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3 tidying tips for between cleaning visits.

After a hectic day at work, or play, opening the door to a freshly cleaned home is delightful.

Keeping it that way can be a challenge. With an active family, or lifestyle, even when you have a cleaning service come several times a month your home can get messy quickly. For families who suffer from allergies or immune deficiencies, keeping the dust and clutter down in-between professional cleanings is important.

1) Setting a schedule, with simple tasks is a good start.

I once asked a neighbor whose children suffered from asthma, how she kept her home looking like a House Beautiful ad. She told me that for each day of the week, she had one area of the house she focused on.

• Mondays, she reserved for guiding her children to tidy their rooms, put dirty clothes in the laundry and throw out or recycle any debris from the weekend activities.
• Tuesdays became the day that a microfiber dust mop was run over the hardwood floors in the entry way, dining room and living room.
• Wednesdays, the bathroom was damp-mopped.
• Thursdays the kitchen was damp-mopped… Well, you get the idea.

None of the tasks took more than 15 minutes. She admitted she had tried to set aside one day a week for cleaning. However, doing it all at once left her drained and sometimes resentful.

2) Make it a family affair.

Even young children can become a part of the team to keep your home clean. Everyone can participate. Taking shoes off at the door helps to keep floors cleaner. Designate a space for shoes in the entryway. Someone can be responsible for tasks on Monday, someone else for Tuesday. Everyone can recycle and taking the garbage out can be assigned on a rotating basis. Get the whole family involved and share the responsibilities.

3) Organize your space so there is a place for everything.

This is another simple concept, but one that not everyone adopts. How many times does a family member say, “Where are my keys? Where is my homework? I can’t find my ______ (fill in the blank).” Do you have piles of paper everywhere? This is a good time to designate where the unopened mail goes and to develop a system to manage it. Also, having a place for toys, clothing and a study space in a child’s room provides fewer reasons to create clutter.

Keeping the dust and clutter down not only helps with allergies and immune deficiencies, it can create a sense of peace and tranquility. We are providing a simple calendar in case you’d like to try to organize Tidy Tasks. You can download it here.

If you would like to talk to a professional about your housecleaning needs, contact us today.

You might want to read: MOVING-IN TO A NEW HOME?