GET YOUR HOME ON AN AUTOMATIC CLEAN BY PUTTING THESE FOUR ROUTINES IN PLACE.

This post is a continuation from a previous post called 3 Things to Do in The Morning to Keep Your Home Clean. So if you haven’t read that, make sure you check it out here.

Now, if you read the previous post, you would’ve heard me mention that I’m a morning person. And whilst that has its benefits, one of its negatives is that, come the evening, I am dead!

I have almost zero energy left and the very last thing I wanna be doing when I’m tired is cleaning.

So I’ll be the first to admit, that my evening routine is still a work in progress. I don’t do it every night, but I’m slowly working my way towards it. And that’s the best we can do – make progress. However small. And I firmly believe that you can make the progress you need to create an evening routine that helps to keep your home clean.

So, without further ado;

4 things to do in the evening to keep your home clean

1. Wash the dishes

This is an important one and one that I’m still working at achieving each night. But it’s important because resetting your kitchen in the evening allows you to wake up with a kitchen that’s ready for the day ahead. And since the kitchen is often said to be the heart of the home, this room is very important.

I particularly find this job hard on the nights when I come home after midnight from a gig. And because I’m the primary dishwasher in my home, it seems that this job always falls to me!

We don’t have a dishwasher, so doing the dishes means standing at the sink and washing every last piece by hand…. {sigh!}. Not something I wanna be doing at 1 or 2 AM after work!

But, if I’m good with this task, then it usually happens right after we’ve eaten (and when I’m not out gigging). I find that I have more energy to give right after our evening meal. So if I can capitalise on that and do the dishes straight away, then I’m golden and I love waking up to a clean and empty kitchen sink!

The problem comes when I get up from the dining table and go somewhere to sit down, like the living room, or my bedroom. Because when that happens, I ain’t movin’! I pretty much power down and my energy reserves magically disappear!

2. Wipe down the kitchen counters

It may seem that washing the dishes and wiping down the kitchen counters go hand-in-hand. But many people (in my own home even), don’t see these as part of the same job. So I’m listing it as a separate task, because it’s equally as important as washing the dishes in the evening.

Taking a few minutes to wipe down the counters after the last meal of the day makes waking up in the morning a much more pleasant experience.

Often, after I’ve cleared all the dishes off the counters, I’ll give them a good squirt with my anti-bacterial spray and let that sit there for a while whilst I get on with washing the dishes.

Then, when I’m finished with the dishes I can quickly wipe the counters down. And it’s much faster to clean when the dried on pasta sauce has been soaking for a while!

3. Do a quick pick-up

Doing a quick 15-minute pick-up in the main living areas of your home helps to reset your home for the next day. This job just involves picking up anything lying around on the floor or that has collected on surfaces and needs to be put away.

Basically, you’re resetting your main living areas. And this can include straightening your sofa cushions, ensuring backpacks or shoes aren’t left cluttering the entry. And reversing any damage control on the activities you’ve had going on during the day.

This job is vital if you have kids. And if you have kids who are old enough to help, get them involved in this one. You’d be surprised how quickly this can be done when many hands are pitching in! It might take you a lot less than fifteen minutes.

When we do this in our house, one of our main priorities is clearing the floor. That’s because our floor sees a lot of action with 3 kids at home all day!

4. Wipe the bathroom sink and toilet

This might not be a task you may have wanted me to list as one to do each night. But if you haven’t been doing this one, I challenge you to start!

Giving your toilet seat a quick wipe down and squirt with toilet cleaner, and wiping your bathroom sink down at night means that when you wake up in the morning, one of the first things you’ll see is a sparkling bathroom sink. And that’s highly energising (especially if you’ve not been doing it before)!

This is one of the last clean up jobs I do in my home in the evening. It’s last on my list because I do it when I’m getting ready for bed. Since I’ve got to brush my teeth and wash my face, it makes sense to knock out two birds with one stone.

I keep wipes and toilet cleaner in my bathroom sink cupboard. That way everything I need is right there to do the job. It takes me about 2 minutes to do the whole thing (toilet and sink). And that’s because I do it daily and so toothpaste hasn’t had the chance to build up and harden into a cement-like crust.

If you haven’t cleaned your bathroom sink in a while, you might want to first clean it with a scouring sponge and some cream cleaner. But once you’ve done that, the daily maintenance of a quick wipe down can be done in seconds!

If you’d like to know how you can get your entire home cleaned up in 2 hours, then make sure you grab my free Speed Cleaning Checklist below!

In summary

If you want a home that pretty much cleans itself, you need to get into some good cleaning habits. In particular, you need to create an evening routine that helps to keep your home clean. And the jobs that I’ve mentioned in this post will help you to do that.

The only way our homes will ever stay tidy is if we never lived in them! So, it goes without saying that these basic household maintenance jobs will always be a part of daily life. We may as well make them automatic!

Other posts you may like:

• 3 Things to Do in the Morning to Keep Your Home Clean

• Help to Get Your Home Organised for Good

• 10 Powerful Tips to Help You Stick to a Routine