How To Clean a Messy House Fast: 12 Approved Tips
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Clutter gets to even the most organized people, turning a home of tranquility into an overwhelming messy house of stress.
If you’ve struggled to keep your home clean for longer than 2 days, you’re not alone!
The constant cycle of clean and pristine to messy and chaotic can be exhausting, but there are ways to clean smarter rather than harder.
Here are a couple of tips on how to clean a messy house fast!
Because we all know that none of us have days on days to devote to tidiness…
It’s super easy to get overwhelmed by the looming mess, but here are the step-by-step instructions on how to clean a messy house so that you can tackle it in a manageable way!
How To Clean a Messy House, Fast
1. Gather your cleaning supplies
Before you start learning how to clean a messy house, try to gather all of your cleaning supplies into one place – brooms, cloths, cleaning solutions, devices, and anything else you might need.
This way you will have them all in an accessible place whenever you need them, which will save you time and some frustration that you might experience trying to find that one cleaning spray.
Work smarter, not harder!
2. Go room by room
When you look at the mess as a whole, it can seem daunting.
You may be paralyzed by the sheer amount of mess and feel compelled to do nothing at all instead (same!).
When learning how to clean a messy house, start with breaking down this herculean task into bite-size chunks.
Smaller, more manageable tasks will really help you combat the overwhelming feelings you’re experiencing before beginning to clean, and it will help you to stay motivated while you clean.
So, start with one room and only focus your energy there.
When you’re trying to figure out how to clean all the rooms at once, your brain suffers decision fatigue.
Jumping from room to room could also lead to unfinished tasks and a sense of chaos.
Make it easy on yourself and take it one room at a time.
Also, stay in that room until that room is completely done.
Once that room is tidied up then you can move on to the next room.
Soon the entire messy house will become a clean house!
3. Clean the rooms in zones
When learning how to clean a messy house, even dividing the cleaning room by room can still feel overwhelming, especially if some of the rooms are incredibly messy.
So, to combat that, try to divide the rooms into easily manageable zones.
For example, in the bathroom, you have surfaces (countertops, the top of your washing machine), the toilet, a shower or a bath, and the sink.
Clean each zone separately, moving on to the next only when you’re completely finished with the one you were cleaning.
4. Set the laundry
Chances are, a large component of your messy house is just random laundry and clothes strewn all over the place.
Pick up any clothes that need to go through the wash and start doing load after load.
Take care also to throw in your bedsheets, as having clean and fresh bedsheets make a world of difference in your sleep quality.
Your laundry may be the last thing on your priority list, but it helps a ton when trying to clean your messy home.
Plus, you can have the laundry going while you get to the rest of your messy house.
5. When in doubt, vacuum
Oftentimes we underestimate how good a clean and spacious floor feels.
Vacuuming may seem like a hassle, but it forces you to pick up any clutter on the ground and get it out of the way.
A large part of having a clean house is getting rid of things that are on your walkways and hallways.
This can easily be done in 20-30 minutes, tops!
This quick act of vacuuming can change the feeling of your messy house dramatically.
6. Pick things up quickly, but put them away correctly
I’m sure we’re all guilty of this — you speed clean your space but as a result, you actually just relocate all the mess into a closet or other room.
This transference of clutter doesn’t actually make your messy house any cleaner and actually just worsens any mess you may have.
Along with picking up your clutter, put everything in the correct place it belongs.
This will help keep your space tidy in the long run and prevent your messy house from falling apart once again.
There’s a clear difference between surface cleaning and deep cleaning, and even though deep cleaning is a hassle, it definitely contributes to the long-term success of your newly cleaned home.
7. Prioritize the messiest areas of your home first
Along with the first tip, organizing your cleaning by the messiest areas will ensure that cleaning the rest of the house will be a breeze.
What area of your home are you least looking forward to cleaning?
Start with that area!
Cleaning your messy house in this way ensures that:
- You have more than enough energy to deal with the worst areas since you’re targeting them first.
- Cleaning the most challenging areas will make the rest of the house appear super easy to clean, thus keeping your motivation up.
This will also ensure that you clean in a timely manner as these areas are bound to require the most time and energy anyway, so you’re doing yourself a favor by getting them out of the way first.
8. When deep cleaning, start from the top
Vacuuming is a great option when you’re learning how to clean a messy house and have limited time on your hands.
However, if you want to deep clean a part of your house and you’re not sure where to begin, start from the top of the room.
Dust the light fixtures, clean the walls and windows, then get to the furniture before finally vacuuming and mopping the floor.
This way you won’t need to do the double job of cleaning whatever falls down to the floor after you’ve already cleaned them.
9. Clean a little every day
It’s no secret that if you often find yourself feeling overwhelmed trying to tidy up your home, the solution to that is to have, well, less mess to clean.
We’ve all been there though – even with the best intentions in mind, sometimes you just don’t have the time to clean regularly.
However, even a little bit counts.
If possible, when learning how to clean a messy house, try to get into the habit to clean something for at least 10 minutes a day.
If 10 minutes are too much, try 5 minutes.
The important thing is to get the habit going, and once you do have the time to properly tidy up, it will still be less stuff to clean than if you hadn’t devoted those 5 or 10 minutes of tidying up every day.
However, if you don’t have the time to clean at all on particular days – no matter!
Try not to judge yourself if you fail to do it every day – the habit is there to make you feel better about cleaning, not worse!
10. Make a weekly cleaning plan
What really helped me personally when I was faced with the issue of learning how to clean a messy house was developing a weekly cleaning schedule.
For example, my weekly cleaning schedule looks like this:
- Monday: vacuuming
- Tuesday: dusting the kitchen and the living room
- Wednesday: changing the sheets, doing laundry
- Thursday: dusting the bedroom and the office
- Friday: cleaning the bathroom
I almost never follow it perfectly (and I don’t think you need to – it’s just a guide, anyway), however, it does provide me with a structure to lean on when I have some spare time to clean during weekdays.
Also, if I’m ever feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to start tidying up, I just look at the plan and go – okay, Thursday, that means I’m dusting today!
The weekly cleaning plan basically alleviates the overwhelmingness of cleaning and the guilt associated with not cleaning when you have some spare time since you just do what’s in the plan and that’s it!
It can also be very helpful when trying to maintain the general cleanliness of the house so that you don’t have to break your back tidying up during the weekend.
11. Make a deep clean plan
In addition to a weekly clean plan, a deep clean plan can also go a long way if learning how to clean a messy house seems like the most daunting task ever.
The way I’ve done it was just listing out all the possible chores I could perform, room by room.
For example, my living room deep clean plan looks like this:
- Light fixtures, lamps
- Pillows, blankets, and sofa
- Wall decorations
- Windows
- Curtains
- Chests of drawers (surface and inside)
- TV + TV stand
My goal is to perform at least 1 deep clean chore out of the list a day, and I usually just go through them in order.
Of course, as with the weekly cleaning plan, it’s a guide only – I don’t force myself to clean if I don’t have the time or if I’m feeling unwell.
It’s really great for the constant upkeep of the house, and when I do decide to deep clean on the day that I’m free, I have less stuff to scrub!
12. Don’t forget to take breaks
Learning how to clean a messy house can be physically and mentally exhausting, we all know that.
So, don’t forget to take breaks when you feel like you need them!
Sit down for a few minutes, take a sip of water, answer missed messages – do whatever you can think of that could help you to catch a breather from tidying up.
Forcing and pushing yourself to finish what you planned to clean in a given day without taking breaks could do more harm than good.
It can lead to burn out and aversive feelings towards cleaning, so just take it slow and try to enjoy it as much as you can!
Even with these tips, it can be difficult to clean a messy house quickly and effectively.
With this in mind, think about instilling new long-term habits that will help you clean quickly in the future!
For instance, always clean up your messes throughout the day periodically, rather than letting it all stockpile onto one gigantic mess.
Cleaning your space before you go to bed allows you to have a clean and productive area to wake up to, and makes less work for you in the future.
Also, having set places and containers to organize your belongings can make cleaning fast and easy.
A hanging shoe rack is useful for organizing random knick-knacks or accessories, and bins are useful to store clothing that you don’t use anymore.
With these tips and sheer willpower, you’ll be sure to have a clean and relaxing home in no time…
No more messy house situations!
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