3 Tips to Make Your Messy House Look Clean
You and your familia are sitting around enjoying yourselves in your messy comfortably lived-in home when you get a phone call from your long lost third cousin from your mother’s side letting you know that she’ll be over with her fiancé in about 10 minutes.
OMAIGA! How the heck are you going to make your house look tidy in such a short period of time? Should you just lie and tell your tercera prima that your entire household has come down with a case of explosive diarrhea? No, no, no! Calmantes montes, you and your family can pitch in together and get the house looking presentable en un dos por tres. I’ll tell you how.
3 tips to make your home look clean and tidy
1. Prioritize. Remember you are not doing a deep clean, you are doing a manita de gato as my mom would say to make things look nice for company. So focus on the areas that your guests are likely to spend the most time in: the kitchen, living room and bathroom. In the kitchen if you’ve got a dish washer, throw the dirty dishes in there. You don’t even have to run the dishwasher; just get the dirty dishes out of sight and then wipe down the counters and make sure the table looks nice. Give the bathroom and toilet a quick cleaning, pero rápido, don’t linger. Straighten up the living room and fluff the pillows. If it’s a little dusty in the living room, you can even use a dry microfiber cleaning cloth to do a quick dusting.
2. Contain the clutter. Start in the living room and then go through the entire house and pick up the clutter. A super easy way to do this is to grab a basket and throw all the odds and ends into your canasta. Move through the house putting stuff in the basket and then just put the basket inside a closet, you can deal with it later. While one person does this, you can have younger kids go to their rooms to throw any toys they have on the ground into their toy boxes.
3. Vacuum last. Once you’ve wiped down the counters in the kitchen, straightened the living room and contained the clutter, it’s time to vacuum. You want to vacuum last so you’ll get all the bits and dust that fell on the ground while you were cleaning. Go ahead and vacuum both carpets and floors.
If you’re done with the above items and your guests still haven’t arrived, you can make sure the beds are made. If you don’t have time for that, just close the bedroom doors and ni modo.
Also, remember your guests are coming to see you and your family. Your house does not have to be perfect for them to have a perfectly good time.
Image via boltron/Flickr
