17 Genius Deep Cleaning Hacks You'll Wish You Learned In School
Recently, Redditor u/totsatot0 asked, "What’s the best hack when deep cleaning your house?"
Here are 17 of the top responses:
1."I read something in passing that said to spend ten minutes a day putting ten things away. It's helped me so much with the clutter."
"Everything in my house has a spot. I don't even have a junk drawer, but I just HATE putting things away the second I'm done with them. What if I need it again in a few minutes??"
2."Asking someone to help you. You can do both the hard cleaning in a short time period and be efficient."
"Cannot stress this enough. Recruit a kid, a spouse, or a friend. Even if it takes the same amount of time, you have someone to talk to."
3."Clean wearing a head torch — if it looks good under such good light, it'll look [very good] under normal lighting."
"It's great for finding cobwebs on walls/ceilings, too, as they throw an obvious shadow."
"I've done this while cleaning inside my car. I kept cleaning and cleaning, and it still looked dusty and awful, so I gave up. When I came back the next day under normal lighting, it looked brand new again."
4."Top down. One room at a time. Pace yourself."
5."If you haven't used it in a year, you probably won't ever use it. Get rid of it."
6."Bowl of water and squeezed lemon. Microwave for three minutes. Wipe. Done and smells nice."
7."Take a laundry basket into the room with you. While you're cleaning, anything in the room that belongs in another room goes into the laundry basket. When you go to the next room, the first thing you do is look in the laundry basket for anything that belongs in that room."
"Clean that room and put the misfits into the laundry basket. Move to the next room and repeat. At the end, empty the laundry basket of anything that's left.
This helps me stay in the room I'm cleaning, which makes my cleaning more purposeful."
8."Lots of Hefty bags, and don't be precious — throw it all away/donate it."
9."Set a timer. Work nonstop until the timer goes off."
10."Energizing music."
11."Don't hold on to junk that you never use because you don't want to create waste by throwing it out. It's already waste; it just lives in your house instead of in a landfill."
"Donate it if you can, sure, but sometimes it's easier to just throw it away and give yourself grace for it."
12."Organize based on how you use things rather than their type or category, and make it as easy as possible to put things back where they go, even if it isn’t the most efficient or elegant solution."
"Also, all bulk containers in the kitchen should be 25 percent larger than the size of the package you buy. (If you buy five pounds of sugar at a time, the container should hold six or more.)"
13."Tidy first, and don't leave any one spot in the house empty-handed."
"E.g., you pick up a sock from the bedroom floor and take it to the washing basket in the bathroom. Here, you find an old loo roll, so you take it to the kitchen bin. In the kitchen, you pick up some antibacterial wipes, which you take to the living room and use to clean a spillage on the coffee table. On the coffee table, you find some empty cups, so you return them and the antibacterial wipes to the kitchen. You find your coat dumped in the kitchen, so you take it to the wardrobe in the bedroom, where you find another few cups....etc.
Helps to get the ball rolling and feels less hardcore than committing to one massive task/room at a time."
14."Wet Swiffer to clean the shower, especially if the ceiling needs a cleaning. Same for a dry Swiffer on non-tile surfaces."
15."135L contractor bags."
16."Maybe not a hack, but something that's always worked for me: just haul everything out of the room you're cleaning (don't worry about the ensuing chaos). Strip it down; clean the surfaces. Then as you start putting everything back, you'll find yourself naturally cleaning all the nitty gritty things as you go — as well as tossing out the dead weight and reorganizing in a sensible manner."
17.And finally: "Declutter, declutter, declutter."
"Having fewer things to collect dust makes general cleaning so much easier, let alone the awful stuff like vents or behind heavy appliances."
What's your best hack for deep cleaning (or just regular cleaning)? Let us know in the comments!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length/clarity.
