People Are Sharing the Cleaning Tips They’d Give to a New Homeowner, and Their Ideas Are Brilliant
While there are lots of great things about becoming a homeowner, there’s also usually a fair amount of unexpected costs and ongoing maintenance tasks that continue to crop up. On top of all this, you have to keep up with routine cleaning chores. Whether you’re eager to keep your new acquisition (relatively) spotless or you’re feeling overwhelmed just thinking of all the home-related tasks in store, Reddit has some invaluable advice.
User Purple-Papaya1 asked the r/CleaningTips community for their number-one piece of cleaning wisdom for new homeowners, and some of the answers that rolled in were low-key brilliant.
Clean as you go.
User DressTasty1335 led the charge of seasoned advice by recommending that new homeowners adopt the clean-as-you-go (also known as CYAG) approach: “For example, when cooking, wash the dishes as you’re cooking. This way, you don’t end up with an intimidating amount of dishes to clean at the end. Likewise, when you shower, give the shower/bath a quick scrub-down just before you get out.” They added that many people keep a dish wand in the shower for this and that adopting the CAYG technique will make deep cleaning far less physically demanding and a whole lot simpler.
Divide tasks into chunks.
User Kaethe_HE takes the clean-as-you-go approach to the next level by dividing up big jobs into smaller ones. “Divide your deep-cleaning tasks in little chunks. Don‘t take the whole lower floor; just deep-clean the shower. I vacuum and mop the floors in one run, but everything else is done on different days.”
Make cleaning easier for you.
Cleaning is hard enough without cumbersome tools or ineffective products. User optical_mommy’s advice is to invest in things that take some of the elbow grease (and frustration) out of your cleaning routine. They suggested buying fun dish towels that you’d want to change out regularly, swapping out your laundry detergent to a better option, or even getting a dual-chamber spin mop to make mopping a whole lot easier. You can also consider splurging on a robot vacuum cleaner that’ll help cut floor cleaning time in half or, alternatively, you can get something as simple as a glass squeegee to make shower cleaning a breeze.
Keep up instead of catching up with your chore load.
Pretty much no one wants to block out entire days — or, worse, weekends — to marathon-style cleaning sessions. Redditor sharp-calculation shared the following wise maxim: “It’s better to keep up than to catch up. Just do a little at a time as it gets the tiniest bit dirty. Then it’ll be perfectly clean again.” Clean-as-you-go habits like wiping down a vanity after washing your face can leave you with a much more manageable weekly cleaning schedule.
Create a “cleaning basket.”
It’s important to have the right tools on hand that are ready to rock at a moment’s notice. User RarelyRad recommends homeowners make themselves a cleaning basket, “like a shower caddy that’s always loaded with all your cleaning spray, rags, etc., so you can grab and go for cleaning around the house.” In fact, you can even repurpose an old shower caddy into a cleaning caddy.
Have rubbing alcohol in the bathroom at all times.
User Head-Drag-1440 recommends having this one product easily accessible: rubbing alcohol. They like to keep spray bottles of rubbing alcohol in the bathroom to use for cleaning the toilet, floor, counter, sinks, and even mirrors. Rubbing alcohol can make for a great glass cleaner and has disinfectant properties, which makes it ideal for use in the bathroom. Just be sure to avoid these safety mistakes when using it, and don’t apply to wood cabinets.
Get Bar Keepers Friend.
“Bar Keepers Friend (the powder) is absolutely your friend. It’s a household staple that cleans a wide variety of things and will change your life,” shared user AdventuresOfMnJ. If you’ve yet to try this well-known cleaning product, it is an oxalic acid-based cleaner that can be used on glass, tile, metals, ceramic, porcelain, and more. Its acidic pH makes it perfect for lifting soap scum, mineral deposits, rust marks, and other typically hard-to-shift eyesores that might already be in your new home, or develop over time. However, while there are tons of things you can clean with Bar Keeper’s Friend, there are also some surfaces you shouldn’t use Bar Keepers Friend on, such as polished stone or painted finishes.
Make a cleaning calendar.
Redditor up_and_at_em named having a calendar-based cleaning schedule as their top piece of advice for new homeowners, and GoonDocks1632 chimed in, saying, “My house didn’t really become clean until I did this. There are so many odd things, like cleaning ceiling fans, that I was forgetting about.” Don’t feel like having to draw up a schedule by hand? This user also shared they use a cleaning app to remind them of pending tasks.