Family
Cleaning Your House Does Not Have To Be A Chore
By Nicole Calhoun
Apr 15, 2008

When I was growing up, my two sisters and I had to clean the house every Saturday morning. This had to be done before cartoons, playing outside and right after eating breakfast. We used to get up early to make sure we’d be finished in time for our favorite Saturday morning lineups of Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry.

Since I was the youngest, my chores were always the easier ones: vacuuming, sweeping and mopping. But as I got older, more duties were strapped to my shoulders, and I’ve become one of the best house cleaners you will ever know!

When I talk to my friends and other women about cleaning, I hear a plethora of thoughts on what it’s like cleaning their homes. Most of it is negative. As you can imagine, everyone looks at me like I am from another planet when I tell them that I enjoy cleaning my house.

I mean, what’s nicer than walking into a clean home where you’re not greeted with clutter, dust or dirt? I love coming through the front door and smelling the freshness of fabric softener, the lemony scent of the cleaners for the floors and the fragrant air freshener plug-ins. It’s glorious.

Therefore, let me tell you how you can make cleaning your house not seem like a chore. First of all, don’t let it get too out of control. Have you ever stood in the middle of a room and looked around, and everywhere you looked, there was something that was out of place? Nothing is more frustrating.

In those moments, you wish you were a genie, so you could cross your arms and blink your eyes and everything would be in its place. But, since we can’t do that in real life, as nice as it sounds, the best way to avoid a pile up is to keep everything in order as much as possible.

When trying to take the sting out of cleaning your home, do the hardest and the least fun part first. For me, it’s the kitchen. Nothing makes me happier than having a clean kitchen, but I must admit, it’s my least favorite thing to do when it comes to putting my house together.

For some, the bathrooms may be your least favorite room to clean, so for you, you should start there.

The next bit of advice I’d like to give is to clean your house in a circle. That means if your living room is next to your kitchen and you start in the kitchen, the living room should be the next room you clean.

Also, stay in one room until it’s finished. If you have dirty clothes strolled along the floor of your bedroom, don’t walk back and forth a million times taking them to the laundry room. Just pile them up on the floor and when you leave out of your room to go to the next room, that’s when you can take them and put them in the washroom.

Going in and out of a room without completing it only complicates the situation. Start a room, finish it and move on.

If you keep your home from getting too out of order by encouraging family members to pick up after themselves, you’re work is halfway done. Just act like you have to rotate from room-to-room and you can’t leave one and start another until the one you’re in is clean, then you’ll find that cleaning your house doesn’t have to be a chore.