Tips To Keep Tidy

My friends and family always ask me "how do you keep your house so clean?" So I thought I would make a list of the tips and tricks I use to keep a tidy house.

Once A Month

1. One day once a month I clean the whole house and re organizing the drawers, cabinets and closets.

Once A Week

2. One day a week I clean the whole house from top to bottom by dusting, vacuuming, doing all the laundry (clothes, towels, bedding), cleaning the bathrooms ect. 

3. I make sure that on my Total Cleaning Day my husband will be gone, I don't know why but I cant clean when he is here....oh wait yes I do...he is always right in my way!

4. I also make sure the we have no plans all day so I don't feel rushed and skip cleaning things because of time. I totally have Chronic Cleaning Disorder so if I skip cleaning one thing it drives me crazy until I can get it done. Moral of this story...on my Total Cleaning Days everything needs to be totally cleaned!

5. On these days I start cleaning right after I wake up, well after I pour myself a cup of coffee, that way I have nothing to distract me like a TV show or the computer. If I sit down my Total Cleaning Day is doomed!

6. I clean one room at a time and I don't move on until everything in that room is put where it is supposed to go and everything is wiped down, clean and the garbage is dumped into a trash bag.

 7. Vacuuming the house is the last thing I will do, its like the icing on a cake.

Almost Every Day
8.  I always keep a bottle of window cleaner and a rag under the bathroom sink so when I see that the mirror is dirty I just grab the bottle and rag and wipe the mirror down...it takes me 2 seconds and the bathroom looks clean again.

9. I pick up the house every night after my son has gone to sleep.
By pick up I mean put the dirty dishes in the dish washer, put my sons toys in his toy box, pick up any dirty clothes that might have ended up on the floor *cough* my husband *cough* and put them in the hamper...I just put everything back where it is supposed to go.

10. I run the dish washer every night, if its full enough, so I can empty it in the morning. I am then able to add the dishes through out the day as they are used. That way stacks of dirty dishes don't pile up in the sink...that just gets overwhelming, sticky and stinky.

11. I do laundry twice a week. Once on my Total Cleaning Day when I wash everything, and once again a few days after my Total Cleaning Day. These days I just wash our dirty clothes and maybe some towels.

12. I make our bed and my sons bed EVERY DAY after we all wake up! A made bed always makes a room look put together and it is so much more inviting when your crawling into bed after a long day.

13. Music is my cleaning buddy! It helps me tune out everything that is going on in the house, keeps me focused on the task and makes cleaning a lot more enjoyable!

14. To me a fresh house needs a fresh scent! I love my old Potpourri Crock that I bought from Goodwill. I put in a couple cubes of some fresh scented wax and the scent fills the whole house! Candles are always very nice as well! I love the $3.00 candles from Walmart, they seriously fill your whole house with the nicest scents.

All in all...if its dirty take two seconds to clean it! 

If the kitchen floor has dirt on it sweep it, if the dishes in the dish washer are clean put them away, if there are dirty dishes in the sink put them in the dish washer, if the counter is dirty wipe it down, if you have folded clean clothes sitting in a basket put them away. These things don't take too totally long to do and you will get into a habit of doing them which will lead to you keeping a tidy house and then your friends will ask you "how do you keep your house so clean?"