Cleaning is something that has huge rewards but can come with great costs. We have to spend our time, our energy, and even our money to get our homes in tip-top shape. Cleaning can be straight up painful, but with easy cleaning hacks, it can be more manageable and more bearable.
I’m always on the hunt for new ways to improve my cleaning routine because let’s face it, as long as cleaning is a task we have to do, there will always be someone else coming up with a genius idea of how to improve it. I’m all for improvement, especially if that new method means I spend less time cleaning the bathroom!
Up ahead are 17 of the best cleaning hacks for getting your home in order without feeling out of order yourself.
#1 Easy Cleaning Hacks: PREVENT CLEANING
The best way to clean less is to do things before a mess happens that will prevent the need to clean in the first place.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Have rugs or doormats placed at every entrance to the house and have both an inside and outside rug.
- Most dirt on the floor comes from soiled shoes and paws, and these rugs will keep a lot of that soil contained. You can clean these rugs periodically by shaking them out or washing them in the washing machine if the label says it is safe to do so.
- Another cleaning prevention tool is covering food in the microwave.
- Cleaning up a microwave mess can take forever sometimes. To keep food from splattering get a splatter guard that can be used again and again without wasting paper towels.
- Keep your dog beds covered.
- Washing an entire dog bed (BTW here’s the best dog bed in the world… the best purchase of my entire life for this dog mom) can be super time consuming and may mean your dog can’t sleep in their favorite bed for at least a day.
- To prevent pet bed messes from getting out of hand simply cover the pet bed with a sheet or blanket that can be easily tossed into the washing machine. Then, instead of constantly washing the pet bed, just wash the sheet or blanket and always have at least two so that while washing the dirty one you can immediately cover the bed with the available clean one.
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#2 Easy Cleaning Hacks: DAILY MAINTENANCE OVER ALL DAY REPAIR
Another cleaning hack is to stay on top of constantly cleaning so that things don’t get out of control but also so that cleaning can be done in minutes instead of hours.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Keep kitchen counters clear daily by getting rid of mail as soon as it comes from the mailbox instead of putting it on the kitchen counter.
- For some reason, the kitchen can quickly become the collection zone for everything so making a daily habit of keeping the kitchen counter clear of everything except kitchen appliances can help a ton!
- Keep your bathroom looking good on the daily by putting away makeup supplies right away after using them instead of leaving them.
- Bonus points for ending your makeup routine with a quick wipe down of the bathroom counter.
- Pick up toys daily no matter how tired you/the kids are.
- You and the kids might be feeling too tired to pick up today’s toys, but that can quickly become a habit so make it a rule that toys played with have to be toys picked up and all in the same day. This can take seconds to do daily instead of hours of organizing later.
#3 Easy Cleaning Hacks: CLEAN THE MAINS NOT THE MINORS
I know, cleaning the dirt out of the cracks in the bathroom tiles can make things look better, but it can also take forever (I know this from experience LOL). Knowing all the baseboards have been dusted makes you feel kind of like a cleaning superhero but, does anyone really notice? If the toilet needs a good scrub clean that before attacking the bathroom air vents.
I have to remind myself this cleaning principle all the time. Sure I could spend the next hour deep cleaning under the refrigerator, or I could tackle the pile of laundry taking over my bedroom.
Sometimes we just have to go for the big things that are literally in our way (shoes left out), disturbing our vision (I get stressed every time I see that pile of papers), and potentially going to start causing a stink (dishes, you always have to be dealt with).
When in doubt go for the mess that is most easily seen, causing the most stress, and making daily life less pleasurable. After that, hidden projects can be tackled when there is time.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- If the entire house is a mess start where it will make a huge difference.
- This could be counters being cleared or laundry being put away.
- Your car might be making you feel awful every time you get in it, but you can’t find time for a car wash.
- Start by washing the windshield and empty the front driver and passenger area of all trash.
- If an entire room is full of clutter, start by being able to close the door.
- Sometimes a room gets so full of stuff you can’t even close the door and if that’s the case, just make it your first goal to clear out the space enough to be able to close the door.
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#4 Easy Cleaning Hacks: CLEAN ALL AT ONCE
Some things are faster to clean when they are grouped together.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- If one task can be done in multiple rooms in a short time frame, do it.
- On my last visit to the kitchen sink, I saw the hand soap was in need of a refill, so I take my soap out and refill that bottle plus all of the other hand soap bottles throughout the house (in the bathrooms).
- Another example of this can be vacuuming.
- Instead of vacuuming one spot of the house, if the vacuum is out, it goes all over the house so getting it out and putting it away happens all at once instead of various times for different rooms.
- When the trash goes out, all the trash goes out.
- If you are emptying one trash can, go ahead and empty them all.
#5 Easy Cleaning Hacks: CLEAN CENTER
Having a command center in your kitchen is common these days and for a good reason – having everyone’s family responsibilities front and center can help with getting more done. Well, same goes for a cleaning center.
What should go in your cleaning headquarters? Have all cleaning cloths, bottles, and supplies in this one area.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Instead of being housed in the kitchen, the laundry room is a good pick for storing all your cleaning supplies.
- This can be a good solution for keeping cleaning supplies away from small children as well because often laundry rooms have existing storage that is built up high away from a child’s reach.
- A basket with your cleaning goods can help you clean as effectively as possible.
- For instance, having a basket for cleaning bathrooms and a separate basket for cleaning bedrooms could help you stay focused on where you’re cleaning and prevent you from having to look for exactly what cleaning supplies you need.
- A cleaning center is a good place to display cleaning checklists, cleaning chores, notes for cleaning supplies that need to be replenished, and special cleaning instructions for major appliances and special fabrics.
- Bonus points for making it all look cute and incorporating a cute sign that inspires you to clean your best.
#6 Easy Cleaning Hacks: CLEAR THE CLUTTER
If you have a choice of quickly dusting before company comes over or quickly picking up all the toys in the living room, go for the latter.
Clutter can’t be hidden, it is glaring at you in the face and makes things look messier than they maybe really are. Dust can be hidden by dark lighting, and most people won’t ever know if your refrigerator has been cleaned out this month.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Dishes left undone is a good place to start if you are cleaning the kitchen.
- After that, clearing the counters is the next step in making a difference in your kitchen fast.
- Laundry dropped on the couch can quickly become laundry stuck on the couch for days.
- Try to get that laundry put away before you sit down to watch TV.
- Stuff covering the floors should be the first items on any quick cleanup agenda.
- Toys all over the floor can make a room look messy super fast. Grab a basket, toss it all in, and if you have time to deal with it go for it, otherwise store it away until you can properly put it away (aim for sometime in the near future). Setting a timer can help with the speed.
#7 Easy Cleaning Hacks: CLEAN WHILE YOU SLEEP
Ah, you wake up and realize the maid came and worked all night! How dreamy. Well, while that may not be the case, there are ways to have cleaning occur overnight. Yes, I’m totally serious!
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Run the dishwasher at night while you sleep (which might lower your bill given the uncommon time of use).
- Put toilet bowl cleaner in the toilets and flush it away in the morning.
- Get limescale deposits out of your kettle by first cutting a lemon, putting it and water to a boil, then turn off the heat and let the lemon water take care of your kettle while you slumber. Just empty and rinse in the morning before you make your morning tea or coffee with your freshened kettle.
- Let stained clothes get treated while you sleep then pop them into the washing machine once you wake up.
- Submerge a shower-head in a plastic bag of vinegar with a twisty tie to unclog the mineral deposits.
- Leave a dryer sheet and warm water on your crusty cookie pan soaking overnight to wake up to an easy-to-clean tray.
- You know how those sink faucets can get all gunky? Before bed, wrap your faucet in a microfiber cloth sprayed with vinegar and in the morning take off the cloth and wipe down the faucet. If the faucet still needs a shine get an old toothbrush and scrub it down with the help of some dish soap. Rinse and go on with your day.
#8 Easy Cleaning Hacks: Laundry Rules
Laundry is one thing that is a constant. To help stay on top of laundry and make it as easy as possible, create a laundry routine.
Instead of just doing laundry whenever, putting the clean laundry wherever, and allowing the dirty clothes to pile up forever, creating dirty laundry placement rules, sorting routines, and dry and put away policies, can make laundry go as smooth as a freshly ironed shirt.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Consider having a laundry basket in every bedroom and/or bathroom or for every person in the house or for laundry types such as dark, light, delicate, and towels. Think of what will make laundry more doable and more quick for your family.
- Also, instead of just using baskets prewash, think about using baskets post wash. Yes, have a clean basket for each laundry member, put their clean clothes neatly inside, and have them put their clean laundry from their clean laundry basket into their final destination in their room.
- Think about who can do what and make sure they do it. Even small children can be tasked with putting away small clothing items like soaks or kitchen towels on a weekly basis.
#9 Easy Cleaning Hacks: DUSTING DOWN
Dusting is a great way to make a room look better fast. The key is to dust downward.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Start of high by dusting any corners in the ceiling and walls that have spider webs.
- Then go down to ceiling fans, light fixtures, and major furniture units like bookshelves (again from top to bottom of the bookshelf).
- Then head to eye level, and waist level dust collectors such as televisions, tabletops, and on down to the bottom shelves of nightstands and magazine racks.
- Then, of course, end with the floor where all dust ends up.
#10 Easy Cleaning Hacks: COOK LIKE A PRO
Have you ever watched those cooking shows where they have all the stuff they need to prepare a fabulous meal within arm’s reach? Organize your kitchen for cooking success like professional chefs.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Have your cooking utensils near your stove, so as you cook you just move your hands and not your feet! Unless of course you’re trying to add more steps in your day LOL!
- Keep all your spices in one place! Nobody has time to go looking for lost spices while they are in the middle of the world’s greatest feast! Have your spices standing at full attention like little soldiers ready to go into culinary battle on your behalf! Here’s a spice contraption that will keep your spice searching under control.
- Clean as you go! While that water is boiling, put away those dishes, while that fish is frying, rinse off those pans. If you got a few seconds to spare, use those seconds for cleanup time!
#11 Easy Cleaning Hacks: AT THE READY
Keep often-used items for cleaning in the areas you most need them.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- If you clean the bathrooms regularly with microfiber cloths, keep some in each bathroom for bathroom use only. Keep your bathroom cleaning supplies in the bathroom.
- If you like your computer screen nice and shiny, keep your computer cleaning cloth in your desk. Also, if you are always cleaning your sunglasses before your commute, keep a cleaning cloth in your car. Keep the cleaning cloth where the cleaning happens.
- If you happen to be out with your little one and realize you never have what you need, when you need it, start a list on your phone called “To Add To Diaper Bag” and commit to adding the supplies on your list to your diaper bag every week until you feel like you’re always ready for the messy moment when it happens! Making a personalized list of supplies needed will help you feel super in charge when it comes to cleaning!
#12 Easy Cleaning Hacks: STORE WELL
Got some cute storage bins to store all your stuff? Great!
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Now make sure you label your cleaning and organizing storage solutions so you know what’s in them!
- Nothing worse than spending an hour looking for something you “organized” months ago but you can’t remember where you organized it at. When you find a place for things, make sure that new place makes its contents obvious. This label maker can make your storage issues totally cute and amazingly easy!
- If there are things you use on a daily basis, store them accordingly.
- Sure you could put all your makeup in a tiny box in the back of your bathroom cupboard, but then you have to spend forever getting that box out every day! If you use something often, store it well, so it’s easily available for daily use.
- Make those storage containers cute, so you’re more likely to like your system.
- If you have paper clutter that’s driving you nuts, but you organize it in ugly files that also make you sad, you’re setting yourself up to hate dealing with paper all the time! Get some cute paper organizing folders and store your paper in a way that makes you smile when you go looking for that tax return!
#13 Easy Cleaning Hacks: FOCUSED AND FEW
Focus on cleaning well and lessen the times you have to clean overall.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Instead of watching television while dusting, just dust quickly during the commercials. Stay focused on the dusting and be done in seconds instead of minutes.
- Decide to do all the laundry in one day and do it all day until it is done. Laundry tends never to end, and if you always do it, you feel like your life is ruled by laundry. Focus on doing laundry and only laundry and then forget about it until next time.
- Find a Saturday this month when you can dedicate three hours to finally beautifying your backyard. The backyard changes with the seasons, so it’s easy to feel behind in yardly duties. Mark a dedicated day on your calendar each season for doing big projects in your yard, so you know that at the very least, major projects are getting done multiple times each year.
#14 Easy Cleaning Hacks: ROOM BY ROOM
Instead of cleaning randomly have a plan of attack and defend the space you’re in until it’s completely won. Clean a room entirely before moving on to the next room.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- This could mean all rooms cleaned in one day, hour by hour.
- For instance, set the clock and get each room as spick-and-span as you can for that one hour, then take a 30 min break and into the next room. This works great for getting things ready before guests arrive!
- Clean the same room each day spread out over an entire week, or heck an entire month, before moving onto the next room.
- So this could look like you getting your office totally organized over the course of an entire week as you are able to dedicate time to it (such as 30 mins on Monday, an hour on Tuesday, ten mins on Wednesday, etc.). Then after your office is awesome, move on to tackling your garage or the next big project. If you want things clean but have a big household mess awaiting you, conquer it room by room over a reasonable period of time such as a week, month or even year!
- Another way of cleaning room by room is by picking a task and doing that same task in all rooms.
- This works great for decorating for the holidays and also taking the decor down. So let’s say you have reindeer decor all throughout the house and you want to take it all down because Valentine’s Day is coming next LOL. Well, your one goal for the day is room by room, clear out all of your reindeer.
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#15 Easy Cleaning Hacks: CLEAN QUICK
Got five minutes? Try doing one of these tasks that make a big difference fast!
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- Clear off counters.
- Pick up all the shoes.
- Unload the dishwasher.
- Vacuum just the areas that are walked in.
- Empty the trash.
- Deal with the mail.
- Straighten all pillows.
- Toss some laundry into the washing machine.
- Make the bed.
#16 Easy Cleaning Hacks: DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Similar to room-by-room this idea means tackling some cleaning tasks now and others later.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- For example, tasks could be divided up so instead of laundry and the lawn today just do the laundry today and the lawn tomorrow.
- You might enjoy life more if you clean in sprints instead of marathons.
- This divide and conquer principle works great for sharing chores among household members.
- Maybe one person likes doing the laundry but hates doing the dishes; it would be great for everyone if the laundry lover got the laundry assignment and the dish duty went to someone else. Divide household chores among those in the house, so everyone is contributing to the betterment of the overall environment.
- Another easy cleaning hack method to consider: divide cleaning the garage into four weekends so the entire month of April will be garage cleaning month.
- Sure, you’d love the entire garage to be perfect by this next Monday, but at what cost? Would you be sacrificing sleep, sanity, and sweetness for the sake of a time-crunched cleaning binge? Sometimes doing a little over a little while can add up to big results!
#17 Easy Cleaning Hacks: HIRE OUT
Yep, if you have the funds, consider the cost of hiring out your cleaning!
Some people feel uncomfortable having their toilets cleaned by a stranger, but there are a lot of people who earn their living (happily) by cleaning other people’s homes so consider the option!
In fact, I know a bit about this as my mom had her own housecleaning business and she got a lot of pride from her work and had amazing relationships with her clients who often became her friends. So if you feel bad about hiring someone to clean your own home, just think about it a bit and of course make the decision that is right for you, your family, and your budget.
Easy Cleaning Hack In Action:
- First, find out how much the cleaning task would cost you, then determine if that cost is worth you not doing the task in terms of time you could be spending doing other work or time you could be spending with your family.
- Maybe you simply have no time to clean your house, but you do have the money to pay someone else to do it.
- If you do decide it is worth it to invest in hired help decide which type and how often.
- A housecleaning service every week? A window washer every year? Lawn service twice a month? A gutter cleaning service for the fall? Or maybe just paying for car washes instead of spending hours doing it yourself? Think about it. Do what’s best for you and yours.
- If you do get a housecleaning service, it can help things go more smoothly if you clear clutter before your next clean.
- If you get your yard done by professionals, make sure you have no toys out in the yard. If you have your house cleaned, go through your house and clear as much clutter as you can so when the cleaning professionals go to clean they can get right to cleaning and not spend time moving stuff out of their way.
I hope you found some useful tips in this list that will make cleaning faster, more manageable and perhaps even enjoyable!
There are a lot of easy cleaning hacks that a person can try over a lifetime and ultimately the true test of a great cleaning hack is if it works for you, you keep coming back to it time and time again, and if you love it so much you want to share it with others!
As one who’s been cleaning for decades, I’ve learned that there is always growth as a cleaner and while there are cleaning practices I think are kinda close to magic, I also know that becoming a better cleaner is a lifelong goal and process and what works now might work even better ten years from now! That’s kinda the exciting thing about cleaning! We can always clean even better!
I hope you’ll find yourself cleaning better with some of these awesome cleaning hacks and at the very least you’ll be inspired to create your own easy cleaning hacks that will help you clean with more ease and less pain!
Happy cleaning! 🙂
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