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If you’re anything like most homeowners then you love the feeling of having a clean home without necessarily loving the cleaning itself. After all, household chores are time-consuming, exhausting, and always comes undone faster than you’d like. But, what if we were to tell you that you can boost the love and lose a lot of the hate from your cleaning routine at last?
After all, the fact that you get an undeniable sense of relief after a good clean means that there is something positive for you to take here. All you need to do is consider how you can offset the stress and struggles that you put in to achieve it, thus making those results even more satisfying. If that sounds like the ideal cleaning solution for you, then keep on reading to discover a few surprisingly simple steps that can help you make it happen.
Make Household Chores Fun
# 1 – Simplify the tough stuff
Traditionally tough cleaning tasks like scrubbing your dirty pans or cleaning your gas stove are not only the most time-consuming, but they also tend to be less pleasant in the grand scheme of cleaning. It’s certainly not unusual to end up with things like blisters on your hands because of how hard you’ve had to work here. As a result, these are the tasks that you inevitably dread the most, and that you most need to simplify to make for a better cleaning routine moving forward.
Luckily, this is simple to achieve and largely comes down to investment in the right products. Dish soap like Joy that cuts through grease, for instance, can significantly reduce the effort you need to put into getting even encrusted pans clean. Meanwhile, a pack of high-quality scrubbing cloths are far more likely to make easy work of even hard-to-reach parts of your stove. In turn, you could well start to feel satisfied rather than filled with dread when you think about even these hard parts.
# 2 – Inject enjoyment into the process
So far, you enjoy the results of cleaning but not the cleaning itself, so it follows that you could also benefit from injecting enjoyment into the cleaning process. Given that you’re obviously not one of those people that just likes to get stuck in, this most often means making room for additional features to your cleaning routine that can transform the experience.
A great example of this would be to listen to music as you do household chores, which more people than ever are finding helps them to have fun even while they work. Equally, other people benefit from listening to things like self-care podcasts which help them engage in a little self-meditation or reflection while completing repetitive tasks. Equally, getting stuck into an audiobook that you only ever listen to while cleaning could soon see you desperate to get back to this task so that you can find out what happens next.
# 3 – Run on a regular rotation
The less we enjoy cleaning, the more we put the task off until it can’t wait anymore. Unfortunately, the less you clean, the more time and energy you’ll need to spend on this task when you do get around to it. With that in mind, it’s hardly surprising that you hate this job so much!
By comparison, keeping on top with a regular cleaning rota that sustains you across the entire week can make for a far easier, quicker cleaning experience in general. In fact, if you keep on top of things well enough, you should find that you can achieve the same satisfying levels of cleanness in as little as half an hour compared to the two tough hours you spend right now. As such, you’re far more likely to associate cleaning sessions with feeling good, instead of collapsing in an exhausted heap on your couch every time.
# 4 – Incentivize your efforts
A clean house is the best cleaning incentive you could hope for, but with this reward often fading as fast as it comes, it’s also worth adding a little extra incentive to brighten your household chores. Obviously, with cleaning being something that you need to do at least once a week (but preferably more as per the last point), you won’t want to go mad here with something like a new handbag every time you get the sink shiny, but there are still plenty of fun ways to reward your efforts here.
Something small, like promising yourself an episode of your latest Netflix binge once you’re finished, could be all it takes. Equally, you could turn this into a competition against yourself and set up a scoreboard that leads to a more substantial reward once you meet certain timings, etc. Either way, making this association between cleaning and something pleasant in your mind is going to make you a whole lot less reluctant to get around to this in the future.
# 5 – Make it a social affair
Above all else, cleaning can be horrible because it takes us away from socialization with our friends or loved ones after a long day. As such, another great way to fall fully in love with this task is to simply make it a social affair.
Let’s say you live with your partner, for instance. As well as speeding up the entire process (which is a plus in itself), having them clean the room next to you while you get to work provides you both with a dedicated opportunity to talk about your days in a way that you might not otherwise. This can help you feel closer than you would if you were scrolling through your phones while sitting on the sofa, and that can unexpectedly help you to begin looking forward to cleaning rather than dreading it every day.
Cleaning can take its toll, but there’s no reason why you, too, can’t be someone who loves getting stuck in if you put your mind to it.
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