My favorite homemaking hack
Homemaking is an art that every elegant woman must learn to master. Your home should be a reflection of who you are. For women who are trying to level up their lives, one of the easiest places to start your elegance journey is within the home.
In this post, I’m talking about something that some women may struggle with.
Keeping your home clean.
While keeping a clean home may come naturally to some, it is extremely difficult for others. Not everyone had a mother to teach them how to clean a home.
Plus, modern women are often very busy working and taking care of kids.
Cleaning the home is something that they get to when they can, but it never stays clean for long.
Some women outsource the cleaning by hiring a house cleaner. That is wonderful if you are able to do that, but the house keepers aren’t there to maintain your home on a daily basis.
Normally a house cleaner comes about once or twice per month to do the deep cleaning.
When I first moved into my own place with my husband, I’ll admit I had no idea how to maintain a clean house. I cleaned when I felt like it, and I also didn’t realize how dirty the house became on a daily basis.
I also didn’t realize how much clutter I had until I started my minimalism journey.
Today, I’m happy to say that I am in a really good place when it comes to house cleaning and maintenance.
I only wish someone told me these things sooner.
Growing up doesn’t come with instructions, and sometimes it takes a while to figure things out on your own.
That’s why I’m doing a homemaking series. For the women who need some advice on maintaining a beautiful, clean home.
When it comes to keeping and maintaining a home, there are 3 steps that you must follow. I’m going to go through each step and how you can achieve this without losing your mind.
Step 1: Declutter
Back in 2020 Marie Kondo took the world by storm. She taught people how to declutter their homes and keep only items that spark joy.
I was already into my minimalism journey by then, but I love her philosophy when it came to getting rid of unnecessary items in your house.
If you are starting your home making journey from scratch, you probably have lots of items in your house that you really don’t need.
It’s time to declutter.
Decluttering in my opinion is a lot of fun but can also be very overwhelming.
The main focus is cleaning out your space to keep things that you use regularly or things that bring you genuine happiness.
Here’s how to do it.
Don’t take on too much at one time. Honestly, if you are decluttering your entire house, you should give yourself a month for the task so you can complete it little by little each day.
Trying to do too much decluttering at once will lead to overwhelm.
- Choose something that needs to be decluttered.
- Make sure you have donation bags and trash bags ready.
- Sort through items and decide if they spark joy.
- If they don’t, donate or trash the items.
- If they do, keep and organize the items.
Step 2: Deep clean
Once your house is properly de cluttered, it’s time to deep clean. Deep cleaning is only necessary if you haven’t been deep cleaned in a long time.
Deep cleaning will also take a while. Again, give yourself several weeks to a month to get this task done. You do not want to overwhelm yourself.
Most common areas in the house that require deep cleaning are behind furniture, the bathtub and sinks, kitchen appliances, etc. There will be a lot of dusting, vacuuming, and wiping down surfaces.
Bonus points if you are able to use an upholstery cleaner to shampoo your furniture. Trust me, it needs to be cleaned.
Deep cleaning takes a lot of time and can be very involved. If you aren’t up to the task, you can always hire someone else to come in and do the deep cleaning. It might seem pricey, but it’s worth it for a clean home.
Step 3: Maintenance
Once you’ve decluttered your home and deep cleaned it, the only thing left to do is make sure that it stays clean. This is where maintenance cleaning comes in.
There are certain tasks that should be done daily, such as washing the dishes and sweeping floors (especially if you have pets that shed a lot) but other tasks can be done weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly.
I struggled to keep up with the maintenance of my home until I created a cleaning schedule. I decided what chores I was going to do on certain days of the week, tested it out for a week and realized that this worked perfectly for me!
I finalized the list by making an official schedule on Canva and printing it out.
I keep it posted on the fridge so that everyone in the family knows what to expect when it comes to cleaning.
This also is great for my kids as well. They know that they only have to clean their rooms on Tuesdays (unless they are hosting) So they never have an issue when it’s time to clean. They know I’m cleaning my room as well.
Here’s what my cleaning schedule looks like.
Creating a cleaning schedule has changed my life. I never feel overwhelmed with the housework because I know it will get done. I love doing the housework now because all I’m doing is maintenance at this point, so my house is never truly dirty.
Give this a try and let me know how it goes!