Ten Minute House Cleaning Tips

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Ten Minute House Cleaning Tips

This is a continuation of last weeks post on Keeping Your House Clean Ten Minutes at a time.

Clean house in Ten minutes, easy daily chores to keep your house clean but not take up all your time

Last week I introduced how I came up with the timeline and what I do on Mondays, the 2 upstairs bedrooms.  This week I checked both bedrooms and really they did not need anything done, they stayed dust free and since we don’t wear shoes in the house the floors were fine as well so I skipped the dusting, vacuuming and mopping until next week.  I did take a moment to look and see if there was anything I need to get rid of and my husband had already made the bed.  The other room was just as easy, being an unused guest quarters.

Note: anything highlighted in red is a link for you to view. It may take you to another post for more info, or an affiliate link. Many times I link to something to show you what a product looks like so finding the right one in a local store is easier. Most things in this post can be found locally though Amazon many times meets or beats the price.  I live rather far from major shopping so Amazon is my friend.

Daily:
I will say now that I do have a daily routine that helps keep the kitchen quick to clean.  Every morning I unload the dishwasher as our coffee brews.  I did time it and it takes 4 minutes to unload.  I make sure and get it done first thing so that the rest of the day as we use dishes they are put directly into the dishwasher, not in the sink.  By bedtime the dishwasher is ready to start.  Also after I cook every meal I always wipe around the edge of the grates on the stove top and counters which takes about 3 mins. I also sweep the kitchen daily. 1 min (small kitchen)

In the winter I also have a daily routine of sweeping between our front door and the wood stove.  We track in lots of debris when bringing in wood for our wood stove.  It is a short distance and takes less than a minute to sweep up.  Sweeping it up immediately prevents the debris from being tracked through the house.

Tuesdays ~ Kitchen

Remove the grates on the stove top and scrub down the entire top ~ 4 minutes 
I do not use a fancy cleaner on this, I use straight dish soap and scrub it around. Dish soap is made to cut food grime, it cuts through grease faster than any other cleaner I have used.
Instead of rinsing I wipe it up with a dry rag, if you use a wet rag the soap is more time consuming to remove.  After I have wiped it dry I shine it up with my Basic All Purpose Cleaning spray and a clean cloth or paper towel. (recipe for cleaning spray found in this post Fast Window Cleaning)

Once every 6 months I spray the grates with oven cleaner.  I place them in a garbage bag and spray them liberally, the bag is closed and left to sit in the sun to heat up.  I also will clean tougher spots on my stove top with oven cleaner.  I have a window open and I don’t breathe the fumes.  While the cleaner is working I am in another room. (I have tried the ammonia in the bag with the grates but the oven cleaner is faster and easier)
Clean house in Ten minutes, easy daily chores to keep your house clean but not take up all your time
Once every other week I run the grates through the dishwasher (I don’t count the time on this as the dishwasher does the work, the grates are added in with a load of dishes to save energy and water)

Wipe down the inside of the microwave ~ 3 minutes (this also only needs to be done every other week)
note:  while I am wiping down the stove top I am heating a cup of water in the microwave for 4 minutes, it steams it up, moistens and loosens any food debris making the wiping easy.  We also have a plate cover we use every time we reheat something.  They are inexpensive, don’t touch your food and keep your microwave from getting spattered.  This is the one we have NordicWare Plate Cover 11 inch

Clean house in Ten minutes, easy daily chores to keep your house clean but not take up all your time
Wipe down front of  microwave ~ 2 min
Wipe down a shelf in fridge or door cubby ~ 2 mins.
Many times I put a door cubby into the dishwasher instead of hand washing.  Wiping down a shelf takes 2 mins, most of that time is moving food to a different shelf. If you have a spot that is something that spilled and dried onto the shelf I set a wet dish cloth on the spot, close the fridge door and let it set while I am doing another chore in the kitchen.  After a few minutes it is fairly easy to wipe up.  Normally I do try to clean up spill immediately so I don’t have to clean it up after it has dried. I also line my door cubbys with a paper towel which is easy to remove and replace.
I never have to clean the refrigerator all at once which can be time consuming, by keeping up with tackling a shelf or door cubby weekly it never piles up.

Wednesdays ~ Living/dining room

Dust from ceiling to floor including blinds and window frames ~ 5 minutes
Sweep or vacuum floors ~ 3 minutes
Mop ~ 3 minutes
Clean under couch cushions (monthly)

Thursday ~Bathroom

Spray tub and sink with Comet Liquid cleaner let sit while doing other things to let it do the grunt work for you ~ 30 seconds
note: I have found that the Comet liquid cleaner which is made with citric acid cleans the fiberglass tubs the fastest, I have tried numerous others in my professional cleaning career and Comet Liquid wins hands down, the second is Dow Scrubbing Bubbles, the third is straight dish soap or shampoo.
Sprinkle Oxy-clean in toilet and swish with toilet brush ~ 1 min (I let it sit while I clean the rest of the bathroom then come back and flush it right before I wipe down the outside of the toilet)
Use duster around ceiling for any webs that may be lurking and light fixture above sink, dust window frame and sill ~ 2 min
Sweep or vacuum floor, getting behind sink base and toilet with wand ~ 1 min  (my bathroom is very small)
Scrub out sink, then bathtub, wipe down toilet from top to bottom ~ 4 mins
Mop floor ~ 1 min
Wash down ceiling and walls with my Bona mop and bleach water sprayed on mop head 2 min
note:I only do this once a month and time it right after one of us has taken a shower, the moisture on the walls and ceiling from the steam of the shower has everything moistened up and ready to wipe off. Smokers lived in this house before we moved in 20 years ago and even though we scrubbed the walls before painting with a sealing paint a brown stain starts to seep through, the Bona mop makes quick work of wiping them down.
Spray shower curtain with bleach water if needed or take down and put in washing machine. ~ 1 min (I do this last as I don’t like breathing the fumes, I hold my breath while spraying, leave the room and shut the door behind me to let the odor dissipate before re-entering)

Friday ~ Office

Our third bedroom has turned into our office space.  It takes less than 10 minutes to clean from top to bottom and usually gets something done to it every day.  I spend quite a bit of time in the office and when I see an issue I tackle it right away.  So basically Friday is a free day from cleaning other than my daily routine.  The weekends are also cleaning free too.

When you really look at actual time it takes to clean a room when you do it weekly on schedule it seems less overwhelming and more doable.  I am not cleaning all day long, just a little bit here and there.  Anyone can do it

Now to get back to painting, gardening and other fun stuff!

Happy Cleaning!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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10 Comments

  1. This is very fantastic post and helpful also. This is very simple and time saver idea. Thank you for idea. Thank you for the.

  2. You look wonderful for a senior! Thank you for the reply. You are so inspiring!

  3. LOL, I wish I were ten. I am officially a senior citizen as of last week. Like I said in my post, I had to stop and track what I did to see how I did it as it is such a routine I don’t think about it. I don’t feel like I spend a lot of time cleaning. I timed everything. But I do enjoy a tidy house, not perfect mind you but I raised 4 kids and life was just so much easier if the house was in order. I found if things were taken care of immediately then they did not pile up. Like the laundry, I did one load a day not wait and spend a day doing laundry. It was easier for me to toss a load in the washer before going to bed, tossing that load into the dryer right after turning on my coffee pot to brew the next morning then folding it after the kids were dropped off at school. Folding took me 8 minutes. Everyone in the family had one basket. They were responsible to put away their own clothes. By the time they were 10 yrs old I had my kids doing laundry. My kids probably thought I was a Nazi but by golly I was not the only one wearing clothes I was not going to be the only one doing all that laundry. 🙂

  4. 3 minutes here, 4 minutes there, 2 minutes whatever….. What are you? Ten years old with unlimited flexibility, boundless energy, dogged determination, unwavering focus and the naive belief of youth that all will turn out as planned?
    Truly….. only kidding! I love the end result, but, I hate housecleaning because it seems to take so much time and it doesnt last. But, I like your approach and your attitude and techniques are inspiring. So, I will change my attitude and approach keeping the house clean based on your tips. I will just, realistically, make it half an hour instead of 10 minutes. If I were 40 years younger I would go for 10 minutes but, ah, time……….
    I love reading your posts…….

  5. Great tips, i struggle with the thought of cleaning for hours on end, so i just end up avoiding everything that is not essential. If I start doing little 10 minute cleaning jobs it won’t seem like such a chore!

  6. Great ideas! I get overwhelmed with keeping a clean house full of boys. I could do 10 minutes a day though! 🙂

  7. Another thing with being more consistent and taking it in small bites is it gets more thoroughly done, at least for me. I don’t ever have to Spring Clean, it is kept up so well that Spring cleaning is superfluous. I tackle the insides of my cupboards regularly.

  8. I used to ignore them before I had started professional house cleaning, and that was on the list of what to do every time a house was cleaned. I noted how I did not have to do a major clean on the blinds as often if I kept them dusted. If you let the dust accumulate and sit then it somehow adheres to the point of needing a good scrub down instead of a dusting. Dusting them doesn’t take long at all. I close the blinds and just dust along, sometimes I have to get in between the slats but most of the dust is caught by the swiffer duster head.

  9. Great tips Pamela you have broken it down so well it does not seem such a chore and actually its lovely to have a clean dust free house,great satisfaction.Thank you for the tips a great help.

  10. Great tips and you have inspired me to do some cleaning today. You pointed out blinds and light fixtures that I never seem to tackle until they are so dirty that it becomes a big project. Makes sense to go over them more often!

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