WHAT ORDER SHOULD YOU FOLLOW WHEN CLEANING YOUR HOUSE?
Have you ever thought of where to begin when cleaning your house? Which room should you start, which room is next and so on? That remains a struggle as most often we don’t follow a certain order. It depends on our mood or which of the rooms call on us first. But following a certain order is not just for the obsessive-compulsive, cleaning enthusiasts.
A step-by-step cleaning guide can actually help you be more efficient in cleaning that you can cover every room in the house in lesser time. The order can differ from person to person but the most important thing to note here is that if an order is in place, the easier it is for you to manage the whole cleaning process – both the effort and time.
There’s a common order that most people follow when cleaning their houses. This might also work for you:
Start with the “leave-on” and “let-it-sit” tasks
Part of your cleaning process would involve cleaning the toilet bowl and tub, wash the dishes and wash the dirty laundry, removing grime and other residues on certain surfaces. And, these are things that you need to leave alone for a certain amount of time for them to do their work.
Say for example, when cleaning your toilet bowl, you need to pour bleach or toilet bowl cleaner and let that sit maybe for an hour or so to allow the solution to cut into dirt and germs. Or, when washing the dishes and the dirty laundry, you can already let the machines run. During the waiting time, you can already start with cleaning the other parts of your house. It would be easier for you to clean when you get to these rooms in your house. And, there are tasks that you can already complete even during the course of doing the other important cleaning steps.
Clear up the space of clutter
It will be easier for you to clean up a particular room of your house if things are put away. There might be clothes scattered on the floor, or books left on a table, knocked-down bottles, and others. As part of keeping things in order, you have to see that things are kept in their proper places. Clothes should be sorted; books returned to the shelves; bottles be put up and so on.
When you deal with each of the rooms, having to see the clutter all cleared up can also get you ready for the big cleaning task to do.
Clean the most difficult room to clean, first
You might grumble at this thought for you might believe that the easiest room to clean should be the first on the list. Cleaning the room that you love to clean first could give you the motivation to move forward and further in to the other rooms. While this may be true, but cleaning all the other rooms can get you tired and drained of energy to clean thoroughly the most difficult room to clean.
A lot would agree that the most difficult room to clean is the bathroom with all its fixtures and all the disinfecting process that you need to do too. If you have used up your energy in cleaning all the other parts of your house, then you would be dead tired to do the proper cleaning for your bathroom when it is the room that needs the most cleaning.
The next most difficult room in most of the people’s list would be the kitchen. So, you can head on to this room after dealing with the bathroom. To others, these rooms are considered the “wet sections” of the house. It’s best too that they can dry out by the time you are done with the whole house cleaning process.
Clean using the top-down approach
The top-down approach can be applied generally when cleaning and more specifically for each individual rooms. It is best to start cleaning from upstairs before working your way downstairs. You would be using the same set of cleaning arsenal from room to room – mop, vacuum, caddy carrier for your cleaning agents and tools and others. It would be easier for you to bring these down after cleaning the upper rooms than it is for you to haul them all up after you’ve already cleaned up all of downstairs. You would have used up too much energy by then.
For individual rooms, the same approach must be used when dusting and cleaning. Start on top, say, the ceiling fans, the blinds of your windows, top of your cabinets. Remember that when you clean, the dust will definitely go somewhere, and that is almost always, the floor. The floor then has to be cleaned last.
Vacuum and Mop the Floors
When all the dust has settled on the floor, you have to clean them. Sweeping is the basic thing to remove the dust from the floor. But, if you have a vacuum cleaner, you can go for that especially for carpeted floors. You can also use the vacuum cleaner to clean the hard-surface floors as it will be easier and could save you time in removing the dust from your floor.
After vacuuming, you can go ahead with mopping your floors. You can mop the floor with a floor disinfectant to be sure that this surface is really wiped clean and germ-free. Be cautious though as there are floor surfaces or materials that do not need constant mopping as they can get damaged. Look for a disinfectant that are suited for the type of floor that you have.
Do inside then out
You cannot really completely say that you’ve cleaned your entire house without lifting a finger for the exterior. By doing so, you are actually removing dirt out of your house. After you’re done cleaning your living area, you can push out the dust onto the porch then clean it after. Or, if you’re done with your kitchen, you can push out the dust onto your backyard and then go for that space after.
No One Correct Order
You couldn’t say that there is one correct order in cleaning your house nor is there a standard that’s carved in stone for you to follow. You can always try out other routines and choose what works best for you – efficiently and effectively. It is important to remember that it is following a certain order that can make cleaning your house easier and effectively, more fun.