5 easy things to clean when you’re overwhelmed by your messy home

So, your house is a bit of a mess. Not only do you not have time to devote to a good cleaning, you may be overwhelmed at the thought of starting! While looking around at all the mess, you may think that nothing will make a difference because the mess is too great.

There are 5 main items that get scattered throughout to create chaos in your home. Learn to tackle these 5 cleaning tasks and you’ll find they can make a huge difference to the cleanliness level of your home!

Do the Dishes

Quick Cleaning trick #1 is to do the dishes! Dirty dishes seem to multiply quickly and can even gather in places they shouldn’t! It’s important to keep up with the dishes so the old food doesn’t attract fruit flies, ants or mold. So get going on those dirty dishes; I’m always amazed at the difference a clean counter can make in my home!

This is my all time favourite dish soap. Makes the chore more bearable. 😉

Dirty laundry and clothes

Quick Cleaning trick #2 is to pick up the dirty laundry and clothes piles. If clothes strewn about have taken over your home, it’s time to take care of this task. Getting all the clothes laundered and back into the closets and dressers will make your house look much cleaner. First of all, go from room to room with a laundry basket or two and gather up all the dirty laundry. Next of course, is to wash and dry all the laundry.  I find that if I don’t fold and put away the clean clothes right away, they’ll sit in the laundry basket, which quickly becomes a mess!

Gather the Garbage and Recycling

Quick Cleaning trick #3 is to gather the garbage and recycling! I think this is the easiest task because all you have to do is wander around your house and put all the garbage and recycling items into  bags and then take them to the trash can or recycling box. I find when I let recycling items pile up, our house can look messy very quickly. So once a week or so, I’ll wander around and pick up old newspapers, junk mail and empty cardboard boxes and put them away in the blue bin.

Toys

Quick Cleaning trick #4 is to pick up the toys.  This is the battle I’m fighting with right now. Toys seem to be all over the place all the time, making the floors seem very messy! If you have older children, make a game out of putting the toys away. Or, if you have the willpower or some time, why not declutter some of the unused toys to create more space?

Paper

Quick Cleaning trick #5 is to take care of the paper.  Between my husband and I, we can create quite the mess with our individual paper piles. Piles of paper drive me bananas, but I can’t seem to stay on top of the piles on a regular basis. Nevertheless, here are a couple of  things that help me stay organized:

• Stack all the papers together.  While filing papers can take a long time, stacking them all together does not.  It’s better to have one pile over several piles!
• About once a month or so, I go though the pile I created to file, shred and organize each paper.  Takes a bit of time, but I love the results and knowing I can easily find an important document.

Any of these quick cleaning tricks will give you relief from a messy house and help your house to appear cleaner, but don’t feel you have to do all 5 in the same day! Why not attempt one task a day?

I hope that these quick cleaning tricks will give you a starting point to help you keep things mess-free and organized!

What are your tips to help you achieve a cleaner home? Let us know in the comments below.