Need some tips to speed your tidying up? I’ve got you covered! These 8 hacks for tidying will change the way you clean from now on!
I’m a huge productivity geek. And part of my journey towards being more productive has been finding ways of tidying up faster and more efficiently. Because let’s face it, there are other things I wanna be doing with my time than cleaning. And these 8 hacks I’m sharing with you today could easily become the rules by which you tidy up from now on. Yes, they’re THAT good!
8 Tidying Hacks You Need to Know
1. Start with the public rooms first
If I want to do a super quick tidy up, I start with the public living areas in my home first. That means the living room, the dining room, the kitchen and the main bathroom.
When these areas are done, I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot, so that even if I don’t manage to get into every nook and cranny in my home, my house is definitely cleaner and more relaxing.
Also, if you’ve got guests coming over at short notice, unless you expect them to be routing through your wardrobe, they’re only going to be seeing the public areas. So doing these first means that any other areas you manage to get to in your tidying session is a bonus.
2. Do the FSS
If you really don’t have time for a big clean, but you need to get your home tidied up in a hurry, do the FSS. The FSS is what I call the floors, surfaces and sinks.
In a hurry, I will literally
- sweep everything off the surfaces in our public living areas into a basket (maybe get your kids to put these items away whilst you’re doing this)
- pick up any debris on the floor (possibly chuck these in the basket too!)
- give the bathroom sink a wipe down with an antibacterial wipe
- clear the kitchen sink and wipe the kitchen counters.
The FSS method is my SOS tidying hack that helps me pick up the main living areas in about 20 minutes (not counting putting the items in the basket away).
Bonus points if your kids can put away the items you stashed in that basket! Which brings me on to hack #3.
3. Use baskets
I remember watching an episode of The Perfect Housewife with Anthea Turner where she told one of the contestants on the show to use baskets. A lot of baskets!! She kept going on about baskets in the episode, that I thought well, she’s a bit of a basket case!
But she was totally right! Baskets are your home’s best friend.
Different ways to use baskets in your home:
- Use baskets with lids to keep messy items contained – and out of sight!
- Small baskets or jars are great for corralling tiny loose items like coins, paperclips or rubber bands that seem to breed all over the house.
- A basket a the bottom of the stairs can keep items that need to go upstairs (ensure people walk upstairs taking something from the basket when they go up!). The bottom of our stairs was always like a graveyard of items that had made their way downstairs and couldn’t get back upstairs again until we did this!
- I think a kids room should be made up of a bed and lots of baskets!! The number of toys and items that need to be contained in a kids room can seem overwhelming. The solution? Lots of containers to give everything a home!
Baskets are great to use because the items inside them don’t need to be stacked neatly. They can literally be chucked in there. And when something can be chucked into a container, that means that even kids and babies can do it!
So, make baskets your new best friend!
4. Keep a bin in every room
I think this is an essential requirement in any home. Being able to throw something away where you’re standing means that rubbish isn’t going to pile up in that room.
For some reason, if there isn’t a bin in a room, I find that people in my house (not mentioning any names here!), just leave their rubbish on the floor or the surfaces. They can’t seem to be bothered to go into another room to throw their garbage away. (Seriously trying not to rant here, but it grates me, lol!)
It might seem like a little effort to walk into another room to throw away your litter, but apparently, it’s a big enough obstacle for people in my home. And that means more work for me.
Stop people littering in your home by making sure that there’s a bin in every room.
5. Work to a deadline
Now, I know that I’m particularly motivated by deadlines. I think some people are naturally hard-wired that way. They cram revision on their exams, pay their bills the day they are due etc.
But whether you’re wired to work better to a deadline or not, deadlines are motivating for everyone. And the way that deadlines come in handy when tidying up is that you can work a lot faster without stopping if you give yourself a deadline.
I like to imagine that my mum or our in-laws just sent us a message saying they’ll be over in a couple hours. And then, with this mindset, I work like a whirling dervish to whip our home into shape in 2 hours (I’ve got a checklist that helps me do that too! It’s my Speed Cleaning Checklist.)
When I imagine that someone’s coming over to our house, that helps me to work without stopping until I’m finished. And at the end I give myself a lovely reward for tidying our home so quickly, of course! 😉
6. Mist your feather duster
Granted, you may not have an actual feather duster. But if you do, here’s one hack that makes dusting quicker. Spray a fine mist of water over the end of your feather duster. This helps the feathers to collect a lot more dust than if they were dry.
If you thought that your feather duster wasn’t as efficient as a damp cloth, you might be inclined to think again!
7. Give your papers one home
Now, one of the main sources of clutter in homes is paper clutter. Despite the highly advanced digital age we’re in, we can’t seem to get rid of paper. And I doubt we ever will!
In order to prevent paper populating your home, keep it in one place. Baskets come in handy here!
I use one area to keep all our papers. That area has a few containers;
- one for papers relating to our home and home life (bills, invitations, shopping catalogues, coupons, etc.)
- an inbox for school papers (this needed it’s own container because I homeschool and new papers pile up daily in this area)
- one for work-related papers and receipts
I simply chuck the papers in these containers the moment they arrive (or are created – like in our homeschool). And then once a week, I go through each container recycling, filing or putting items that need my attention into my task manager.
When you have a place to throw your papers in and keep them out of sight, your home will look more inviting and less like the aftermath of a fight between Edward Scissorhands and a library! Cause in that fight, the library loses…real bad…
8. Erase wall drawings magically!
Do you have kids that are budding artists? And do they take the liberty of redesigning your home will cave-like scrawlings?
I do. And yes, my kids would frequently draw on our walls. Perhaps it was because we read them Harold and The Purple Crayon too often, I’m not sure. But at any rate, I had wall drawings which needed to be removed.
Enter the Magic Eraser! If you’ve never heard of this, you’ll wonder where this has been all your life!
The Magic Eraser is a cleaning tool that takes marks off your walls when you wet it. All you need to do is wet the eraser sponge, wipe your wall and voila! Cave-like scrawling has magically vanished!
I seriously buy this in bulk on Amazon because we can’t live without it! And my kids enjoy magically erasing the marks off the walls. Double bonus!
BONUS HACK! 9. Get a robot vacuum
I know this post is entitled 8 Tidying Hacks You Need to Know. And, in truth, those 8 hacks I mentioned are ones you need to know. But I couldn’t resist telling you about a tidying hack that has almost literally changed my life.
Our bot is called Mac the Vac. We named him because, to be honest, he’s one of the family now! Lol! And he’s made my life so much easier. He vacuums our home every night at 11pm when everyone (except my hubby) is fast asleep.
He works quietly and never complains. Plus, he even vacuums underneath the sofa (a place I only used to once every couple of months!). And each morning, I come downstairs to nicely hoovered floors. It’s been revolutionary in our home! I only wish Mac the Vac could vacuum stairs!
I do very little vacuuming now. And whenever we do a Speed Clean session, we all get to work with the surfaces and the sinks whilst our handy little bot does the floors. You see? That’s a tidying hack I had to include here because it’s literally amazeballs! And if you want the checklist I use to do our Speed Cleaning sessions, you can download it here for free!:
Ultimately, these tidying hacks are here to speed up your cleaning so that you can get on with the other things you want to be doing with your time. Because who wants to be cleaning? (Unless cleaning is your jam, in which case, do your thang!)
What was your favourite hack? Or which ones do you use that you can’t live without? Let me know in the comments!
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