10 cleaning tricks that will save you time around your home
Very few people actually enjoy doing household chores; most people are happy when they can get them over with as quickly as possible. Here are 10 ways to accomplish different kinds of chores a little bit faster. If you save a couple of minutes doing each task, you'll be impressed at the end how much more time you have for all the other things in life you want to do.
1. Wax paper in the fridge
Lay wax paper on the shelves of your fridge before putting anything on them. If ketchup or any other sticky liquid spills, it will land on the wax paper, which you can easily replace. This keeps your shelves clean and there won't be any nasty stains like the ones in the photo below.
2. Create order with a hanging shoe rack
A hanging shoe shelf is very well suited for storing items that would otherwise be scattered around your apartment. There is enough space for wallets, keys, headphones, phone chargers, etc. And if you hang it up on the door of your dresser, there won't be anything lying around anymore.
3. Self-cleaning mixer
The next time that you need to clean your stand-mixer, just add a little bit of dish soap with water inside. If you turn it on for a moment, it will clean itself much more thoroughly than you could doing it by hand. Just wash it out with water at the end and you're done.
4. Everything in the right place
You'll save a lot of time if you store all your cleaning supplies in a single basket. So the next time that you go to clean the bathroom, you won't have to search for anything. Instead you just grab your basket and have everything you need. When you are finished, you put the basket back. This way everything stays orderly and you don't lose anything.
5. Doing the dishes—the easy way
To make it a lot easier to wash your dishes by hand, you can make a spray. Add one cup of water along with a tablespoon of dish soap to a spray bottle. If you spray your dirty dishes with this prior to putting them in the sink, all the leftover bits of food on them will come off easily.
6. Always have fresh laundry
If you want to do the laundry but already know that you can't put it in the dryer or hang it up right away, this trick is a great way to keep your laundry fresh even when it's wet. Just add a few drops of lavender oil to your load. The oil has antibacterial properties and prevents the formation of fungi, which helps keep your clothes smelling fresh. Since the oil can leave marks on some pieces of clothing, it makes sense to add the drops to dark socks or a separate cloth.
7. Quick and clean
Another trick for your laundry: try out the fast cycle on your washing machine. Often this works just as well as the normal one but is much faster. And you'll save water this way too.
8. Let the soap do the work
Many people scrub for ages in the sink to get rid of tough stains and are just frustrated at the end. You can save yourself a lot of work here: Just let the dish soap do the work on its own. Spray the liquid on the areas that need to be cleaned and let it soak in for a few minutes. This allows the cleaning product to unleash its full strength. Often it's enough just to wipe it clean afterwards—no need to scrub and scrub for hours.
9. Please take off your shoes
Get use to taking off your shoes at your front door. If you wear your shoes in your home, you will bring dirt in with you that will just have to be cleaned up later on. One doesn't even want to imagine what kinds of nasty things can get stuck to the soles of your shoes...
10. Use psychology to become a cleaning genius
Finally a little "psychological" trick: Using a kitchen timer, cleaning doesn't just seem shorter, it also goes a lot faster. Set the timer for 5 minutes when cleaning up and you'll be impressed how much you accomplish when you suddenly feel like you are under "time pressure". This makes cleaning child's play because you are more motivated to work when you think you just have minutes for it.
All these tricks are really easy to do. Try them out and soon enough you'll have internalized one or two of them. This will make doing your household chores a breeze!