The 40 Best Home Cleaning Tips for a Fresh and Tidy Home

Nobody loves a clean house more than we do.

Over the years, we’ve discovered some great cleaning tips, all focused on helping you create a healthy, super-tidy home.

These are 40 of the very best.

 

40 Cleaning Tips for Your Whole House

There were many amazing tips to choose from – we’ve categorized them to make it a little easier for you to implement at home.

The Bathroom

1. Cleaning the bathroom at room temperature. Run hot water in the vanity and the shower for a few minutes before you clean for ultimate effectiveness. This is because the steam helps to loosen up the grime.
2. Most store-bought mould cleaning products you buy don’t actually kill mould. They instead just ‘bleach’ the colour out of the mould, making it invisible. This means that in a few months, the mould will be back! Try this instead.
3. Use vinegar to treat mould. Vinegar is well known for effectively treating mould thanks to its antibacterial and antifungal properties.
   
   Here’s a rough guide:
   Use a spray bottle to apply vinegar directly onto the area. If it’s heavy mould, use a soft-bristled nylon brush to agitate the mould. Leave the vinegar on the mould for an hour to work its magic. Wipe with a clean and slightly damp cloth.

5. Use a broom or mop to clean your bathtub. It’s convenient and saves you from being on your knees scrubbing.
6. Don’t forget to regularly check for mould in your child’s bath toys – it’s a common place to find it.

The Kitchen

6. Baking soda will do an amazing job of cleaning your oven. Check out our method for natural oven cleaning here.
7. You can clean the gunk out of cheese graters with lemons. Cut a lemon in half and rub it across the grater to get rid of any particles before giving it a good rinse with hot, soapy water.
8. Lemons are also a great way to freshen up stained chopping boards. Cut in half and place on the board, sprinkle with salt and rub, rub, rub! Rinse away with water to finish off the job.
9. Stinky drain smells can be fixed with baking soda. Put half a cup of baking soda around and down the drain, letting it sit for about 30 minutes and then rinse the mixture down with boiling hot water.
10. Swap your clingwrap with beeswax wraps. In basic terms, they’re just like reusable plastic wrap. They come in a variety of sizes and some cool patterns. If you look after them, they will last about a year.
11. Keep half a cup of baking soda in your fridge to keep it smelling fresh.

The Bedroom

12. You should be washing your pillow every four months. Here’s why. In 2020, Perth-based respiratory expert Professor John Blakey told The Guardian that more than 10% of the weight of most dirty pillows will be hundreds of thousands of dust mites and their droppings.
13. A clean mattress can improve your sleep. Your mattress is home to millions of dust mites; breathing in their excrement can cause several common reactions such as itchy eyes and skin, flu-like symptoms and difficulty sleeping.
14. Replace doonas and pillows regularly. Manufacturers will print a replacement date on the product itself but as a rough guide, replace pillows every 2 years and doonas every 5 years.
15. Dust mites hate UV light. Take your mattress into the sunshine once every few months for at least an hour and try to keep your bedroom windows open a little where possible.

 

Your Floors

16. A good quality abrasive doormat can really protect your carpet. Ensure everyone is wiping their shoes a couple of times before coming in.
17. You should never rub a stain into carpet fibres while trying to treat a stain – you will only make it worse.
18. You can use baking soda to clean vomit stains. Sprinkle generously on the stain, cover it up with an old towel, and let it sit overnight. Lift the towel and vacuum the clumps of powder. Baking soda’s odour-neutralising properties will remove that stench, too.
19. Invest in a vacuum with a HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filter. These trap smaller particles of dust that a regular vacuum just recirculates back into your home.
20. Washing wood floors with vinegar is a bad idea because your floor is covered with a polish and acidic vinegar is doing very little other than wear down your floor’s protective coating.
21. Using a lot of water while cleaning your floors can make your tiles and grout even dirtier over time. Grout between the tiles is highly porous, so when you wash with too much water, the grout soaks up the dirty water.

Your Pets

22. Try your best to keep your pet’s paws clean and their nails clipped to protect your carpet. Keep on top of grooming as well.
23. To deter pet hair, wrap some duct tape (or similar) around an old paint roller and roll it across your carpet.
24. Keep pets out of your bed – hair, dander and dirty paws will expedite how quickly your bedding becomes contaminated.

 

Your Health

25. Indoor plants look great and are good for your health, too. Many natural plant varieties successfully remove toxins such as formaldehyde and carbon monoxide to create a healthier home.
26. Clean your touchpoints! These are the things you touch often but often don’t clean so collect germs. Grab a disinfectant wipe and clean things like doorknobs, computer keyboards, benches, staircase bannisters, remotes, fridge door handles, and phones.
27. Got allergies? Dry your clothes inside or use a dryer instead of on a clothesline to avoid pollen being absorbed into clothing fabrics.
28. Don’t ever mix vinegar and bleach. It makes a powerful disinfectant but creates toxic gasses as a by-product. Vinegar with bleach produces toxic chlorine gas that can cause coughing, breathing problems, and watery eyes.
29. A few drops of essential oil can add some extra kick to your cleaning game. Essential oils are safe, non-toxic and many of them have antibacterial and antiviral properties.

More Handy General Tips

30. Amber glass spray bottles are recommended if you are using essential oils in your natural cleaning solutions as some properties of the oils can break down plastic.
31. There’s no reason why kids aged 3 or older can’t help out with the housework in some capacity - ensure that the task is age-appropriate, keeping safety and capabilities in mind. These are some chore ideas for the kids.
32. Vinegar does a great job of cleaning windows! Use white vinegar, hot water and a microfibre cloth. Note: if you've been using commercial window cleaners on your windows for a long time, there may be a subtle waxy film that you can remove with a dishwashing detergent and water mix.
33. You can clean your washing machine with vinegar and baking soda.
34. Implement "couch rules" at your place. This may include no eating, no drinking or no shoes/feet on the lounge.
35. Using a small amount of olive oil on a leather lounge can restore colour and repair small scratches.

More Household Hacks You Didn't Know About

36. Did you know the correct method is to spray the cleaning product onto the cloth before wiping it? This is because spraying directly onto a surface can make it unnecessarily greasy, creating a build-up that may attract dust.
37. WD-40 works wonders on stuck or stubborn zippers. Just be careful that you don’t get any WD-40 on your actual jeans.
38. You can use silica gel packets (those sachets you find in shoe boxes) to nix unpleasant smells around the home, in areas such as under the sink or in the bottom of the garbage bin to reduce odours. Here are some other uses.
39. Don’t you hate it when you can’t get rid of residue from stickers, price tags, and labels? Soak a paper towel or cloth in rubbing alcohol and wipe down the sticky area.
40. Use toothpaste to make sneakers shine. Take the laces out and scrub them well to make them look new. Rinse with warm water and put them out in the sunshine to dry.

You’ll find many more clever cleaning pointers on our blog pages – we hope we’ve inspired you.