5 Household Cleaning Tips
Parents don’t have a lot of time on their hands to deep clean their house every single day. In their book, Just Clean Enough, I. B. Caruso and Jenny Schroedel, give busy moms (and dads!) tips to declutter just enough so you can relax!
1. Color Coding
While sharing is an important lesson to teach, it’s also a god idea to give your children certain items that are uniquely their own. An easy way to do this is to color code by each child’s favorite: purple towels and sheets for Jane and yellow for Sarah. This will instill a sense of ownership in your kids, hopefully encouraging them to take care of their belongings.
2. Carpet Tile
Kids and fancy home furnishing do not mix, and for this reason we strongly advise you not to give each of your children his or her own Persian rug. A better idea would be individual carpet tiles, such as Flor brand, which can be joined together to fit the shape and size of any room. Carpet tiles are especially great for kids’ rooms because if the carpet gets damaged, you can simply replace the damaged tile instead of buying a whole new rug. Carpet tiles can also help protect your gorgeous hardwood floors from the spills, scuffs, and scratches of childhood. The tiles are held in place by an adhesive on the back side, so one your kids are grown, just pull them up to give the room a more adult feel. Kids can choose from a wide variety of patterns and designs and can lay down the tiles themselves – it’s that easy!
3. Store-and-Swap
If your kids have an overabundance of toys (aka more than they can possibly play with in a lifetime), give the ol’ store-and-swap method a try. With your child’s help, weed out the toys tat he or she isn’t that into at the moment. These might be seasonal toys or those that have simply been pushed aside to make way for the newer ones. Store these in a large lidded plastic container and put the collection away in the closet or slide it under the bed. Then on a rainy day a few months later, bring the box back out, swapping the stored toys for other playthings that have lost their savor. Your children will have regained their interest in the stored toys, and they wont’ have been clogging up space in the meantime.
4. Hang a Mirror
Mirrors are not only useful for the morning makeup routine, but they also brighten a room by reflecting light and make a room look bigger by projecting an image of the space in the room. Enhance your living room by hanging a mirror today. When deciding where to place it, however, consider what it will reflect. The reflection of another wall isn’t going to do much for you, while a reflection of a window or pair of glass doors leading to a garden out back will make a huge difference in the way you see your living room.
5. Use a Broom for Pick-Up
On days when the multipiece toys like Legos, dominos, and marbles come out, the floor of your child’s room can become completely obscured by teeny toys and plastic pieces. A great way to get all these pieces into a pile for easier pickup is to sweep them up with a broom. Pick up a child-size broom and dustpan from the toy store and then teach your child how to sweep up toys and dump them back into their proper bin or storage container. This will take far less time than picking up each individual piece by hand, and it’ll make your child feel like an adult to use a broom just like Mommy and Daddy
Get yourself a copy of Just Clean Enough for these tips and many more room specific ways to declutter.
