It has been a while since my last post on cleaning and organising and to be flat out honest here, I was not keeping up with my housekeeping duties at all and our home was in quite a mess the few weeks leading up to our Melbourne trip.

After returning from the trip, I felt so inspired by all the beautiful apartments we stayed at in Melbourne, I decided to get my housekeeping act together.

I recalled that I followed a cleaning routine during my SAHM days and it worked pretty well for me because I was doing a little something every day and didn’t have to spend extensive amount of time during the weekends slogging away with a scrub or mop.

So we cleared up the mess as we unpacked our travel stuff, hired a part-time cleaner that very weekend to get our home to it’s squeaky clean state again before I start on my daily cleaning routine.

Now that I’m working and the earliest time we reach home is typically around 7pm, then we need to cook (at least for Laurent), feed him, bathe him and get him ready for bed. “HOUSEWORK” is really the last thing on my mind. In fact, I usually don’t have it on my mind at all.

But I figured, if I could save a whole lot of elbow grease and time during weekends and holidays by just spending about 30 mins each day keeping my home clean, I could probably spend more quality time with my family during our off days.

I drafted out a 30 mins cleaning routine and tried it out for the past 2 weeks and I think it worked really well for me. I didn’t have to spend time procrastinating thinking about what tasks to complete because I just had to follow the plan. I don’t get intimidated or frustrated by the thought of having to do housework on a weekday because I know it wouldn’t take longer than 30 mins. I won’t try to complete one task after another and end up suffering from burn out after the first few days because I know I will have time to complete them on another day of the week.

And of course, cleaning duties are made so much more enjoyable with my trusty (and beautiful, and amazing smelling) Method and Full Circle cleaning products!

Here’s how my 30 minutes Cleaning Routine look like. I will be providing a link below for you to download an editable copy to customise and cater to your own home.

Download the 30 Minutes Cleaning Routine in PDF format

Download the 30 Minutes Cleaning Routine in Word format

Now, let me elaborate a little about all the tasks and how they take just a few minutes each!

1) Make Bed

I make our bed every morning because I love coming home to a neat and inviting bedroom at the end of the day. It only involves arranging the pillows back to where they should be, tucking in the sheets and laying the quilt cover flat. 2 mins max!

2) Laundry

I throw in a load of laundry every morning and set it on delay mode to end around the time we return, then I throw the load of clean laundry into the dryer when we reach home and we’ll get fresh clothes after dinner!

To be safe, I’m setting aside 3 mins to bring the clothes to the washer, sort them if you haven’t and navigate through complicated delay functions. Check out my post on Wardrobe Organisation and Laundry Care to find out why I couldn’t stop using the METHOD LAUNDRY SET after trying it. In fact, I just bought the METHOD BABY LAUNDRY DETERGENT to try too (and it comes in such a sweeeeeeeet pretty pink packaging!!!) !

3) Vacuum surfaces

I vacuum the surfaces of 1 room every evening of the week with my Dyson vacuum cleaner. It’s such a breeze to do so because my Dyson vacuum is always charged, extremely portable and does a brilliant job in removing dust!

I also found the vacuum cleaner really useful for removing eraser bits after I’m done with my artwork because I tend to do several drafts and refinements to my work with pencil sketches. But if it’s already late at night when I’m done and the hubs and bub are already sleeping, I’ll use the handy FULL CIRCLE CLEAN TEAM DUSTPAN & BRUSH SET to help clear away the eraser bits.

4) Magic Clean the Floor

I have an iRobot vacuum at home which has been doing a pretty decent job of vacuuming the floor everyday. I’ll do a quick wipe through with magic clean sheets every alternate day just to make it feel clean and smell great.

However, magic cleaning the floor doesn’t really remove ALL the grime and hard to clean stains. I’ll tackle that on Saturdays when I give the floor a good mopping with my favourite METHOD SQUIRT + MOP ALL FLOOR CLEANER which smells super refreshing and unbelievably convenient to use. Just squirt, mop and enjoy the clean floor without having to “rinse” through again with another round of mopping!

5) Wipe Kitchen Surface

Even on days when we don’t cook, I will still spray my METHOD ALL-PURPOSE CLEANER on the kitchen and dining table surfaces and give it a quick wipe to keep the surfaces clean and free from bacteria.

Be sure to check out the new METHOD ANTIBACTERIAL ALL-PURPOSE CLEANER and METHOD ANTIBACTERIAL BATHROOM CLEANER which are able to kill 99.9% of household germs—including influenza A flu virus, staphylococcus aureus, rhinovirus and salmonella enterica!

6) Clean Toilet/ Freshen Bathroom

On days when I don’t have to magic clean the floor, I will speed clean the toilet bowl. If you’ve read my post on bathroom cleaning, you’ll know that I’m quite paranoid about cross contamination when it comes to cleaning the toilet. Hence, I have been using toilet wipes when I’m cleaning the toilet bowl and so far, the Kleenex Moist Toilet Tissue works the best because they are thick and moist enough to clean the toilet bowl properly.

After wiping, I’ll squeeze some METHOD ANTIBAC TOILET and give the toilet bowl a quick scrub. Check out the bathroom cleaning post for a tip on how to let your toilet bowl scrub dry faster!

Besides cleaning the toilet bowl on alternate days, I will do maintenance for my bathroom everyday. I’ll squeegee my shower stall after shower and spritz some METHOD DAILY SHOWER SPRAY around the shower to prevent soap scums and bacteria from building up and to make my bathroom smell like spa! I’ll also give the sink and vanity counter a quick wipe to remove residues like hair spray, facial products, etc before they get stuck on to the surface and requires a lot more elbow grease to remove.

7) Fold Laundry

After showering (and when I settle down to watch the 9pm show), I’ll take the time to fold the laundry. I used to let the laundry pile up and only fold them once or twice a week and had to spend at least 30 mins in one sitting to finish folding the mountain of clothes. Folding them every night makes the task so much more manageable and I usually take less than 10 mins to complete it!

And that you’ve seen my 30 minutes cleaning routine and my elaboration on the individual tasks, I’ve managed to show you how manageable  and possible it is to spend less than half an hour every day, and about an hour of your weekend to keep the house clean so that your family can reside in a clean, safe and healthy home and enjoy more quality time together during the precious weekends!

This is my final post for my current collaboration with Method Home Singapore and Full Circle. I have been an avid fan of Method products even before this collaboration so this opportunity has been like a dream come true for me 🙂 Trying out even more Method products has allowed me to learn more about the brand and made me love it even more.

For this final post, we would like to give a set of general cleaning tools consisting of the following items to 2 lucky readers! This prize will come just in time for the decluttering and spring cleaning season since the new year is just round the corner! If you would like to get some Method and Full Circle items, don’t forget to use the promo code DAPRAYER10OFF during check-out for a 10% discount!

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