12 Daily Cleaning Habits to Keep Your Home Clean
Inside: Use these daily cleaning habits to keep your home clean all year round!
Building daily habits into your routine can help keep your home cleaner and get rid of some of the stress caused by home maintenance.
Rather than waiting to do all of your cleaning on a particular day, developing daily cleaning habits makes cleaning your home more manageable.
From reducing clutter you have to clean up later to smart habits that make your home feel like it is cleaning itself, after you master them, you can use these habits to keep your home clean with less work.
Read on for the twelve daily cleaning habits to help keep your home clean.
Daily Cleaning Habits to Keep Your Home Clean
Adopt some of these daily cleaning habits to keep your home clean with minimal effort.
1. Wipe down counters
Take a few moments each day to eliminate countertop clutter in your kitchen and bathroom. Do a quick wipe down to remove crumbs and any sticky substances that have made their way onto your counters.
If you live with children, this can be one of the best moves you can make to keep their messes from taking over.
From spilled drinks in the kitchen to painting with toothpaste in the bathroom, a simple wipe with a damp rag can make cleaning these spaces easier by getting it done before the mess is completely dried out.
2. Do a quick floor cleaning
Floors can get dirty quickly, especially if you have small children or pets. Adding the daily cleaning task of vacuuming or sweeping will help keep your space clean.
If you happen to have a robot vacuum, which is a great cleaning tool that saves you time, then you don’t have to do anything for this daily task other than let it run.
A quick daily clean is a lot easier than a weekly clean because there is no time for things to really build up.
If you have little kids, this is also a great task to have them help with. Sweeping under the table after a meal helps them begin to learn responsibility with keeping the home clean.
3. Make your sink shine
Washing dishes and cleaning out your sink at the end of the day before bed can make starting the next day all the better.
Often, we wake up and begin our day making coffee and then realize just how much we really need to do for the day when we turn and see the sink.
Doing dishes right after the meal works better for most people than saving up all the dirty dishes to deal with at the very end of the day.
By going to bed with a clean sink and your dishes done, your home will stay cleaner, and you can feel better when you start your day off on a better foot without having a big chore looking you in the face.
4. Clear flat surfaces
Look around at the top of your kitchen table, coffee table, dresser, nightstand, and any other flat surface in your home.
Are there things that have been placed on them that don’t belong? Take just a minute to put them away.
Build a daily habit of keeping misplaced stuff in check to help keep your home cleaner and less cluttered with only a few minutes of your time.
5. Clean up messes immediately
Cleaning up messes right away is a great habit to teach your entire family. This habit can be a hard one to stick to because most people do not want to go hunt down the things they need to clean up the mess.
One great trick is to keep a cleaning kit with things like rags and a multi-surface cleaner on hand. Try using a cheap shower caddy to hold cleaning supplies in every room to make quick clean-ups easy.
Cleaning up messes immediately can also apply to kids getting toys out and adults leaving out various items rather than putting them away. Work to build the habit of putting it away instead of putting it down.
Help your kids learn the habit of putting games and toys away before getting new ones out.
6. Create a paperwork system
Work to break the habit of leaving things on the counter to deal with later when you bring mail and other papers into the home.
Instead, take the time to clear out the paper clutter and put it into the recycling bin right away.
Anything you need to keep, place it where it belongs immediately, either on a bulletin board or a file folder, rather than letting the clutter take over your home as easily as paper does.
7. Do a load of laundry every day
If you have a washer and dryer in your home, you can help to make laundry easier to manage and less stressful by opting to do a load of laundry start to finish every single day.
Folding and putting away a single load of laundry only takes a few minutes and doesn’t use nearly as much energy as doing an entire week’s worth of laundry in one day requires.
If your household is on the smaller side, doing laundry every other day or even just once a week may make more sense. Create systems that make the most sense for your household.
The goal is to keep the pile to a minimum so it’s an easy cleaning task rather than an overwhelming one.
8. Run the dishwasher each evening
Other than just cleaning the sink every evening, also make sure to run your dishwasher each evening. It’s really frustrating to wake up to no clean dishes left and a full dishwasher you forgot to run…ask me how I know.
Again, if you have a very small household, it may make more sense to do this every other day or so if your dishwasher is nowhere near full.
Creating the daily cleaning habit of running your dishwasher each evening will ensure you have clean dishes the following morning.
9. Make your bed
This may seem really simple, but a made bed can make your space look really clean compared to a messy bed.
Making your bed is a great way to make your room look and feel cleaner. This is a great way to start your day off on the right foot and a wonderful way to make your evenings more relaxing so you can unwind from a long, hard day.
Before you tell me all of the reasons not to make your bed in the morning, I am aware of them. Feel free to air out your bed for an hour before making it.
I still stand by making your bed helps you to feel more productive, and the benefits outweigh the negatives.
10. Reduce clutter
Build a habit of getting rid of clutter often. This simple task of decluttering different areas of your home can help make it easier to clean.
When you have a lot of extra stuff in your home, you end up spending more time cleaning your home simply because there is more stuff to be out of place.
Make decluttering easier by having easy access donation containers in one or more places in your home.
Make a habit of dropping off your donations once a month or more often as needed. Another great option is to give items via your local Buy Nothing group.
Further reduce clutter by being very selective with the items that you bring into your home.
11. Tidy high-traffic areas
There are certain areas in every home that become clutter hotspots. Look for where yours are and pay special attention to tidying them each day.
A common one is your entryway or mudroom. Anywhere that becomes the typical drop zone for purses, backpacks, coats, shoes, and keys are ones that can get cluttered quickly.
If you don’t already have an organizational solution for that area, such as shoe racks and hooks, set it up now. It will help to keep those items contained and your home looking cleaner.
12. Plan regular cleaning days
Making a cleaning day a simple habit and part of your weekly routine is a great way to help keep your home cleaner.
When combined with daily cleaning habits, a single cleaning day can go a long way in making your home easier to clean and more relaxing for your whole family.
You can either assign a specific area to focus on for a more thorough cleaning each day or plan one day per week where you do a bigger cleaning. Choose what works for your schedule.
This will help to ensure you clean the areas that are commonly forgotten and get a good deep clean done in your home.
Want more helpful cleaning tips?
Check out these posts:
- 5 Habits of People Who Have an (Almost) Effortlessly Clean Home
- Stress-Free Cleaning: Try the FlyLady Method for a Sparkling Home
- How to Use the ‘6/10’ Cleaning Rule to Keep Your Home Clean
- The 10 Best Cleaning Tools That Save You Time and Energy
What daily cleaning habits do you have in your home? Share it in the comments section.
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I designated Saturdays deep cleaning day. During the week I pretty much do what is suggested in this blog post. Consequently, my home always appears neat, tidy, and clean. Today being Saturday I decided to scrub, not dust, my 10 bookcases, clean and wax my writing table, repot a plant, wash plant leaves (13 plants), and scour the kitchen. The four white microfiber cloths I used were brown by the end. My takeaway? Dusting doesn’t cut it. I probably scrubbed years of caked grime. (Until last month I hired professional cleaners to clean my home. What I scrubbed was more than a month’s filth.) Other takeaway? One cleaning day is not enough to complete a deep clean. Remaining are the bathroom and my bedroom, plus vacuuming, mopping, and scrubbing baseboards. To clean those well requires time and a lot of energy. Monday I send out the laundry. Laundry is too much to bear.
I like this blog post, but I wish you would post about the necessity of deep cleaning and what that entails rather than focusing on how to make one’s space presentable with an uncluttered feel. Yes we must buff the kitchen sink each night, but each week may require cleaning the refrigerator and each month, cleaning the oven. Those aren’t light duties. Decluttering and cleaning go hand in hand. Cleaning is much more than tidying.