Good Cleaning Habits To Start Immediately

You’ve just finished Spring cleaning and already your hamper is overflowing, there are dishes in the sink, and you feel like your recently spotless house is trashed. What if you could keep your freshly deep cleaned home cleaner longer?

Today I’m going over effective cleaning habits that will keep your house cleaner after deep cleans, all month long, and all week long.

Cleaning Habits to Start Now

Good Cleaning Habit #1: Put It Away Right Away

You will start taking the extra 30 seconds to put things where they belong after use. Starting this habit will save you up to 30 minutes of time spent tidying your home before doing your actual cleaning.

Pro-Tip: Leave little post it notes throughout your home till it becomes a habit to put everything away where it belongs and to remind your family to do it too.

Good Cleaning Habit #2: Load and Unload Your Dishwasher Daily

The most important habit to have for your kitchen is loading and unloading the dishwasher every day. Take 5 minutes every morning to unload your dishwasher from the night before.

Along with unloading your dishes every morning you should be loading your dishwasher throughout the day instead of dropping dishes off in the sink.

Caucasian couple loading dishwasher together in kitchen

I highly recommend working with your family to train them on doing this too.

Good Cleaning Habit #3: Wipe Down Your Counters After Every Use

The next habit is the counter wipe down a couple times a day. With a dishcloth wipe down your counters in the afternoon, after dinner, or anytime you use them to prepare food. This will help your kitchen to look cleaner all day long.

Good Cleaning Habit #4: Clean While You Cook

Try cleaning up and loading all your prep dishes into the dishwasher as you are cooking your food. This makes the final clean up of the day all that much easier and keeps your kitchen tidy too.

Good Cleaning Habit #5: Put Your Dirty Clothes In The Hamper

Buying a two section hamper is all I needed to make sure I stayed on top of my laundry.

However you do your laundry is up to you. So if you separate out your laundry into two, three, four, or five piles get that many hampers and line them up in your room.

Then put your dirty clothes into the correct hamper. Now you don’t need to worry about spending time separating your clothing because it’s already done. This could save you 10-20 minutes every week.

Good Cleaning Habit #6: Start A Load Of Laundry Every Morning

The next habit is to do a load of laundry as soon as your hamper is full. So if you get a hamper that fits the capacity of your washing machine, like I did, it makes it super easy to tell when a load of laundry needs to be done.

I start my laundry every morning, dry it in the afternoon, and fold it sometime after dinner and before bed. I end up doing a load of laundry about every two days or so. I find that if I don’t have laundry to do one day I might wash sheets or extra blankets instead.

Now if you live in an apartment where you have a shared laundry facility it might be worth it for you to wait, do all your laundry at once. Try to pick a day or time when your laundry room isn’t busy so you can do up to 4 or more loads at once.

This made my life extremely easy when I was living in an apartment. If you feel like being nice to your neighbors try to leave a couple of machines open, if possible. I would get up super early or do my laundry late at night to get it all done at once.

Good Cleaning Habit #7: Make Your Bed Every Morning

My mentality about making the bed has changed over the last couple of months. I used to believe there was no point to making a bed that would just get messed up again within 12-16 hours.

Woman making the bed is a good cleaning habit

After moving our office space into our bedroom though that mentality has completely switched. We now make our bed as soon as we get out of it. Our room looks more tidy which helps us to be more productive.

Good Cleaning Habit #8: Put Away Beauty Products

Do not walk away from your bathroom after getting ready. Take the time to put away your beauty products after use, it goes a long way to keeping your bathroom clean.

I use three baskets to organize my makeup, hair products, and skin products. I use a basket, put the products back in the basket, and the basket goes back on the shelf.

Good Cleaning Habit #9: Remove Dirty Clothes From Your Bathroom

This one has always been a weakness for me. I used to be terrible about it. Taking your dirty clothes from the bathroom and putting them in the hamper is one of the best ways to keep your bathroom looking clean.

Mid section view of a woman holding laundry basket filled with clothing

This also helps you to be aware of the state of your hamper so you know if you should start a load of laundry that day or not.

Good Cleaning Habit #10: Wipe Down Your Sink, Counter, and Mirror

Take 20 seconds before you leave the bathroom to take a rag and remove splash marks off your mirror, remove powder or makeup from your counter, and wipe out the inside of your sink.

This simple act keeps your bathroom looking spotless and makes your actual bathroom cleaning easier and faster.

Good Cleaning Habit #11: Pick Up The Toys

Just before the husband comes home from work take a few minutes to clean up all the toys in the living room.

I tried to make this fun for L and I both. I would start cleaning and he would help. Once the room was clean it would usually stay clean for the remainder of the afternoon and evening.

When you have creative storage in the living room the toys can be easily hidden away. This gives the space a grown up look even though there was a kid in the home.

Good Cleaning Habit #12: Fluff The Pillows

Kids often play with throw pillows and leave them all over your living room floor or in the wrong spot. Taking a little bit of time to put the pillows in the right spot and fluffing them makes the room feel loads cleaner.

Keep It Quick

It was around this time that I realized big daily cleanings were completely unnecessary. The small habits that I was creating allowed for me to keep my home clean without needing to also vacuum, dust, and scrub the floors.

I could do small little quick clean ups throughout the house as I used each room in order to have a clean home.

These small daily cleaning habits suddenly had my home looking cleaner longer. The mindset shift of focusing on tidy not perfect turned me from a frazzled messy mom into the mom with the clean home.

Related: The Art Of The Quick Clean

Keep It Realistic

My home is NOT perfect. Any home that is lived in, played in, and worked in will never be perfect.

Luckily perfect is not the goal. I’m going to say that again, Perfect Is Not The Goal.

The goal is to have a tidy home but still have time to enjoy your kids, your life, and your downtime. If you are going for perfect you will miss the big picture.

Do you have any daily habits that help make you bigger chores easier? Let me know in the comments below. Follow me on Pinterest for more like this and pin this to your favorite cleaning boards.

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Sarah Ann

August 13, 2020 at 2:53 PM

I love the simplicity of these habits and how big of an impact they make. A few years ago, I made our family commit to making our beds everyday and it definitely paid off because now my kids make their bed without me even asking! Unfortunately, keeping the counters clear of clutter has been a more difficult task. But, we just got our granite countertops cleaned and resealed, so I’m going to try to keep the them clear so I can show them off!