5 daily cleaning habits that actually keep your home tidy

Clothing folded on couch - daily cleaning to try.

If you’re looking for simple daily cleaning activities that fit into your busy schedule, you’ve come to the right place.

The secret to a cleaner home isn’t spending more time cleaning it, it’s about building simple cleaning habits into your everyday routine.

By tackling small cleaning tasks throughout the day, you can prevent clutter from building up, keep high traffic areas under control, and make your home feel calmer and more manageable without adding extra stress to your day.

In this post you’ll discover 5 quick but effective cleaning habits that you can fit around busy family life.

You’ll learn how to clean as you go, why making your bed can make your bedroom feel tidier, how to speed clean to stay on top of mess, simple ways to make decluttering a habit, and how to keep clutter from building up where it doesn’t belong.

Let’s get started!

Download your FREE cleaning checklist with quick and easy daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning tasks to make cleaning easier here

Table of Contents

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Why daily cleaning is effective

Many people think they need a dedicated cleaning day each week, but when you’re a busy mum that’s not always possible.

The benefits of having a daily cleaning routine are:

It helps keep your home organised
It makes cleaning less overwhelming
Clutter is less likely to build up
It helps to keep high traffic areas like your kitchen and bathroom cleaner for longer
It takes significantly less time than doing day long cleans

5 cleaning habits to start today

Here are 5 daily cleaning habits you can start that will keep your home clean and tidy every day.

Clean as you go

One of my favourite ways to keep my home clean and tidy is to clean as you go, which means to clean or tidy things as soon as you’re finished with them, to prevent clutter and mess from building up.

Here are some examples of how you can clean as you go:

Wash dishes while dinner cooks
Wipe kitchen counters after preparing food
Load dirty dishes into the dishwasher instead of the sink
Put groceries away immediately
Sort mail as soon as it arrives
Place dirty clothes straight into a laundry hamper

Make your bed every morning

Making your bed every morning is one of the easiest ways to make your bedroom feel tidier, and it may even motivate you to tackle other cleaning jobs.

To make this daily habit easier, consider:

Keeping decorative pillows to a minimum
Not using a top sheet
Making your bed as soon as you get up

Freshly made bed - daily cleaning to try.

Schedule speed cleans

Scheduling in some speed cleans, where you focus on areas of your home that bother you, or that get untidy faster than other areas, is a great way to keep your home tidy.

I do two speed cleans every day, one in the morning and one at night, here’s what I focus on during my daily speed cleans:

Morning speed clean

Load breakfast dishes into the dishwasher
Wipe the dining table
Put toys away

Evening speed clean

Clear paperwork from my paperwork holder
Put blankets back into their blanket basket
Put all remote controls into this remote control holder
Place school supplies in their dedicated backpack storage area
Return items to their proper homes
Clear kitchen counters

Doing one or two speed cleans each day allows you to start and end the day with a tidy home.

Make decluttering a habit

One of the most effective ways to keep your home clean and tidy is to regularly declutter items that you no longer need.

Some simple ways to declutter your home include:

Keeping a donation bag in each wardrobe, and when it’s full donating the items within it
Regularly removing items from your home that you no longer use
Choosing one area to declutter each week
Decluttering clothing every season
Scheduling large decluttering projects into your calendar each quarter

Clothing hanging on rail - daily cleaning to try.

Never leave a room empty handed

When it comes to cleaning habits, never leaving a room empty handed is something I do every day.

This means that before you leave a room, have a quick look around to see what doesn’t belong in the room, then take it back to where it does belong.

Something I do to make this easier is having a stair basket at the bottom of my stairs. During the day I place items in it that need to go back upstairs. At the end of the night, I take the basket upstairs and put the contents away.

Here are some examples of other things you can do when leaving a room:

Take empty cups to the kitchen
Return toys to children’s bedrooms
Carry laundry upstairs
Put paperwork where it belongs

Daily cleaning habits – a recap

Daily cleaning doesn’t have to mean spending hours scrubbing, vacuuming, and tidying every corner of your home.

Small daily habits like cleaning as you go, making your bed, doing speed cleans, decluttering regularly, and never leaving a room empty handed, can make a huge difference to how clean and tidy your home feels.

These simple habits help prevent mess and clutter from building up, making your home easier to keep clean.

The best way to start with these habits is to choose one and then build from there. Small changes add up, and before long you’ll notice that keeping your home clean feels easy and less overwhelming.

In case you missed it, here’s your free cleaning checklist to make cleaning your home easier.

Which of these cleaning habits are you going to try first?

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