Too busy to clean the house to a sparkling finish? We’ve got your back

You wage a perpetual battle against dust and grime in your house, and it seems like the enemy is winning – because you don’t have the time for full-fledged war. We present 5 cleaning hacks for busy people:

1. Have one multipurpose cleaner instead of a bucketful of bottles

Here’s a good house cleaning tip for nothing: Instead of a battery of detergents, bleaches, powders and what-have-you, just get one multipurpose floor cleaning liquid that many surfaces with the same power.

Not only will you save a lot of money, but also time. Prepare a solution using the cleaning liquid in a spray bottle of water, and spritz it on the surfaces, wiping dry with a soft flannel. The liquid kills 99.9% of germs and is great for household cleaning use.

2. Clean the bathroom area while you’re in the shower

If you despair about the state of your bathroom – slippery tiles, mould in the corners, grime in the tile grouts – because you hardly get the time for a thorough scrubbing, try this home cleaning tip. Spray some dishwashing liquid in the shower area just before you bathe.

Give it a scrub with a tile brush, but don’t rinse. Now shampoo your hair and while you let the shampoo and conditioner work, give the tiles and floor another rub down, and rinse off. By the time you’re done showering, you’ve got a clean shower area. The next morning, targeted another area of the bathroom similarly.

3. Attack one room at a time, and do only a handful of things

You don’t have the time to do all the cleaning that you would like to do, so go after the visible areas first. And go one room at a time, instead of tackling the entire house at once and being unable to finish. Do the dusting first, followed by wiping down the dirty surfaces.

Next, you can tackle vacuuming and mopping the floors, and sweeping the walls. Set aside time for just one or two cleaning activities at a time, and you can have a clean room quite quickly.

4. Clean the toilet bowl every two days to save time on a hard clean later

The toilet bowl needs frequent clean because it gets dirty really fast. Instead of waiting to make the time for a hard clean once a week, here’s a time-saving house cleaning tip: throw in some cleaning liquid in the bowl before you start brushing your teeth in the morning. Brush down the bowl before you take a shower. Do this every two days to have a sparkling clean toilet.

5. Use a paintbrush to ‘dust’ the furniture

The living room furniture attracts a lot of dust, and vacuuming is often the only way to remove all the dust from it. Make the task even simpler: get a large paintbrush and use it to dust the furniture briskly. This dislodges the dirt and dust particles, and you can quickly vacuum them off.