How To Clean Your House Fast
How many times have you needed your house tidy in as quickly as 10 minutes and felt like it was impossible? Perhaps you were heading out for the day but planned to bring someone home with you for dinner. Or maybe someone calls and would like to drop by unexpectedly. You aren’t trying to strive for perfection, but you really don’t want people tripping over toys, looking at last night’s half-eaten popcorn bowl, or sitting on unfolded laundry in the living room. How to clean house fast and efficiently is especially important with young children around.
If you have children over the age of five then learning how to quickly clean your house by creating a household zone system is a must-have. Not only is this the fastest way to clean a house, but putting the system in place now will reap rewards well into the future.
Household Zones should be areas of the house that are communal living areas (not personal bedrooms) and typically areas that are open to the rest of the house. For instance, if you have a storage room that you seldom go into, then you might remove this area from consideration as part of this process. I actually include my laundry room in the process because, while it can be a catch-all, I really want it to be picked up every day even though guests don’t usually walk into the room.
Divide the areas of your home into as many areas as you have people to accomplish the task. Your areas will change as your children grow up and leave for college or get busy in high school and aren’t at home as much. If you have three children, then your zones may look something like this:
Zone 1 – the kitchen, dining room and office
Zone 2 – the front hallway and living room
Zone 3 – the hall bathroom, laundry room, and family room
In our house, the cue is “Everyone go pick up your extra room.” Everyone takes about 5-10 minutes picking up anything in their zone that doesn’t belong in that area of the house…shoes, plates, cups, schoolbooks, jackets, games, blankets, scissors, cell phone chargers…whatever has been left where it doesn’t belong. We do this every morning and sometimes in the late afternoon or evening as well.
The great part about this ‘how to clean your house fast’ plan is that the house can get picked up in 10 minutes or less. Everyone works together to get the job accomplished. One thing you will notice is that the kids who typically pick up after themselves become quickly frustrated when they find their siblings things left out all the time. They rationalize that since they put their own things away, then shouldn’t the sibling be required to put their own things away. So, the challenging part of this plan is that those who don’t pick up after themselves are not held accountable, and those who do are not rewarded. It’s another value decision of parenting…which do I want more right now….the fastest way to clean house…or the life lesson for my kids?
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