Pre-Holiday Home Cleaning Hacks to Make Life Easier

What better motivation to roll up those sleeves and get cleaning than visiting family?

Plus, those fairy lights and tasselled banners simply won’t look right in a messy home. Before you get to it, make sure to keep these tips in mind:

Sort your tools and products by type. For example, that window-cleaning solution should go with a microfibre cloth or a cloth with a pail of water, while that mop should go with a floor-cleaning detergent and a different pail of water. Group these items together to speed up cleaning.

For advanced-level cleaning, set aside one set for every floor in the home, or place them on a trolley for easy manoeuvring.

Why clean 20 items when you only need to clean 10? Go room by room to inspect the items in your closet, drawers, cabinets, pantry, and refrigerator. Pick out things you don’t need or want, or expired items. Then, sort them into piles for donation and the bin.

Set up before starting your cleaning. Lift and tie the curtains so that they don’t touch the floor and interrupt mopping, switch on all the ceiling fans for quick-drying floors, and roll up rugs and mats to clear the floors.

You can also pull chairs away from the tables to clear up floor space, unplug multi-adaptors on the floor, and stow away miscellaneous items sitting on tables.

A quick way to clean the insides of storage areas is to vacuum them. Remove the vacuum head and suction away! Just be careful with fragile items.

Instead of laboriously scrubbing down the insides of your ovens, give them steam baths. Place a bowl of water, some slices of lemon, and several tablespoons of vinegar into the microwave oven and microwave it on the high setting until the water starts to boil and steam. Wait until the steam clears (Caution, hot!) before opening the door and using a kitchen towel to wipe the inside of the microwave oven.

Do the same for your oven, except use a oven-safe dish and switch it on at 180°C for 30 minutes.