Quick Tip: Clean Only What Needs Cleaning

Something that a lot of people do when they think about getting organized is to make a schedule for themselves and their household. A common mistake is to make scheduled cleanings mandatory. The truth is, if you want to save time and be as efficient as you can with the running of your household, most cleaning should only be done on an as needed basis.

Cleaning to a schedule wastes time and effort that could be better saved for those things that actually need to be done.

If your floors are clean, skip the sweeping and choose to run a dust mop under the large furniture.

Have a few spots on your kitchen floor? Get a washcloth, get down on the floor and wash them the same way you would wash your counters. There’s no need to mop your entire house or even an entire room if spot mopping dirty spots will freshen your floors and save you half an hour of time you can use to clean toilets, dust baseboards, or clear counters and tabletops.

Many of the cleaning tasks that people put off can be done in place of these everyday tasks that can be skipped when they aren’t necessary. Things like clean baseboards, clear counters, and shiny glass can give a house that spotless look that most people so desperately want.

Neatness also pays huge dividends when it comes to making a house look cleaner with less effort.

I use these techniques to keep my house clean with as little effort as possible. Give it a try.

Don’t Forget to Manage Your Household Finances!

Quicken Deluxe 2012 is an easy to use, reliable software solution for managing your household finances. If you're ready to save time and money by taking better care of your home finance issues, you might want to try Quicken.

Quicken is from Intuit, the company behind Mint.com. If you prefer an online only solution to managing money and don't need the detail that desktop money management software can give you, you should try Mint. I recently revisited Mint because of the useful Mint Android app. It's the easy way to keep up with your account balances on the go. I do still use the discontinued Microsoft Money but am in the process of switching to YNAB (for budgeting), which I'll write about soon.

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