7 Little Cleaning Hacks for a Spotless Home During Coronavirus Lockdown
Admit, there is scarcely any activity to keep you engaged all day long in the recent scenario. With the extended lockdown period due to COVID-19, you feel like chained midst the four walls of your home. Why not make your home a better place to help you feel less overwhelmed? Why not finish off the long pending spring clean now?
Just a little wiping here and a little scrubbing there will make your home look, smell and feel like fresh blossoming flowers of the season. This will create a huge difference to your home and your life. Now that you are stuck in your homes, lets make the most out of it.
People who are working from home and does not have the entire day to spare for cleaning can also apply these tricks for optimum results. All you need to do is divide your one hour properly to devote your time to one thing at a time. Don’t forget you have saved enough time on commute. Therefore, no excuses and lets get started to make your home a little cozier and cleaner.
Here are 7 Little Cleaning Hacks for a Spotless Home during COVID-19 Lockdown:
1. Declutter All the Surfaces
The thought of cleaning is overwhelming enough to compel you to procrastinate. Well, I suggest, don’t clean just declutter. By decluttering I don’t mean you throw away your clothes, furniture, and all the worldly possessions. What I mean is, to pick everything that does not belong to were it is lying and put it to its appropriate place. Things like TV remotes, keys, headphones, coffee mugs, chargers, and similar other small things tend to get accumulated on your coffee table or dining table; a place where they do not belong. This will take you less than 10 minutes a day to keep your homes decluttered and clean.
2. Peep into Your Wardrobes
As you are restricted to your home, it is quite evident, you don’t need party wears or office wear for the time being. Rearrange your wardrobe based on your present needs. Go through your clothing pieces and accessories to sort them out into three categories, home wears, office wears, party wears, and off-season clothes.
First and foremost, you won't need your heavy woolens in summer (just like you won't require your summer wears in winters), so put them away in your less used closets or other storage areas. Now take your home wears or daily wears in your most used or accessible shelf or dresser. The rest of your office and party wear should be kept a little away from your daily wear section for convenience.
You might consider keeping some of your office wears at handy locations if you need to attend video calls and conferences for work. This entire process won't take more than 20 minutes.
3. Re-arrange Your Book Shelve
Due to COVID-19, people across the planet are stuck in their homes. Irrespective of your area of expertise, you might be working from home or studying from home. After living, working, and staying the entire day for such a long time might have messed up your bookshelves, magazine racks, or paper cabinet.
Don’t worry and start picking up all your books and papers you get your hands on from the coffee table, center table, bedside table, and every other corner of your home. Now sort them into categories like books, magazines, newspapers, and every other journal, place them on your bookshelf accordingly. Organizing your bookshelf provides visual relief to your eyes and mind as well.
4. Vacuum Cleaning All Corners
Turn on your vacuum and get started from your living room and gradually move to your bedroom, study nook/room or any other room that needs to be vacuum cleaned. Attend to your sofas, chairs, curtains, carpets, and every other piece of furniture. Consider the corner of your beds as well.
To clean pet hair from your carpet or sofa, you can wear rubber gloves. Due to the friction it creates, you do not have to struggle much.
If you do not have a vacuum cleaner you can take a damp cloth and wipe off the dust from your furniture. You can use a soft brush to clean your carpet and curtains as an alternative.
5. Tend to Your Microwave Oven
A microwave oven is probably the most tricky, sticky, greasy, and dirty part (appliance) in your home. You might have already procrastinated the plan to clean your microwave oven during the lockdown several times. But you wouldn’t have done that if you knew a magic potion called bicarbonate of soda (a.k.a. baking soda).
With bicarbonate of soda, all you have to do is add it into water ad spray the interiors of the oven (avoid the heating elements). Let it rest overnight and wipe it off with a damp cloth the next morning. Swish!
6. Attend Your Fridge
Food and water stains in the fridge are common. What if I say they are easy to handle? All you need is toothpaste and a toothbrush. The chemical compound used in toothpaste is a great solution to remove tough and stubborn stains in your fridge. Moreover, using a toothbrush helps to avoid scratch marks. To deal with the lurking smell of food, you can cut a lemon half and place it inside your fridge for half a day.
7. Clean Your Bathroom
Dirt and limescale stains in the bathroom can be overwhelming. Getting rid of them require massive scrubbing and probably straining your hands and shoulders. Well, not anymore. Spray white vinegar on the limescale and other dirt stains. You can spray the white vinegar on tiles all over the bathroom as well. Let the vinegar settle overnight while it breaks the stain molecules effectively. Wipe off the vinegar from the tiles with a sponge dipped in some white vinegar to witness the magic.
Conclusion
There you go. you have dealt with all the critical corners in your home within an hour. If you divided your hour strategically into 5 or 10 minutes blocks then you will be able to achieve a clean and tidy room with ease.
Dividing your time into strategic intervals or blocks can save be a great time saver for you when it comes to cleaning. You don’t have to do everything together. Try to schedule all these activities throughout your day.
For example, when you get up after the day-long working hours then clean it immediately. Put your laptop, chargers, notepads, or papers in their respective places. It will take just 5 minutes at max and you will get a clean work desk. Come back to a clean and tidy workspace.
This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.
© 2020 Arnaba Saha