Cleaning can be a huge drain on your time. Sometimes there are so many things to do it seems like you only make a dent in what needs to be done. Instead of spending your weekend cleaning, try doing one of these fast clean-ups whenever you have some spare time.
1. Clean up mail, magazines and catalogs. Everyone keeps old mail hanging around the house too long. Spend 10 minutes going through the papers on the kitchen counter and seeing what you should hold onto and what can be tossed. If you have to keep something, put it in a safe place rather than on a table or counter.
2. Make the beds. My mom used to tell me, “if you make your bed your room instantly looks 10 times cleaner.” It’s true! Making a bed has a major impact, even if the rest of the room is too messy to tackle at the moment.
3. Vacuum a room. Vacuuming the carpet takes no time at all and instantly makes a room look so much cleaner. You might need to spend a few minutes picking things up off the floor before you start, but if you’re short on time just place them in a pile in a corner until you can clean up more.
4. Wipe off your kitchen counters, the front of the refrigerator and the front of the dishwasher.
5. Go through your refrigerator or cabinets and throw out any expired or bad food you can find. This is great to do while you’re preparing dinner.
6. Get rid of all your empty containers. I think we’re all guilty of hoarding empty shampoo bottles, yogurt containers or other bottles that we forget to throw out or hold onto because they might come in handy someday (note: if they haven’t yet, they probably never will).
7. Throw out old cosmetic products. Makeup, facial cleansers, body lotions and any other toiletry you can think of has an expiration date. Many of them even have a label on them like this one:
This indicates that the product should be thrown out after 12 months. If you think it has been that long, throw it out. Using products that are too old will either diminish their effectiveness, cause you to break out or even worse, make you sick.
8. Place miscellaneous clutter in the room it belongs it. Put the kids’ toys that are in the living room back in their bedrooms, cookbooks that are in the living room in the kitchen, etc. You don’t have to put them away if you’re short on time, but it’s nice to have them in the right room.
9. Wash your windows and mirrors.
10. Wipe down sinks, bathroom counters and clean the toilet.