Lazy Ways to Keep Your Home Tidy

Did you make a New Year’s Resolution to get your home more organized and keep it clean?  Did you find that it’s February and you’re already having a hard time keeping your resolution?  I’m here to help!  Read on for lazy ways to keep your home clean!

Move over Marie Kondo!  There’s a new mama in town and she’s all about working smarter, not harder.

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I can’t stand to have a messy home.  Mama SoCal was a domestic drill sergeant when I was growing up.  As a result, my eye tends to twitch a little when things at home are out of place.

However, I believe that keeping your home clean shouldn’t require you to give up every Saturday of your life.  That time is for going out and exploring 😉

So, since I love you my readers, I will share some of my tried and true lazy ways to keep your house clean!

Bathroom

Use foam hand soap in the bathroom. Over the years I have found that kids make a huge mess with regular liquid soap.  Once kids get past the initial excitement of foam soap, you’ll find that it doesn’t get all over the place like regular liquid soap.

Keep wipes under your bathroom sink. Take a minute to wipe down the bathroom mirror and surfaces after your kids have emptied the entire toothpaste tube onto the bathroom sink and walls.  Yes, this happens regularly.  I don’t know how.  If you take care of the incident for 30 seconds now, you’ll save yourself 5 minutes later trying to clean up caked on messes.

Keep hampers in drop zones: By this I mean, keep a pretty hamper or basket where people tend to drop their dirty clothes. I found that despite having a hamper, everyone kept leaving their clothes in a more convenient (to them) spot.  I moved the hamper to that spot and, viola, it’s like magic.  Sometimes, you just have to go with the flow when you live with others.

Use a daily shower spray: Yes, you still have to clean your shower the regular way. But once you clean it and use a daily shower spray, you’ll find that weekly cleaning will go quickly because there is no gunk build-up in your shower.

Bedroom

ALWAYS MAKE YOUR BED: If all you do is make your bed, your room will automatically look cleaner.  That’s a fact.  I’m sure there’s a useless study that supports this fact 😉

Kitchen

Load the dishwasher throughout the day: This keeps the counters and sink clear. Also, taking care of the dishes immediately means food doesn’t get stuck on- which would mean more work for you later.  Teach everyone how to load their dishes after eating and the dishes practically clean themselves.

What if I don’t have a dishwasher? If you don’t have time to clean the dishes immediately, fill the sink with warm water and soap and let the dishes soak until you’re ready to clean them.  This will prevent food from getting stuck on your dishes and making more work for you later.

Containers: I use containers to keep like things together and easy for anyone in the house to quickly access what they need. For example, I keep all tea boxes in containers that are easy to access and keep organized.  Everyone knows where things are and don’t need me to find anything for them.

Be like Tom Sawyer: Get fun Cleaning gadgets.  I can already hear you all rolling your eyes and saying, “How is this lazy?”  Um…did you ever read (or watch) that part of Tom Sawyer where he makes painting the fence look like so much fun that the other kids wind up doing the work for him?

Yes my friends, trickery is fair in the game of keeping your house clean.  Some gadgets I’ve gotten are soap wands for washing the dishes, counter sprays that smell like apples, petunias, you name it.  You’d be surprised how people want to help out when cleaning doesn’t feel like a chore.

Another trick?  Put on Cinderella or Snow White around your little ones…suddenly they want to play the part of cleaning.  Even buy them a cute apron.  I’ve done it for years and it works like a charm.  I’m so evil, I know…


Wipe the counters and tops of appliances down after each meal. This takes 30 seconds or less.  It makes your home look clean and smell better too.

The Entire House

Use a robot vacuum. It’s cheaper than hiring a maid!  It works great on hard floors.  Make it a game for the kids to tie up the curtains and move things out of the way.  I also highly recommend getting one or two barriers for your robotic vacuum to keep it out of certain places if you desire.

WARNING: If you have indoor pets…maybe hold off on the scheduled cleaning unless you’re home.  I’ve heard of horror stories where a pet had an accident inside the house and the machine did its auto clean.  Mr. Jackson would never do that, but just imagine the horror!

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Use a robot mop: It took me until this past November to finally break down and buy one of these. I was skeptical that it would do the job.  To my surprise, it works great.

Go digital! I LOVE to read.  Unfortunately, books take up a lot of space!  If you must hoard books (like me), consider buying a Kindle.  It is life changing in terms of saving space in your home.  I can keep way more books in my device than in my home.  Also, several libraries now have e-books that you can check out through your device.  How awesome is that?!

Get rid of cases: What do you do with all of the movies and music that you did NOT buy digital? Get a folder to keep discs in.  Toss out all of those cases/covers and just slip them into a pocket.  This saves SO MUCH SPACE!  I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.  Face palm…

Get all of the bins! Yes, I am once again going against Mama SoCal and advocating for bins!  Ha!  Who says people stop rebelling in their teenage years? 😉

I love using bins and baskets to corral toys, blankets, toiletries in the closet…you name it. 

Slap a label on those babies, and you’ll even find that everybody in the house starts to help keep things organized too.  This system is simple, effective, and keeps things pretty and organized.

Guess what?  My house just got vaccuumed and mopped while I wrote this post!  I guess now I know what it feels like to be Judy Jetson 😊

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