great job! Focus on stains, dirt, crumbs, dust and other obvious signs of messiness and dirtiness. 

4. Set Goals

Make a list with the things you need to do each week, and then spread them over a week. You don’t have to occupy your whole Saturday slaving away at cleaning your home.

Some things you need to do every day, like making your bed and washing your dishes. Other things you can spread throughout the week, such as dusting, cleaning your bathroom or mopping the floor. Make a plan that works for you. Simply adding 30 minutes in your day for these tasks leaves a lot more time during the weekend to do the things you like.

5. Use Cleaning Time As Quality Time

Many working adults who are busy with their families detest cleaning. The children are whining and you can’t do your cleaning. Or, to avoid the whining altogether, you wait for everyone to go to bed, and then you start cleaning the house. This leaves you more tired and at risk for developing a burnout syndrome.

The key is to get your family involved with the cleaning. Older children can do their own chores, such as putting laundry in the washing machine, washing their plates after they eat, and keeping their rooms tidy.

Smaller children and toddlers will get a kick out of accompanying you while doing chores. They love pushing brooms, picking up crumbs, and playing with soapy water when you’re washing dishes. Plus, helping makes them feel productive and valuable members of your family. 

The secret is to make a game out of cleaning. You can be dust hunters or turn cleaning into a competition to find out who puts away their laundry the fastest.

6. Evening Clean-Up

Make sure you spend a few minutes each evening to tidy your home. Use this time for laundry, vacuuming or mopping the floor, depending on your goals for the day. 

The evening clean-up should be a routine for every member of your family. Everyone should clean their rooms or fold their laundry at the same time because of two reasons. 

The first is to avoid procrastination because some people tend to avoid doing chores, while others feel like they’re doing too much.

The second reason is to decrease the overall feeling of doing something unpleasant. After all, if everyone is doing chores at the same time, you’re sharing the burden. 

To make things fun, set your alarm for 20 minutes and see who’s gotten more things done. Besides, 20 minutes is not a lot of time, so you won’t become excessively tired or feel like you’ve missed too much of your free time.

7. Clean As You Go

If you’re a busy working adult, you don’t spend a lot of time in your home during the week. So how can your house become so messy? Many people ask themselves this question. The answer is simple: you’re probably not tidying or cleaning as you go.

Imagine this scenario. You wake up in the morning. Your alarm rings, you reach to turn it off and your book falls off the nightstand. You leave it there. Your pyjamas gets thrown on the floor as you head for the shower. You leave the bathroom floor wet and your dirty towel on the floor.

Next, you head to the kitchen for your breakfast. You cut bread to make some peanut butter sandwiches. The breadcrumbs get left on the table and the dirty knife on the counter. Jam drips off your teaspoon and you leave it there, thinking you’ll wipe it off in the evening.

In just half an hour, your house is a mess, and you can think of similar actions for your evenings at home. The not-so-secret secret is to clean as you go. Spend a few extra seconds every time you do something to ensure you’re not leaving a mess behind.

Besides, we rather clean up there and then, rather than let the dirt accumulate and cleaning a whole mountain of dirt moving forward.

8. Put Things Back

Putting things back helps you keep your house tidy. At kindergarten, children learn to take one toy or one kit from the shelves, play with it, and then put it back before taking another one. This succession of things helps them internalize the need for cleanliness, to become more focused and goal-oriented.

Are you done with your plate? Wash it immediately instead of leaving it to rest on the counter. 

9. Don’t Buy Unnecessary Stuff

Don’t clutter your home because it makes it more difficult to keep it clean. To quote Marie Kondo, if an item doesn’t spark joy, you should either donate or trash the item. 

Lots of trinkets and photos on your bookshelves mean you have to spend more time dusting because you have to lift each of them up to dust underneath. Too many clothes entail a lot of laundry. Too many dishes in your kitchen tempt you to leave unwashed dishes in the sink.

Besides, unnecessary stuff is really… unnecessary. They just add to the clutter and have no real purpose, apart from increasing your cleaning time.

10. Keep Supplies Handy

Having a clean house is easy if you have the right tools at hand. Imagine spilling something on your kitchen countertop, or dripping that delicious tomato sauce all over your stove.

Now imagine you have to go all the way to your downstairs storage closet, turn on the lights, reach for a box on the top shelf, take out a sponge and a spray bottle, get all the way upstairs to clean your stain, then get all the way back to put your cleaning supplies where they belong.

Just reading those lines was tiresome, right? Imagine actually doing all those steps multiple times per day as you’re struggling to respect the “put things back” principle. 

It’s a lot easier to keep a few supplies handy, like a cleaning cloth and a sprayer with water and vinegar on your countertop.

11. Get Help

Help comes in many forms. Some people decide to hire a full-time helper who can help them with all the major cleaning and laundry. This is convenient for families with a bigger monthly budget, though it might put a dent in yours if you’re on a tight budget.

Others who have smaller homes might choose to hire a part-time helper who comes over once or twice a week, for a few hours.

Another solution is to invest in automatizing your home. Get a washing machine, a dryer, or a robotic vacuum cleaner, or a robotic window cleaner, depending on where you need an extra hand. 

12. Have Fun Doing It

Dance. Listen to music or an interesting documentary. Add some ankle weights or a weighted vest and turn your evening clean-up into a quick 20-minute workout. 

Find something that motivates you, and combine it with cleaning to make it feel less like a chore.

This way, you’ll also feel more motivated to start cleaning and stop procrastinating!

13. Make Organizing Stuff Look Stylish

Shelves, organizers and dressing rooms have become fashionable interior design trends. People have hectic lives, so they need to turn their homes into oases of convenience. But no one says you can’t blend convenience with style.

While dressing rooms look glamorous and can impress your guests, they also make it easier for you to keep your clothes handy. Organizers for your makeup or desk supplies come in all sorts of modern models, which make your house look more appealing for both you and your guests.

Keeping Your House Tidy Amidst The COVID-19 Pandemic

With most of us still working from home during this period, it pays to keep your home spick and span. Messy rooms, clothes strewn all over the floor, moldy food in the refrigerator are some of the things that we wish to avoid.

With a clean and tidy environment, we’ll also be able to work better and enhance productivity.

Investing in better quality automated household appliances can save you a lot of time and keep the house tidy with minimal effort on your part. However, appliances such as robot vacuums, vacuum cleaners and washing machines can easily run into the thousands. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many Singaporeans to suffer pay cuts or job loses. Instead of eating into your savings, you can consider alternative funding options.

Katong Credit is a legal and licensed moneylender under the Ministry of Law. Having been in the borrowing industry for many years, our highly trained and experienced loan consultants will be able to provide you with the best loan package suited to your needs.

Whether it is to purchase household appliances, or just to have a sum of money to tide you over, our wide range of personal loans can be extremely helpful.