Cleaning

Using technology to help manage the household can add up to a good amount of time and money saved—not to mention a significant reduction in things (paper calendars and planners) and clutter (all those papers!). Here are the top four apps I’d hate to live without. YNAB stands for “you need a budget.” And let me just say: You do. You can read more of my thoughts in Basics of a Household Budget that Works.

Keep the house clean with display-worthy supplies you’ll be jazzed to use every time. Well, perhaps not jazzed, but certainly a bit more chipper about the tasks at hand… Dish Brush, Anthropologie, $12 All-Natural Laundry Kit, Food52, $33 Eco-Friendly Cleaning Kit, Food52, $20 Cleaning Pail, Williams-Sonoma, $49.95 Downright Festive Duster, Kaufmann Mercantile, $21 Copper Sponges, McGovern Home, £10/set of 2 Casabella Sponges, Target, $4.

If your favorite part of cleaning is when it’s over, then listen up, lazybones. You can do less work and still have a clean and tidy house if you set up these strategies ahead of time to diminish dirt, wrangle clutter and keep yourself on track. It’s sooo much easier to prevent dirt from coming inside than it is to clean it up afterwards.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing has revolutionized my thinking about decluttering and spurred me to action in a way that, for once, doesn’t feel like I’m spinning my wheels. Marie Kondo tells us to ask one question when deciding what to keep: “Does it spark joy?” and I’ve been asking this while going through my entire wardrobe. Here’s why I think it’s the best decluttering question ever.

Try as I might to achieve that perfect pantry look (you all know what I’m talking about), I still have errant boxes of cake mix and plastic bags of who-knows-what-anymore from the bulk bin. Recently, the hodge-podge of things I knew I had but couldn’t find and the creeping lack of space drove me to the point of yet another Great Big, Real-Life Pantry Cleanup.

Not all painters are created equal — especially those who ch0ose to slop paint over beautiful, antique hardware. It may seem like a daunting task to return those beautiful bits to their original glory, but don’t be fooled. Homeowners and renters alike can remedy this problem with just a few supplies, none of which are toxic. If you live in an old apartment building you’ve probably got interesting design details hiding in your hardware just beneath a few layers of paint.

Ah, spring: when a young man’s fancy turns to beating rugs and scrubbing the crisper. And no, those aren’t euphemisms, but chores that are infinitely easier to accomplish now that going outdoors won’t result in certain death. Some of these require access to a hose, but there’s hope for apartment-dwellers, too… I am stupidly excited about finally getting to scrub down the recycling can we keep in our pantry.

Do you dread the job of cleaning home? Rather pass on tackling chores? Do you view such tasks as scrubbing and mopping as the most boring and unappealing things ever? Do you either fail to get started (putting cleaning off until things are really bad) or do you run out of energy before finishing everything on your to-do list? You might need to rearrange the order of what cleaning tasks you tackle first. Have you ever heard of something called job crafting?

Newcomers to my home can’t ever find my paper towels. That’s because they’re hidden in the pantry so the cloth towels and rags I have are the first line of defense against spills and messes that need to be wiped. Here’s how I use cloth and when even I reach for a paper towel. When and Why I Use Cloth I use a rag for wiping off the kitchen counters and the table.

I’ve ruined a lot of great clothes in my life and most of them could have been saved had I known a few handy laundry facts before I embarked upon my trial-and-error method of clothing care. Official warning: don’t make my mistakes! Don’t do this stuff anymore.

One doesn’t always factor in cleaning when thinking about your home’s budget. But all those cleaning tools, cleaners, supplies and more can add up if you’re not careful. If you’re on a tight (or non-existent) cleaning budget but want an always-tidy, always-fresh space, consider these ideas for staying clean without a lot of green.

Having a home that’s generally in order pretty consistently— not to be confused with “perfect all the time”— is in large part a matter of habit. One such habit which has tremendous impact is one I call “completing the cycle.” Here’s how you can practice it at home. Completing the cycle is a synergistic mix of Leaving Things As You Found Them and Not Leaving Things That Can Be Done Now For Later.

Sometimes, our homes can overwhelm us. What should be a place of retreat and comfort becomes bloated with items not needed, styles experimented with and abandoned, and projects started but never completed. While a good Spring Clean (whenever it happens) is always welcome, sometimes you want to go even further than that and streamline your style, too. Read on for our Minimalist Manifesto, and for ideas on how to simplify your home.

Whether you’ve got a trusted cleaning routine that keeps your home in tip-top shape or not, there are six things you should never let go uncleaned, not even for a day (barring vacation and illness, of course). Every day, take a few moments to tackle this handful of cleaning tasks — you’ll live in a cleaner home for it! You’ve heard it said before — don’t let those dishes pile up.

Get easily bored or completely distracted when you try to clean your house? You’re not alone. When some folks try to do too much at one time or try to tackle too many tasks in one session, cleaning can end up abandoned. But there’s a type of cleaning routine for folks just like you that will help you stick to cleaning tasks, keep the momentum going and leave you with a whole clean house each week. See if it’s something that might fit your lifestyle (or cleaning personality)!

Cleaning bathrooms, ugh right? No one likes to do it, and certainly no one likes to spend a ton of time doing it. So take as little time as possible to clean yours by checking out this complete guide — all the tools you’ll need and the order in which to tackle tasks — so you can get the toilet scrubbing done quickly and get back to living life.

Whether you love it or you’re so sick of hearing about it, there’s no denying that The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up has impacted a great many people. But the book’s overall message isn’t new—we all know how good it feels to shed things. What Marie Kondo has given us, what’s changed so many of our lives, is the language that empowers us to do what we’ve wanted to do all along.

Everybody poops- let’s just get that out of the way. So when that blessed event occurs, and it happens to clog the toilet on its way down, be prepared to defend your bathroom’s honor with a plunger and the proper skills with which to use it. Plunger Rubber gloves Safety glasses 1. To stop the water from overflowing, turn the water off at the valve. 2. If there isn’t any water in the bowl, you’ll need to add some.

We’re coming up on sweater weather, y’all. While you’re slowly changing out your closet – pulling those cool-weather clothes out of under-bed storage and trying to sartorially navigate between the seasons – you might find your closet getting a bit tighter with all your bulky knits. The solution? Slim down your sweater collection to your most favorite and best-built pieces, then take really good care of them.

Whether your tackle the cleaning yourself or this is a chore you choose to outsource, we could all use a virtual snooze button for our deep clean routine. To make your time spent cleaning even more effective, take these small steps to keep your spotless home looking clean longer. Get doormats for every door and use them religiously. I know you want a chic doormat that fits with your vibe, but this is not a place to sacrifice function for fashion.

There are plenty of habits everyone should adopt to keep a home reasonably clean and tidy. Here are ten worth practicing in any size home, but especially vital for people living in small spaces when even a small amount of clutter can make your home look and feel messy. Make your bed each morning. In a small room, the bed may take up half the space or more so if it’s not made it will look unkempt even if everything else is in order.

Not everybody cleans the same way. Some people like to let things pile up, then do big clean sweeps, spread out over time (or at least right before company comes over). Others–who may be the “tidier” of the two–clean a little at a time, chipping away at tiny messes as they go along. This list is for folks who identify with the former, but who aspire to be a little more like the latter.

First it was the painting I accidentally knocked off the wall (and for some odd reason didn’t rehang right away). Then it was the Halloween decorations I managed to take down but not put back into storage. When I noticed that my junk drawer was too full to stuff my scissors back into, I just set them on top of my counter and walked away. Then I got really busy one week and skipped vacuuming under my sofa (I think the cat fur-fueled dust bunnies have started growing personalities).

There are a wealth of household items that get used and re-used throughout the year, but mostly in the background. They’re not a staple of your tidying routine, though, and actually might actually be kinda filthy by now. Whether it’s been a week, a month or several years since you last took a close look at these things, read down the list and consider to yourself if these unsung heroes of your home need a deep clean (or a trip to the trash bin).

I get it—it’s cold out and all you want to do after work is get under a blanket with a hot cocoa and a good book. Why on earth would anyone want to spring clean in winter? Well, here are five very good reasons why… 1. You just got a whole bunch of stuff over the holidays. Moms and dads of the world, you probably know what I’m talking about: your lucky kids might have recently acquired a mountain of new toys.

Ever open the door of your kid’s room and think: oh my, there is just too much stuff in here? Well today—seriously, today—let’s throw some of that junk away. Here’s where to start: 1. Recycle papers from school. Not everything is a masterpiece. Not everything will even be noticed if it is gone. Kids bring home reams upon reams of paper from school. Fight back. Recycle. 2. Throw out broken crayons. No kid draws with broken crayons.

I vacillate, when it comes to grout. Sometimes it’s que sera, sera, and sometimes it’s all-out war: baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, OxiClean, toothbrushes, grout brushes, elbow grease, and five million moppings to clean the residue with fans to speed drying times in between rounds. But ever since I’ve discovered this completely awesome way of cleaning grout, I almost look forward to doing it, and really, it’s another kind of life-changing magic.

There are a lot of places stuff can pile up on in the kitchen. From the counters (bills, kitchen supplies, dirty dishes) to the sink to even the floor, there’s one place that doesn’t often get considered when it comes to kitchen decluttering. However this spot, when cleared off, can have a profound effect on your kitchen feeling a lot less hectic and a lot more controlled.

Maybe it’s the Dutch in her, I don’t know, but my mom is spic-and-span. And even though my room as a teenager nudged her toward apoplexy (sorry, Mom), I’m happy to report that all those years under her tutelage and example worked. These days, she even tells me not to be so neurotic about how I fold my laundry. (Note to self: consider whether said neurosis contributes to this.

Preparation is the key to success. The next time your favorite sweater shrinks or you smear sauce on your sleeve at dinner, instead of furiously Googling for a solution, you’ll remain cool, calm and collected because you committed these five in-a-pinch laundry hacks to memory. No garment steamer? No problem. If your clothes are just a bit more wrinkled than you’d like them to be, don’t break out the iron, just use your dryer (if you’re lucky enough to have one at home).

If you’re feeling the spring clean and refresh bug, but haven’t yet made any progress on your goals, consider applying some performance boosting methods adapted from spring training to your home field. A clean, refreshed, and re-styled space is a serious mood boost. Carving out the time and energy to tackle it all, however, can make you want to throw the towel in before you even get started.

Despite an unpleasant childhood experience involving a tire swing and a hornets’ nest, I’m not terribly bothered by the wasps’ nests that came with our new house. However, a certain member of my family is not so blasé about our buzzing neighbors, so I’m determined to make our summer wasp-free. Here’s how… Set up wasp’s-nest decoys. They mimic real nests and trick the wasps into nesting elsewhere.

If you’ve taken a trip to the beach recently, you know first-hand the magic that natural sea salt can work on your skin and hair. It’s a wonder ingredient at home, too. Just try out one of these natural house cleaning remedies and recipes from around the web. Chances are, you have everything you need to “cook” one together right in your pantry.

Summer weekends are made for sipping blueberry lemonade while wearing wide-brimmed hats and no shoes under the caress of a warm breeze — not cleaning! Here’s how to make sure you enjoy yourself on your free summer days without giving up a clean house. The key to making sure you’re not cleaning on the weekend is simple: make sure you get your cleaning tasks done during the week! Here’s a gameplan for staying on track.

Maybe you know a clean freak. Maybe you are one. In either case, you know that the people who lead spotless, uncluttered lives have very simple needs: Just spray bottles, a cleaning checklist and a doormat that delivers sass to anyone who dares not to take off their shoes inside the house. Use these to mark down little to-clean lists all over the place. $3.75 for 40 from Honeyinked You can also mark specific tasks with little icons on your calendar with these. Washing Machines, $3.

There is nothing more glorious than jumping into the water on a hot summer day, and while the crispy hair, dry skin, and faded swimsuits are more than worth the relief that chlorinated or salty water provides, they can be avoided by following these 14 tips. My personal tip would be to wear your suit into a cool post-swim shower. Once you feel thoroughly rinsed, take off your suit and turn the water up to a comfortable temperature.

If you’ve already invested in a Nest Learning Thermostat ($249) or have read about the smart device, you likely know about some of the perks—but not all of them. Nest allows you to turn up the AC from your iPhone when you’re about to head home on summer’s hottest day, open utility bills that have dropped significantly thanks to the smart Auto-Away mode, and just generally live in a world where the temperature is perfectly regulated at all times.

There are a lot of things to love about summertime—vacations, movies, warm weather and that DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince song, chief among them. But we all know how those other summer staples—sweat, stink and sunburns—are the enemy of a good time. You don’t need to stay cooped up inside all summer long to battle the elements, you just need a handful of cheap beauty and cleaning hacks in your arsenal (and in your purse). Do you have any summer survival tips?

If you live with clinical depression, you know that sometimes even just getting out of bed can be a struggle, let alone tackling household chores. Every little thing feels like the world’s biggest hurdle, and sometimes you just feel nothing at all. And the whole “I’ll do it later” thing wouldn’t be such a problem if watching a mess pile up around your home didn’t make you feel even worse.

Doing laundry may be a basic household chore, but if you live in a small apartment in a major city, having an in-unit washer and dryer is a huge luxury. You might be lucky enough to have a laundry room in your building or complex, but it’s more likely that you’re on your own with your dirty clothes. Fortunately, you don’t have to lug your things to the nearest laundromat if you don’t want to.

When you think of essential oils, you probably think about aromatherapy. Sure, they smell amazing, but essential oils can also come in quite handy when it comes to cleaning your home. From degreasing your stove to de-germing your kids’ stuffed animals, here are 7 ways you can clean your home with essential oils—their uses might surprise you! Lavender does more than just smell and look lovely—the purple plant has natural antibacterial properties, too.

Here’s a dirty little secret of the most chill people you know: They get overwhelmed and frazzled, just like you, but the difference is that they’ve cultivated a personal set of tricks that help them cool down when things get tough.

When was the last time you wiped down your curling iron or cleaned out the back of your hair dryer? If you can’t remember—or you didn’t even know that was a thing you had to do in the first place—then it’s definitely time for a deep clean before your next styling sesh. Notice how the vent on the back of your blow dryer tends to fill up with lint over time? The good news is cleaning it out is simple. The bad news?

Confession time: My body and I have a long, sordid love-hate relationship. I’ve dealt with chronic illness and body image issues for as long as I can remember—I was always somehow too sick or too big or too small in my mind, and I was never forgiving or kind enough to myself when I needed it most. And over the years, my struggles with my body became very much personified in my wardrobe.

You love your pet more than anything else in the world, but let’s face it—your favorite furry friends can make quite the mess in your home. Between weird smells, stubborn stains, and shedding hair everywhere, cleaning up after your four-legged best friends can feel kind of impossible sometimes. You can live cleanly and peacefully with your pets, it’s just a matter of having the right products in your cleaning arsenal and the right tricks up your sleeve.

Who would imagine that a professional organizer would buy a home that has very little built-in storage? What would be a deal breaker for many buyers became a welcome challenge for the de-cluttering guru and talented DIYer Tami Hills. The owner of Nola Clutter Busters, whose home we recently featured as a house tour, shares some of her simple storage solutions with us. As an organizer, I’m NOT a fan of using plastic storage containers if they are visible.

One of the greatest mysteries in life? Figuring out where your other sock always disappears to in the wash. If it seems like you lose yet another sock with every load of laundry you do, you’re not alone. There are plenty of uses for those orphan socks you’ve already got lying around—but if you want to try to keep the rest of your socks together to avoid future laundry losses, these simple tips should help.

Dogs are messy, no doubt about it. In fact, when you’re a dog owner, it feels like you’re constantly cleaning—every day finding new, surprise places where dog dirt seems to accumulate. If you’re a new dog owner—or you’ve just been blissfully unaware of some of the hidden areas that have been hoarding hair and filth—here’s a list to get you started. Pay extra attention to these spots the next time you’re cleaning.

Stuff. We spend a lot of energy and money acquiring it…and we spend a lot of time looking around our homes and wondering “How the heck did I get all this stuff?” If you are tired of the push and pull of stuff in your life, consider these simple stuff truths by a design expert who absolutely aces storage, stuff and style in a small studio apartment.

No matter how much you love them—and, oh, how you love them—dogs get stinky. Between the dander, the slobber, the dear-god-what-did-they-eat and the I-can’t-believe-what-they-rolled-in, dogs have a unique way of filling your home with unwelcome odors. Those smells are bad enough when you have a few thousand square feet to spread out in, but when your home is on the small side, odors become especially odious.

There are a lot of places in your home where dust, mold and other hidden allergens can get trapped and trigger allergic reactions and asthma attacks. Whether you yourself have asthma or you live with someone who does, here are nine things to do so you can breathe easier (…literally!) According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, cockroaches carry a protein that is a common allergen for many people, and can trigger asthma attacks.

If your happy place is walking around with a P-Touch label maker, assigning a tag to every notebook, binder and bin around the house, here’s how to bring your organization game up to speed. From printed fabric tags to Cricut vinyl canister labels, these modern DIY labels put a name to every last place in your home.

Colie and her husband’s Minneapolis rental isn’t super tiny — at 781 square feet it’s perfectly adequate for two people. But the place they moved from had more space, 1150 square feet. While the jump down in size wasn’t tremendous, the act of downsizing is always difficult, and it was even tougher in this case thanks to a serious lack of storage. Colie shares her experience and four tips to making downsizing a little less painful.

Instructions are important to pay attention to, especially when it’s laundry time. You might think that measly little tag inside your favorite sweater doesn’t offer any sound advice, but in reality, the future of your wardrobe might depend on it. You see, many of us take the words “Dry-Clean Only” as a slight suggestion, when they need to be read literally (should you want to preserve the life of your garments). And yet, just because a tag recommends dry-cleaning (i.e.

No household chore is particularly fun, but few things are more stressful than doing laundry when you’ve gone so long between washes that you’re on your last pair of underwear. It’s like waiting until you’re on your last fork to do the dishes—it doesn’t seem like an issue until you realize you’ve got nothing left, and then suddenly it’s a disaster.

The other day I had to recycle two shoe boxes. They were very nice boxes, and it damn near killed me. Hello. My name is Nancy Mitchell, and I am a box hoarder. I know we sometimes throw that term around, but if the definition of hoarding is that you’re unable to properly identify which things are valuable and which aren’t, I think it fits my condition, at least when it comes to boxes.

When your freezer is clean and organized, cooking gets easier: you can see what food you actually have, less food gets freezer burn, and you’re better equipped to face weekday meals. While it’s still cold out, take advantage of nature’s icebox and stick your frozen foods outside while you give your freezer one a good scrub down. But wait!

When you it’s time to buckle down and get organized, not knowing where to start or what to do can leave you feeling totally defeated—and getting out from under whatever it is that’s overwhelming you can seem impossible. For some people, keeping things clean and organized and staying on top of the chores is just another part of their routine to breeze right through.

Your dog needs a bath. You don’t. You also don’t need a wet bathroom floor. Or muddy paw prints all over your carpet. And certainly no stand off pitting damp-and-grumpy you versus grouchy-and-dripping-wet Fido. Instead, you can make doggy bath time stress-free and mess-free. Follow the five tips below to keep your home and your pet nice and clean.

The idea of spring cleaning is daunting — a whole season devoted to ambitious housework. So this week we’re breaking up home maintenance into a bunch of workable parts. Try combining everyday chores with these 20-minute tasks: things you only have to deal with occasionally. The best news is that they really only take minutes each: it’s spring cleaning for people who hate spring cleaning.

A few weeks ago, after waking up with neck pain for the third day in a row, I realized it might finally be time for a new pillow. I wasn’t happy about it — I loved my pillow dearly. But it was lumpy, and it leaked feathers every time I leaned against it, and under its case it was the mottled yellow color of a mummy’s wrappings. It was also, I realized, approximately 15 years old. This seemed, potentially, very gross.

There are some debates that loom large in the annals of Apartment Therapy, and this is one of them.

In an effort to green their clean routines, some Apartment Therapy staffers are taking on small shifts at home, replacing their usual products and tools with more eco-friendly versions. Anyone who watches Shark Tank knows about Bambooee towels. In fact, while I had our roll sitting on the counter waiting to take this challenge on, my husband couldn’t resist shouting “BAMBOOEE!” (in co-founder Noam Krasniansky’s contagious accent) every time he walked into our kitchen.

If you’ve ever wondered why spring cleaning came to be such a staple of the homekeeping zeitgeist, you should know that climate and cleaning have a long and storied relationship. It isn’t arbitrary that we take on a massive deep clean of our homes in the springtime, it’s almost destiny. The mild weather of spring simply makes cleaning easier.

Is there anyone not embarrassed by yellow pillows? Because those stale drool marks and vaguely head-shaped grease shadows gross me out. I’ve done the whole whiten-your-pillows schtick and it was super satisfying. But when we recently replaced our master bedroom pillows, I was determined to keep them snowy white from the start. Enter waterproof pillow covers, which, aside from keeping your pillows pristine, bestow other (arguably more important) benefits.

The slow movement has crept into our cooking and our shopping, why not embrace the slow life when it comes to housekeeping, too? It’s true: You can tackle your spring cleaning—that big, hairy, audacious task that turns up this time each year—without a lot of time or fuss. Focus on one (small) area at a time, and check that thing off your to-do list for the day.

I’ve always thought you could tell a lot about someone by looking inside their refrigerator. And that’s why, for some of you, today’s spring cleaning task might be easier than for others. If your fridge contains the bare minimum—some takeout containers and a bottle of ketchup—you could be done in 5 minutes. If you’re a regular cook, you might need the full 20.

For today’s spring cleaning assignment, you’ll need to grab a few common supplies and head to the bathroom. The task itself shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, but you’ll need to pick a time when the shower in your home doesn’t have to be serviceable. If you’re lucky enough to have more than one, you can stagger your efforts throughout the day. Even Ellen and her eight bathrooms could get them all done with 20 minutes of actual effort.

I hate doing the dishes and never have anyone over because it gets to levels no human should ever see. Can or should I get a countertop dishwasher? Will my landlord hate me? What if I don’t have any countertop for it? You could totally get a countertop dishwasher. There are even non-countertop versions, too. For instance, The Sweethome recommends this portable dishwasher on wheels, for $450.

Over on a Reddit thread about items that can and can’t be BIFL (bought for life), there’s a series of comments about what makes towels (and sheets, and duvet covers) good enough to last a lifetime. They come from Reddit user (and fabric expert) JessthePest (all of whose comments are delightful, if you care to spend a morning falling down various Reddit rabbit holes). I recommend the entire towel thread, as well as her extended sheets manifesto.

Considering how much attention as your home computer likely gets, I bet most of the time your gaze is focused on a browser screen instead of the area around your machine. Although it’s not always an item on everyone’s spring cleaning checklist, I want you to take 20 minutes today and focus on your home office area—whether your setup is a compact corner or a room unto itself.

There is a reason great artists spend so much time preparing their canvases: a clean, smooth slate allows all their creativity to shine. It’s true, also, for you and your home. You care for your space and take pride in decorating it, so why let tiny blemishes scar the surface?