3 category steps to make house cleaning easier

To understand how to clean easier, faster and more effectively, it's important to understand the three categories of cleaning.

Examples include toweling off the shower after each time it is used, having family members remove their shoes at the front and back door and washing dishes immediately after using them, rather than stacking them up.

• Immediate cleaning prevents small, easy-to-clean messes from becoming big, tough messes. Let's say that after cooking dinner, your stovetop has a few spatters of grease on it. You could leave it — it's scarcely noticeable.
• But if you take a minute to wipe the stove with a sponge or cloth every time you use it, the job will take only seconds, the stove will be restored to pristine condition, and you'll prevent what could eventually become a multi-layered build-up requiring hours of remedial attention.
• In the immediate cleaning mode, you clean up messes as soon as they happen.
• Otherwise, messes accumulate, stains and grime set in, and your family learns that a dirty house is acceptable.
• Toweling off the shower after each time it is used.• Having family members remove their shoes at the front and back door.• Washing dishes immediately after using them, rather than stacking them up

Examples include: spraying the shower with soap scum remover once a week; vacuuming all the dirt that family members track inside each week and making sure all dishes, glasses and cooking gear are cleaned up each night before bedtime.

• Maintenance cleaning is done regularly, but not necessarily often.
• This kind of cleaning can be put on a schedule. For example, you could decide to clean the shower once a week (perhaps even set the day) and wash the curtains twice a year.
• Maintenance cleaning can be organised in a written plan.
• Or it can be simple habits, like always cleaning the kitchen immediately after dinner is done.

Examples include: spending hours scrubbing away a year's worth of soap scum and mildew; vacuuming whenever your friends make jokes about the dust build-up; wasting your Sunday scrubbing hardened food from the week's dishes and pots so you have something to cook with.

• It covers cleaning after long periods of neglect, such as tackling the fridge after a year's growth of drips and spills have accumulated on the bottom shelf.
• That kind of remedial cleaning is preventable.
• You can avoid it by taking immediate steps or following maintenance routines — it saves time and energy in the long run.
• Remedial cleaning also includes what you do after a disaster, major or minor, such as a flood or a pet accident on the carpet.
• The big danger is that remedial cleaning can easily become abusive cleaning. That happens when a mild cleaner fails to budge the dirt, so stronger and more abrasive cleaners and tools are called into service.
• Abusive cleaning often does more damage than the original dirt did.