6 Apps That Will Make Cleaning Easy (Or At Least More Bearable)
As much as you might be horrified to see your weekly screen time update, you probably know a handful of apps you can’t imagine (or don’t want to imagine) living your life without. You might even have them divided into folders for work, home, entertainment, food, and shopping—for a good reason—because there seems to be an app for basically everything.
Even when it comes to cleaning and housework, there are apps that are designed to make the work feel easier. Now that so many of people are spending more time in their homes than ever, it’s harder to ignore those pesky household chores.
“It’s super important to prioritize not just a clean kitchen or living space, but also clean indoor air,” says Allison Evans, the co-founder of nontoxic cleaning brand Branch Basics. For Evans, this means focusing on products with non-toxic ingredients. For you, spending more time at home might mean that you finally do the deep clean you’ve been putting off when it comes to your kitchen appliances. Or maybe it means rethinking how you divide household chores between you and your partner. Whatever you’re hoping to focus on when it comes to cleaning, though, there’s likely an app that can help.
Best for People Who Want to Delegate Chores in Their Family: OurHome
Do you share your home with people who have trouble feeling motivated to help? Try OurHome, which makes it easy to divide household chores between family members and keep track of who’s getting their work done. It also makes it easy to reward people for completing tasks. One reviewer wrote, “I’ve downloaded this app to keep track of chores and behavior. With a family of 7 it can get hectic at times. This app has allowed me to customize tasks for point values and also customize wrong behavior for subtracting points.” If a family of seven can master it, you can too.
Best for People Who Want to Avoid Toxic Ingredients: ThinkDirty
ThinkDirty is an app with more than 22,000 reviews and an average rating of 4.8 stars, so… clearly people love it. And this includes Evans from Branch Basics, who says she loves the app and avoids using products in her home that rank higher than Zero on the app. “To dramatically improve your indoor air quality, vet your products before you buy them with a third-party that fact-checks for toxic ingredients,” Evans suggests. If that sounds like something you’d like to do while cleaning, try out ThinkDirty.
Best for People Who Want to Outsource Work: Takl
Have you been avoiding power washing the deck? Cutting the lawn? Deep cleaning your garage? Whatever you want to do (or… don’t want to do?), there’s likely someone who’s willing to do it for you for a price. Takl helps you find people who are willing to take on household chores for payment. With more than 3,000 reviews and 4.8 stars, people really love this app. If you’re able to hire someone to take on some cleaning work for you in a socially distanced manner, why not book someone?
Best for People Who Suck at Laundry: Laundry Day
Do you never know what to do with your laundry? Cold water? Hot water? All whites? All colors? Dry cleaning? Not dry cleaning? Air dry? It can be confusing. That’s why Laundry Day exists—to read those labels on clothing that we all often ignore or misinterpret entirely. This app has less than 50 reviews, but still has a solid 4.4 rating in the app store, which is always a good sign.
Best for People Who Love a To-Do List: Tody
Tody is rated 13th in productivity in the app store (out of all apps), so you know that it’s a good one. According to the App Store, Tody is “a smarter to-do list for managing household cleaning routines. It will optimize and motivate your cleaning.” If you love a to-do list and hate cleaning, this one’s for you.
Best for People Who Can’t Get Their Kids to Do Chores: Homey
Homey is a pretty similar concept to Our Home, but if you are specifically trying to motivate your younger children to do chores, this one might be a slightly better option (though Our Home does have slightly better reviews overall). As one reviewer wrote in their 5-star review, “This has been the first app that got my kids doing chores consistently, and without me nagging.”