4 Spring Cleaning Tips (That Keep Your Home Clean All Year!)

Apr 3, 2021 | Cleaning Tips and Tricks, Organization

Spring cleaning can sound intimidating, especially if you've let your house go a little too long without giving it a good cleaning. Use these four simple tips and you'll be able to get your house cleaned in no time! Plus, you can use these spring cleaning tips all year round!

Woman cleaning glass window, from Fun Cheap or Free

Does anyone have the spring cleaning itch yet? Between winter, kids, animals, extracurriculars, and just life in general, our houses can get a little out of control. Who wants to do anything besides stay curled up by the fire with a good book when it's cold outside?!

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Read on for our four BEST spring cleaning tips to get you going and to get your house freshened up in no time! And the best part? You can use these ideas all year long to stay on top of things. Now, when next spring comes around, you can enjoy all of that fresh air with your family instead of being stuck inside making up for lost cleaning time! So, you ready to change your world one dust bunny at a time?!


SPRING CLEANING TIPS

Time to throw open the windows and freshen up for spring! But don't let that spring cleaning checklist weigh you down. Here are a few simple tips to knock out your spring cleaning fast and keep the list from getting too overwhelming!


GET YOUR FAMILY INVOLVED

little girl helping mom wash dishes, from Fun Cheap or Free

We fully believe that kids as young as two can be involved in helping clean the house. Honestly, most young kids want to help when it comes to doing chores around the house. Use that to your advantage! Get them in the habit of pitching in do things around the house. This way, as they get older, kids can take on more responsibilities. This not only teaches them that they're an important part of the family but getting involved also teaches them life skills they'll need later.

We use cleaning products that are kid-safe so they can help with pretty much any chore that makes sense (based on age range and capability). Our absolute FAVORITE cleaning tool is Ecloth (Use code JORDAN for 10% off)! Get the whole family involved when it's time to clean, and it'll go by much quicker!

You can even make it a game. Huddle up and decide what each person will “tackle” in the room. “I'll tackle picking up the floor. You tackle washing the windows. You tackle straightening the pillows on the couch. Ready, BREAK!” Make a game out of it! When you're done, let everybody brag about what they “tackled” and how quickly they did it.


USE A TIMER

timer on a counter, from Fun Cheap or Free

Do you look at your messy house and have a hard time imagining having the day or two it would take to get it clean again? Rather than spending that much time to clean all at once (or putting it off until you can), use small pockets of your time to clean! We might not have all day to clean our house top to bottom, but everyone can find fifteen minutes in their day.

Here's how this works:

  • Pick One Area – Focus on one area of your home that needs to be cleaned or organized. Keep it to a small area, no greater than one room, and as small as one drawer or closet.
  • Set a Timer and Go! – Shoot for fifteen minutes at the most. You'll be able to work fast and stay focused easily in that short amount of time. Use the timer on your phone or get a hand-held timer the kids can easily set. Have everybody work as fast, hard, and focused as you can for those fifteen minutes!
  • Do a General Cleaning First – Rather than picking up one item and running into the next room to put it away, be more general. Pick up all items first. If it doesn't belong in that room, put it in a laundry basket to empty and put away later. Once the room is picked up and tidied, you can work to fine details such as vacuuming, decluttering, organizing, and even deep cleaning such as dusting and scrubbing.
  • Stop Cleaning When the Timer Goes Off – Once you hear it go off, stop what you're doing and move on with your day.
  • Repeat – Commit yourself to two fifteen-minute cleans per day. If you happen to find another ten or fifteen minutes later in the day, do it again!

You can get a lot done in fifteen focused minutes. After all, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! “Bite” away at the mess in your house and it will keep you encouraged and able to stay on top of the overall mess.


DEEP-CLEAN YOUR HOUSE WITH ONE CHORE PER DAY

woman cleaning the bathroom, from Fun Cheap or Free

One of our most viral posts is on how to keep your home clean with one chore per day… because it really works! Again, it's hard to find a lot of time to deep-clean your house. In addition to the day-to-day chores, you can stay on top of deep cleaning by tackling just one chore per day. No more trying to deep clean the whole house once a week!

If all you can dedicate is 30 minutes, that is enough! You can make your own schedule, or try out our schedule. Here is a condensed version:

  • Monday: Laundry Day – Keep the machines running all day long. Yes, you will probably have to do laundry throughout the week, but this is your day to dedicate to towels, sheets, rugs, clothes, etc. In between switching loads, we also have Monday as vacuum and tidy day.
  • Tuesday: Bathrooms – All parts of all your bathrooms. This may take you longer than 30 minutes the first time that you do it. But remember, Tuesday comes around every seven days! By staying on top of the schedule, it will be quicker each time because it will be more “touch-up” cleaning rather than super-deep cleaning.
  • Wednesday: Surfaces – We're talking anything that can be dusted, mopped, vacuumed, or wiped. This includes countertops, baseboards, windows, floors, microwave, mantels, shelves, etc. Again, it will be lots of work the first or second time, but if you stay on top of it, it gets muuuuuuch easier.
  • Thursday: Organize or Clean Out Something – Size doesn't matter! This could be anything from your car, a junk drawer, a closet, or your garage. Just pick one thing that has been a pain point for you and tackle it that day.
  • Friday: Tidy and Vacuum – Tidy the whole house (never leave a room empty-handed!) and vacuum the whole house, including the stairs.

Pro Tip: If you have a large house, feel free to split up the levels with bathrooms and surfaces. The first week of the month, focus mostly on the main floor. For the second week, focus mostly on the upstairs. The third week, focus on the main floor again since it's the most used floor. Then focus on the basement the fourth week.


USE CATCH-ALL BASKETS

Laundry basket in a bedroom, from Fun Cheap or Free

A simple, yet effective tool in your spring cleaning arsenal is a basket. In each room, closet, and even on the stairs, have a “catch-all” basket. It can be cute, basic, small, or large, whatever you find that you need in that space!

As you tidy up your house, toss things that don't belong in the room that you're cleaning in those baskets. If clothes tend to end up on the floor of your closet because you like to try out different outfits before going somewhere, you can toss your clothes in the basket and put them away when you have more time. It keeps things off the floor and is an easy way for kids and adults alike to put things away. You can even say “No dessert until your basket is empty!” and it gets everybody's tails in gear. 😉

This goes hand-in-hand with our awesome 5-minute laundry basket trick that will help you keep the house clean with really quick trips through the house!


So there you have it! Four tried and true spring cleaning tips that not only work after a long winter, but also all year round! Do you have any tips that help to keep your house clean and organized? Share them with us in the comments!

Image with text that says "4 spring cleaning tips" from Fun Cheap or Free

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7 Comments

  1. Rocky | Somethin Outta Nothin

    Oh Jordan, you hit the nail on the head for me. I’m OCD and sometimes just looking around at the mess can be so overwhelming. I’m glad we have talented people like you posting ways to break it down.

    One of the best things I’ve done is to make a reward system for myself. When the hubster and I were freshly married I knew how to do all the homemaking stuff but hated it. So we agreed that on the weeks where I kept the sinks mostly dish free, we could get ice cream on Friday. Once that was a habit we moved the reward to something else. And on and on. Finding a way to encourage ourselves to create good habits, no just getting work done, has been really helpful in our family.

    Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • FunCheapOrFree

      Ice cream for clean sinks?? I LOVE THAT! Thanks for sharing!

      Reply
  2. Keeping it Real

    What a great way to make keeping a house clean manageable! My hubby and I are both neat freaks with 2 boys, so I use a house cleaner every two weeks to deep clean because it seems like all I can manage is making beds, laundry and keeping things organized and tidy. I don’t know how I would keep the tubs scrubbed and toilets cleaned! I’m going to try your method and see if we can save money by having her come once a month. Who knows? Maybe from there I can let her go completely 😉 Woo Hoo! You really don’t get any outside reinforcements? What an inspiration!

    Reply
  3. Eva Russell

    Spring cleaning is like a family meeting in my family. Even kids enjoy it. Just like mentioned in this article, we make it like a fun game. Each of us deals with each area for cleaning on each room. Kids enjoy it as I make their favorite food as reward for doing it quickly. We take breaks at regular intervals and thus no one gets too tired. My husband makes a good schedule and urges us to stay with the plan. Unlike many others who complain a lot, me and my family enjoys spring cleaning.

    Reply
    • FunCheapOrFree

      Love the idea of making their favorite food as a reward! Thanks for sharing!

      Reply
  4. Angela

    Baskets for toys has been a lifesaver for keeping the kids’ rooms tidy!

    Reply
  5. Gail

    Awesome cleaning hacks! I’ll for sure be trying them out this year!

    Reply

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