Sometimes a house just gets away from you.
It doesn’t necessarily happen because you don’t care about your home. Life gets busy. You get tired. You may be working long hours, taking care of other people, or simply have too many other things that need your attention.
A few dishes are left in the sink. The laundry piles up. Things get put down instead of put away. Before you know it, you look around the house and wonder where in the world you are supposed to start.
If you are wondering where to start cleaning a messy house, the most important thing is not to try to clean the entire house at once.
Pick a place and start.
Start With the Trash
I think one of the easiest places to start is with the obvious trash.
Get a good-sized trash bag and walk through the room. Don’t worry about dusting or scrubbing anything yet. Just pick up the things that you know need to be thrown away.
Empty food containers, junk mail, paper towels, empty bottles and other trash can make a room look much worse than it really is.
Getting those things out of the way can make a noticeable difference pretty quickly.
Gather Up the Dishes
Next, collect the dishes.
You don’t necessarily have to stop and wash every dish you find. The first goal is simply to get them all to the kitchen.
Once they are there, you can load the dishwasher or start washing them a little at a time.
A clean kitchen sink and an empty kitchen counter can make the whole kitchen feel better, even if there is still plenty of work left to do.
Get the Laundry Under Control
Laundry has a way of taking over a house.
Gather the dirty clothes, towels and linens and put them in baskets or in one designated place. Start a load if you have enough for one.
But there is another part of laundry that can create just as much clutter—the clean clothes that never got put away.
If you have baskets of clean clothes sitting around, don’t feel like you have to stop everything and organize every drawer and closet. Fold what needs folding and get as much of it put away as you reasonably can.
The object right now is to make progress.
Work on One Room at a Time
One of the easiest ways to get discouraged is to work a little in the kitchen, notice something in the living room, carry it to the bedroom and then start cleaning the bedroom.
Before long, you have worked all over the house and it doesn’t look like you accomplished much of anything.
Choose one room.
Even if you can’t finish the entire room, choose one part of it. Clean the kitchen table. Clear one countertop. Straighten one corner of the living room.
When you can actually see an area that you have finished, it gives you a little encouragement to tackle the next one.
Don’t Try to Organize Everything While You Clean
Cleaning and organizing are not always the same job.
If you haven’t used something in years and know you don’t want it anymore, certainly get rid of it. But this probably isn’t the best time to spend two hours going through a box of old photographs or deciding what to do with every piece of paperwork you own.
Have a box or basket for things that belong somewhere else.
Put those things in it and deal with them later.
Otherwise, it is very easy to turn a cleaning job into an organizing project and never get the cleaning done.
Clean From the Top Down
Once the clutter is out of the way, you can actually start cleaning your home.
I like to work from the top down.
If the ceiling fan needs dusting, do it before you clean the floor. The same goes for shelves, furniture and countertops. There isn’t much sense in vacuuming a floor and then knocking dust and crumbs all over it.
Save sweeping, vacuuming and mopping until toward the end.
That way, you are cleaning up everything that has fallen while you worked.
If you’ve discovered pantry pests while cleaning, see our guide to getting rid of pantry moths.
Don’t Expect to Finish Everything in One Day
If your house has gotten away from you over several weeks or months, don’t expect yourself to put everything back in order in a few hours.
You may get tired.
That’s okay.
Finish the job you are working on, put away your cleaning supplies and come back to it later.
One completely clean room is an accomplishment. So is one clean counter, one empty sink or one load of laundry that is washed, folded and put away.
Every job you finish is one less job waiting for you tomorrow.
Keeping It From Getting Away From You Again
Once you get the house back under control, keeping it that way is usually much easier than getting it there in the first place.
Try not to let dishes sit for days. Take the trash out when it is full. Put a load of laundry in before the hamper is overflowing.
You don’t have to keep a perfectly clean house every minute of every day.
Very few people do.
A few minutes spent picking things up each day can prevent that small mess from becoming a big job later.
Sometimes You Just Need Some Help
There are also times when the job is simply bigger than you want to tackle by yourself.
Maybe you’ve been busy. Maybe you’re preparing for company. Maybe you have fallen behind and would rather have someone help you get caught up.
There is nothing unusual about that. We see homes in all different stages of being lived in.
At Driscoll Cleaning, our job isn’t to judge how the house got that way. Our job is to help get it clean.
And sometimes, getting a little help is all it takes to get things back under control.
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