We all have our own cleaning routines. However, whilst we have established tried and tested methods to clean our home, they may not all be as effective as we think and could in fact be a waste of time and could potentially even cause damage. Here, we share some bad cleaning habits that need to be broken.
Leaving wet towels discarded
Don’t leave wet towels discarded on the floor, over the banister, on the bed, or scrunched up on the back of the bathroom door. This is a bad cleaning habit because this will mean you have to change your towels a lot more regularly as without proper ventilation the towels quickly start to smell and can cause mildew on bathroom surfaces. Place on a proper towel rail to avoid this problem.
Using too much cleaning product
It is a common misconception that the more cleaning product you use, the cleaner something will be or the faster it will work. However, this is not the case. Using too much product can be counter-productive. If there is an excess of cleaning product, you may not rinse it all away properly and this residue can help up trapping dirt and this will quickly build up. Using too much product will also be a waste of money in the long run, so only buy what you need and follow the instructions.
Avoiding Paperwork
From bills to Christmas cards, junk mail, and more, the average household gets a lot of paperwork and it can be easy to avoid dealing with this and let it gather up various places across yourself. To help tackle this issue, purchase a letter holder and place it in the hallway. Use this to place all your paperwork and once it is full, go through and sort through it, keeping what you need, recycling what you can, and shredding anything that you don’t need but contains sensitive information.
Ignoring cleaning tools
To do the best cleaning job we use several cleaning tools from cloths to a vacuum cleaner. You may clean regularly but how often do you clean your cleaning tools? Avoiding this job can cause damage to the tools and will also stop from doing as good a job.
Wearing shoes in the house
Make it a rule for people to remove their shoes before walking into the house. Keeping outdoor shoes on can trail in mud and germs into the rest of your home. This will lead to a lot more vacuuming and floor cleaning. To avoid giving yourself more work to do, make sure your guests and family know to remove their shoes and make it easy for them to store their shoes by using a shoe cabinet or shoe basket.
Not storing cleaning products correctly
You can often waste precious time by trying to find the correct cleaning products you need for a certain job. Avoid this bad cleaning habit by efficiently storing your products. Optimise the space under your kitchen sink by using baskets to store your cleaning products. You can organise this by product type or by room. When cleaning upstairs, use a basket to take everything you need in one go, saving you multiple trips up and down the stairs which just makes cleaning an exhausting and time-consuming task when it doesn’t need to be.
Also, consider keeping all your bathroom products together in the bathroom itself. This makes cleaning a lot more convenient and there are plenty of nice units that are designed specifically for bathroom cleaning storage.
Dusting last
Dusting surfaces is often a task that people leave until last but this is the wrong way round. Do the dusting first as this will get all the dust onto the floor where you will later pick it up with the vacuum. If you leave the dusting until last, you are essentially ruining the hard work you have just done.
Avoiding jobs all together
There are some cleaning jobs that people simply hate doing and therefore avoid doing them. This can be damaging and harmful, depending on the task as it could be an issue that you will have to eventually deal with, by which point it will be a much harder cleaning task. Break this habit by tackling it head-on. If you don’t want to do it yourself, you can hire a cleaning service where you can specify which jobs you would ideally like doing.
Whilst you may not be guilty of all of these, many people will be able to relate to atleast one. Ensuring you avoid these bad cleaning habits will enable you to get the job of cleaning and tidying your home much more efficiently.
