Do you live in an apartment but is having a hard time in doing up keeps? Sometimes it’s really quite a handful to think about staying organized and on top of everything when you just want to lounge and relax. Being in Chicago, of all cities, makes it even trickier— you’re in one of the busiest cities in America and apartment cleaning isn’t really part of your daily routine. But, you just have to give time and create a habit to do little things everyday and you’ll see that you’re not the messy apartment owner after all. Today we’ll help you out on the doing the best practices in cleaning your apartment.
“Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.”
-Benjamin Disraeli
Here are some simple daily practices you can do to keep your apartment clean and green:
Clean as you go.
You should start with yourself, every time you do something or even after you eat you should make it a point to always clean after yourself. Do you have a small working kitchen? You should make sure your dish washer or sink is clear before you start cooking and wash those dirty dishes as you cook. With this way, you don’t get to end up with a mountainous amount of dishes lurking around your counter tops, you’ll just have to clean up the ones you used when eating. Now, lets’s move from the living room, then to the bedroom when you cap the night? Arrange and fluff those pillows in your sofa, use a coaster for your coffee table when you drink, and place things back where they belong after every use. When you wake up, you’ll be at ease that you left everything organized the night before and you could start your day fresh.
Use a reliable Storage Solution.
When you’re a little sentimental and can’t get rid of some of your most memorable stuff, all you have to do is store them efficiently. Use stackable storage bins and label them accordingly, you can just store them at the back of your closet, under your bed or in your basement so that they’re stacked away. Make sure the things you put in these storage boxes are things you don’t need everyday. All through out the house, you could have your furnitures designed with hidden like clever cupboard storage for your pantry. One example is a pull out pantry hidden in your cabinetry, you could also use mason jars for your spices and other ingredients to get rid of those bulky and unreleasable packaging.
Declutter.
Stored away all your memorabilia’s and you still have a lot of cluttered stuff in your apartment, then guess it’s time to declutter them! Make some time to rummage through your little stuff and create boxes labeled to — Throw, Donate and Sell. You might end up with a couple of bucks after selling some of your pre-loved items. Decluttering might just be as therapeutic as you expect it to be, you just have to learn how to let go and not hoard off little things that might just create clutter in your apartment. It will make your space more open and clean, and you’ll realize that it minimizes your maintenance.
Practice Clutter Prevention.
Practice what you “recently” preached! When you’ve already started decluttering your apartment, you should keep it up, even if it means you have to do it on a regular basis. You need to make this a routine to avoid any messes happening all over again. Here are some preventive measures:
Don’t make impulse purchases. Have the time to go shopping? You don’t have to fill your cart and basket with stuff you don’t need. Control yourself and ask if do you have space for it in your apartment and do you really (we mean really) need it. You should have to fight your urge to buy things you don’t need.
Sort your things accordingly and keep your labeled boxes in place or possible items you need to store away. Just bear in mind you need a minimalist home and it means keeping your stuff in stowed away.
Free up 5 Minutes of your Day.
5 minutes might be a short time but it really helps in your day to day activities of keeping your apartment spotless. When you have time to check your social media, walk around your house and tidy little bits of garbages and knick knacks. While watching your favorite show, you can simultaneously fold your laundry or keep your towels and dirty clothes to where they’re supposed to be. Just spend that 5 minutes of your free time to go around all corners of your apartment for a spot check, just do things that’s within your seeing level, when you see it— arrange or clean it. It goes back to rule one, Clean as you Go!
Schedule a Cleaning Day every Week.
Use your rest day from work to designate as your “cleaning day,” you have to be invested in it and be able to put it in your calendar or list of things to do. Whether it’s on a weekend or a week day off, your apartment just needs at least 3 hours of your time for that day to clean up as much as you can. You can sweep off your floor, clean up and organize your fridge, re-arrange your bedroom and your closet. There are many things that you need to consider and do but you just think of it as what you would like the result to be. Try zoning and doing one area at a time, you won’t realize it that you’re almost done with everything and you’ve covered all your bases already.
If your apartment is too big for you to handle, you could also ask help and call a cleaning service provider. They have cleaners with flexible schedules that matches yours and you could just let them know what areas of the house you need help with. They could also do the deep cleaning for you if you could only use a day on your month to keep your apartment spotless. With deep cleaning, they could cover your carpets, upholstery and even your mattresses. Most of these cleaning services have reliable and professional cleaners, so if you need to go out and take care of some errands like your laundry, you could leave them in your apartment and they’ll do the rest of the job for you.