We Have Proof: All You Need for a Clean Home is 10 Minutes a Day
We’re all busy, but we can probably all spare 10 minutes or so, right? Just a few minutes a day is all you need to keep your home clean and in order—and if you don’t believe it, we’ve got proof.
The guide you need to turn you into a believer? “Simply Clean,” a new book out this year by Becky Rapinchuk (aka Clean Mama). The books’s aim: “keeping your home organized, clean, and beautiful in just 10 minutes a day”—and it certainly delivers.
Part 1 of the book starts with a breakdown of what you should be cleaning daily, weekly, and monthly—you already know that some things need to be done every day (like dishes) while other things can be done month to month (like cleaning out your freezer). “Simply Clean” lays it all out there to make it a little easier for you and prove that you don’t need to devote as much time to homekeeping tasks as you think you do. The daily tasks include things like making the bed and wiping the counters, while you can see the weekly breakdown below.
Monday: Bathroom Cleaning Day
Tuesday: Dusting Day
Wednesday: Vacuuming Day
Thursday: Floor Washing Day
Friday: Catch-all Day
Each day features a brief explanation of what to do, along with a “quick tip” to make your life a little easier while you’re at it. Tuesday’s quick tip, for example, is below:
If you like the spray-and-wipe dusting method for furniture, spray directly on a microfiber cloth and dust to shine. This will avoid overspray on floors and it will keep you from using more spray than you need to. Look for a nontoxic furniture spray so you avoid that waxy buildup that eventually ruins furniture.
Friday’s Catch-all Day just means it’s the day that you do anything that you may have skipped or any miscellaneous other tasks you need to take care of.
What’s especially great, along with all the plans and detailed how-tos, is Rapinchuk’s attitude about cleaning. “Simply Clean” opens with blurbs about why her method works, how to avoid feeling overwhelmed, how to prioritize and set goals for your home, and another important concept: the idea of learning to embrace a little messiness. “Your home will most likely never be show-ready all the time,” Rapinchuk writes. “Life is messy.”
Along with the daily, weekly and monthly routines laid out in the first part of the book for cleaning in just a few minutes a day, Rapinchuk shares a 7-day cleaning kickstart in Part 2 which covers general decluttering as well as taking care of the bathrooms, dusting, vacuuming, and more. Part 3 is a 28-day cleaning challenge that goes room by room with smaller tasks to get your home thoroughly clean and organized in a month. And Part 4 is all about customizing the “Simply Clean” method for you and breaking tasks up into monthly focuses.
If you really want to up your cleaning game, Parts 5 and 6 have basically everything you could ever want to know about cleaning. Part 5 is entitled “How to Clean and Organize (Just About) Anything” for a reason—it’s 74 (yes, 74!) pages of instructions and tips on how to do exactly that, so you never have to wonder how to get something done ever again. And for those of you who want to DIY your cleaning routine, Part 6 is for you—it’s filled with cleaning recipes to try and everything you need to know about DIY cleaning.
“Simply Clean” by Becky Rapinchuk is available on Amazon.