Unless you’re cleaning a house bit by bit, knowing where to start with an overall clean can be difficult. Do you start with the dirtiest room or the hardest job? That’s what we’ll address in this article.
Below, we’ll discuss where to start when house cleaning, including developing a plan and any practical considerations you might need to address. So, let’s dive in.
Where Do You Start When Cleaning a House?
1. Write a Plan
This might be obvious, but start by writing a plan of action. It should include information such as:
- What rooms need cleaning
- What jobs each room involves
- What supplies you might need
For example, in the bathroom, you’ll likely need to do the following:
- Clean the sink, bath and shower
- Clean mirrors and windows
- Change towels
- Vacuum and mop the floor
Breaking each room down in this way can help you to organise your thoughts and tackle the overall cleaning process in a more manageable way.
2. Look for Cross-Room Jobs
Some jobs are best tackled on a household basis rather than per room. This includes vacuuming, mopping, and often decluttering. For example, if you’re tidying up after a kid hurricane, it might help to do this in one go rather than addressing each room individually.
Listing each job a room involves helps with this because you can look for common jobs across all of them. From there, decide if it’s worth doing these jobs all in one go or keeping them in their respective rooms.
Vacuuming the house all in one go is a bit of a no-brainer, although you can separate it by upstairs and downstairs if needed. However, if you’re doing a really deep clean, vacuuming each room on its own might be better just because of the time it’ll take.
3. Work Top to Bottom
Working top to bottom is a fundamental concept in proper household cleaning. In a room, this means starting with, say, cleaning away cobwebs and then dusting before finishing by cleaning the floor.
We do it this way because it allows us to clean up after ourselves. After all, vacuuming the floor is pointless if you then disturb a load of dust.
Include room-specific jobs into this and figure out if they’ll affect the order you do things. For example, changing bedsheets is better done before dusting, as it can kick a load of dust and fabric fibres into the air. While this doesn’t fit the top-to-bottom approach, it’s a fairly logical order.
4. Figure Out Your Order of Cleaning
When doing a whole house clean, decide where is best to start. There are a couple of options:
- Start in rooms where products might need to sit, such as the bathroom
- Start with the dirtiest room
- Start with large jobs that give noticeable results, such as decluttering
What you decide will depend on your house and how much time you’ve got. That said, it’s generally best to start upstairs and work down, often with the family bathroom.
You could also start in the room farthest away from where you’ll stop and work backwards. This might be with a guest bedroom upstairs, finishing in the kitchen. Doing so allows you to clear up after yourself without crossing back over areas you’ve cleaned.
5. Organise Your Cleaning Supplies
Group together cleaning supplies by room or general area. For example, bathroom supplies often aren’t used elsewhere, so you can keep them in a caddy. The same is true for kitchens. However, you’ll likely have a more general box for bedrooms and living spaces.
Regardless, having organised caddies makes it much easier to move between rooms without leaving a load of mess behind. Your original list will help here, as you’ll know what jobs require what products, so you can group them together. To make this process even more efficient, consider how you can rightsize your home by decluttering and organizing each space.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, this list of tips will help you address your household cleaning tasks more easily. It’s perfectly normal to be overwhelmed by a whole-house clean because it can be a lot of work to do in one go.
If you feel this way, start with big but practical jobs that can be delegated, such as tidying. Putting stuff away can make a big difference and empower you to tackle the more time-consuming jobs.
