Now that the current situation is forcing you to stay at home, you can no longer ignore the burgeoning pile of chores waiting to be done. If it isn’t boredom that will motivate you to get up from your couch and stay away from Netflix for a while, it’s safety being supremely critical these days that will compel you to clean up.
Cleaning and disinfecting your home will make it less possible for microbes to thrive, obviously, thus making you less susceptible to catching diseases. With a pandemic wreaking havoc around the world, the last thing you want to happen is to have a compromised immune system and get sick.
Here are a few things you can do to keep your house germ-free, pristine, and tidy.
Creating Organization Systems
To the detail-oriented people, this bears no repeating, and it may well even be their habit at home. There are people, however, who have their peculiar organizing methods and can benefit from clear labeling and classification of certain items.
For example, you can sort bills according to when they’re due or when you received them. Your footwear may be stored in clear plastic boxes with appropriate product descriptions (e.g., color, material, size, and purpose) so you can easily pick the one you need to wear when you’re in a hurry. Meanwhile, you can keep potentially toxic and strong chemicals and substances (e.g., cleaning agents) away from the reach of children and pets to avoid burns and accidental poisoning.
When you know where each item goes and you have that committed to memory, you don’t have to go in a mad scramble every time you need anything. You don’t waste time on fruitless or long searches, and you can do more tasks as you see fit.
Setting Schedules for Chores
Although you may not be going out as much now or at all, it is still possible for dirt and dust to enter your home, especially if there are other people around. Those delivering packages or food may even inadvertently be the carriers of pathogens and dirt, so tasks like sweeping, disinfecting, and dusting may be done daily.
Changing beddings and curtains and scrubbing the floors may be a weekly task, while floor polishing may be done monthly. Use gentle cleaning agents on your floor to avoid damaging it. As for a full, thorough cleaning of windows, you can do that twice a year.
Split the Chores among Family Members
Doing everything by yourself will overwhelm you, especially if you have a large household and plenty of areas to clean. You can ask your partner and your children to help you with the tasks so you can finish faster and more efficiently. This will ingrain a sense of responsibility in your children and teach them to appreciate how much effort it takes to keep the house clean. Remember to delegate chores that won’t expose your children to harmful chemicals or sharp objects.
Decluttering Closets and Rooms
Changing seasons and clothing preferences, outgrowing clothes, and not being relentless enough in clearing out closets and rooms will allow the junk to pile up. The time will come when you run out of space and your house will start looking like a landfill from all the clutter.
The previous sentence may sound like an exaggeration, but the point is that you shouldn’t wait for your house to become a cleaning disaster before you take action. Make a consistent and regular schedule for checking closets and other storage areas. Sort out the items you can keep, repurpose, discard, sell, or donate.
If you have plenty of gently used but fully functional items, you can start opening an online store where you can put them up for sale. Choose a reliable e-commerce platform with secure features to avoid compromising potential customers’ sensitive data while they’re making purchases. This way, you solve your problems with storage capacity, and you can make this online store a steady source of income.
Control Your Impulse to Buy
Having a lot of free time and the saturation of ads and influencer recommendations on social media will certainly test your self-control. Do not yield to temptation so easily. Your unbridled spending habits will cost you not only a lot of money but also a considerable amount of storage space.
You should be able to differentiate your wants and your needs so you don’t end up making impulse purchases. You will regret these purchases even more when you realize that these items don’t add value to your home or have any practical use. Times are hard today, especially in terms of the economy and employment stability, so you must be more judicious in your spending.
Remember
Keeping a regular schedule for cleaning and having a well-defined organization system will make housecleaning less intimidating and even more therapeutic as a task. Take note too that proper sanitation is central to maintaining a healthy household and preventing illnesses. Those things should give you enough motivation to clean.
What are your favorite cleaning hacks? Share your answers in the comments section.
