16 Tips to Make Housecleaning Painless
Procrastinating a deep clean of your home? So are we. Fret not: Here’s how to spend less time on your least favorite chore. From Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste by Bea Johnson.
• Adopt a minimal lifestyle. The less you have, the less needs to be picked up and organized.
• Assign a location and container for donations. Decluttering is an ongoing process; make it convenient to let go.
• Choose materials and surfaces that are easy to maintain. A leather couch, for example, lasts longer and is easier to maintain than an upholstered version; it can simply be wiped.
• Eliminate or condense flat surfaces as much as possible to reduce dusting.
• Keep the floor clear of furnishings as much as possible. Pick hanging fixtures over freestanding ones. Wall-mounted television, lights, or coatracks, for example, ease floor cleaning.
• Open a window or run the bathroom fan for at least twenty minutes after you shower to reduce mold, and therefore reduce the amount of grout cleaning.
• Run the kitchen hood fan when cooking to reduce grease buildup, which is difficult to clean and collects dust.
• Install a shoe storage in your entryway and adopt a no‑shoe policy inside to limit incoming dirt.
• Restrict your pet’s access to certain rooms.
• Install an under-counter soap dispenser at the kitchen sink and fill it with liquid soap to conveniently wash dishes and hands.
• Install a gas insert in place of your fireplace: it not only burns cleaner and is more efficient (with programmable thermostats) than the woodburning type, but it also does not require sweeping.
• Let plants cleanse the air for you. According to NASA research, the ten most effective plants are: bamboo palm (Chamaedorea seifrizii), Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema modestum), English ivy (Hedera helix), gerbera daisy (Gerbera jamesonii), Janet Craig (Dracaena deremensis “Janet Craig”), marginata (Dracaena marginata), mass cane/corn plant (Dracaena massangeana), Mother-in-Law’s Tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata “Laurentii” ), pot mum (Chrysanthemum morifolium), peace lily (Spathiphyllum), and Warneckii (Dracaena deremensis “Warneckii”).
• Store food in airtight containers such as mason jars to prevent pest problems.
• Clean the house from top to bottom. Dust first, clean floors last.
• Buy only dishwasher-safe goods for the kitchen to ease dishwashing.
• Run a full dishwasher instead of hand washing. It saves time and water. When your dishwasher needs replacement, scout the secondhand market for a drawer model. When one drawer is running, the other can be filled: it discourages sink pileups.
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