7 Tips to Always Having a Clean Home

Home cleaning.  It has to get done so often but very few of us actually enjoy it.  I know that feeling and I know you don’t enjoy it either.  You know it’s a chore that you wish you could forget about.  Wish you could hire someone else to do the work.  But no matter how much we loathe it, cleaning must get done.

We put off cleaning because we are too tired or we lack the motivation to clean.  But then, the phone rings, and someone wants to stop by.  What do you do?  Your home is a wreck and you have 15 minutes to clean.

Well, you do the bare minimum to get by to make your home presentable and tell yourself things will be different next time.  That you’ll clean more often and not have to run around frantic when someone is coming over.

But it never happens. The same cycle just keeps coming around. Someone’s coming over – you scramble to get the house clean – have it looking as perfect as it can be when the company shows up. But you’re tired of it. You want a cleaner home and want the motivation to do it.

This post may have affiliate links. This means I may earn a commission should you choose to make a purchase using my link..

7 Tips to Keep Motivated to Clean

Play Music

What kind of music puts you in a good mood? Use that to your advantage. Play this music and play it loud when you need to clean. Listening to music that you enjoy excites you. It puts you in a good mood and that’s the feeling you want to be in when you have to do something you don’t particularly like or enjoy. Find the songs you enjoy and use them when you have to clean. The whole process will feel better and more positive.

I use our Amazon Echo (we call it Alexa) to listen to music when I’m cleaning. If I don’t like a song that’s playing, I can tell Alexa to skip it. It’s also great if there’s a song that comes on that I love, I can tell her to play it again and all of this can be done without stopping what I’m doing.

Set a Timer

Set 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or whatever time you feel will motivate you.  Some will want to set a timer for how long they want to clean.  For example, you can clean for 30 minutes and when the timer stops, you’re done.

Or set a 5-minute timer. Sometimes, all we need is to start and if we can tell ourselves we’ve only got to work for 5 minutes, it may be all we need to motivate ourselves. Once the 5 minutes are over we realize we aren’t finished yet and might stay to finish the task we started. Sometimes we just need to trick our minds to begin a task. 🙂

Related: 10 Cleaning Hacks That Are Pure Genius

Works in Short Bursts

Make cleaning tasks a daily thing that gets done in small 15 minute bursts. Get more done that only takes a small amount of time. Most of us can do anything for 15 minutes. And then see how many of these bursts you can fit into your day. Four 15 minute bursts over the whole day might be more tolerable than cleaning for an hour straight. Figure out what works best with your personality.

Related: 30+ Useful and Quick 5 Minute Tasks

Invite Guests Over

This pushes me into action the best. I don’t want to suffer the embarrassment if my home isn’t cleaned up when a friend stops by.

When you invite someone over, you are guaranteeing to yourself that you will find the motivation to clean. It’ll likely be stressful but it works. It will get you off the couch and into cleaning up your home in no time.

Tell Yourself Positive Things

Tell yourself it will be quick and easy.  Self-talk can be very positive.  If you’re telling yourself that it’ll take a long time and you have better things to do, it will only make the task harder and longer.  Just think how great you’ll feel when you’re done cleaning and how clean your space will be.

Another tip I learned from reading Atomic Habits by James Clear is to tell yourself that you “get” to do something.  For example, instead of saying you have to clean your home, try saying you get to clean your home. Our minds find evidence as to what is true.  If we keep telling ourselves we have to do something, our minds will think about that task negatively.  But telling ourselves we get to do something, we’ll look for ways that allow that to happen.

I use this technique with laundry. Telling myself I get to do laundry, I think about the people that can’t do laundry in their home. I’m not viewing laundry as a chore I have to do anymore. See how that shifts our mindset?

Related: Don’t Let Clutter Steal Your Time Anymore

Do Your Worst Task First

If you absolutely dread a certain task, do it first. The popular book, Eat that Frog, states to tackle your toughest and biggest task first. Once you’ve completed it, everything else that you have planned for your day will seem much easier in comparison. It’s a great way to start your day!

Related: Clutter is Killing Your Happiness and it Doesn’t Have to

Establish a Routine

The main reason we despise cleaning so much is that we don’t have a good cleaning schedule.  When you set up a routine and stick to it, there never comes a time when someone’s coming over and you need to scramble to get your home clean.  Your home is already clean because you’ve set up a schedule that has you cleaning every day.

The more often you clean, the less dirty your things will get.  Take a bathroom, for example, if you do a quick wipe of the bathroom each day, your weekly task of cleaning the bathroom will be much quicker.

Establish a routine. It saves time and sanity.

Final Thoughts

These 7 tips have helped me find a good balance in my home when I’ve never enjoyed cleaning. I have a cleaning routine, where I have my daily tasks (dishes, laundry, etc) and my weekly tasks (dusting, bathrooms, mopping, etc). This schedule lets me know what needs to be done each day.

But when I get into a mood where I don’t want to clean, I use these cleaning tips – turn my favorite music up loud, set a timer, tell myself it will be quick, and I will love the result, and if it’s the bathroom, it will be the first thing done for the day.  I also remind myself it will be one less thing I need to do if guests show up that week.

Have this balance in your home and your life.  Use these tips to get into a routine to clean every day and help give you the motivation when you don’t want to clean.

Remember, the more frequently you clean something, the easier the job will be next time. You just need to start. The choice is yours but I do know how happy you’ll feel with a clean home. You’ll want friends and family to just show up! Wouldn’t that feel great!

Do you have any other ways to get motivated to clean?

Don’t forget to pick your favorite pin to reference later: