Want a tidier Toronto apartment? Here’s how to get it.

Keeping up with chores and making your home presentable and clean on any given day is probably one of the hardest things imaginable (aside from flossing and working out). We all are much too busy to diligently clean our places and we usually all feel bad about it. Here are some methods you can use to better approach cleaning in general and to develop “tidy person” skills.

Keep up with the clutter

Big tasks always make us cringe. You don’t want to do the dishes when there’s an entire sink full of them, so cut the problem off at the head and start cleaning sooner – when you just have to clean a dish or two, or do a little floor sweep every two days or so, every problem never truly turns into a huge problem. It’s so much easier to clean a dish a day than a sink full every week – it turns a thirty second job into an hour-long one, and no one ever wants to deal with that.

Keep a daily cleaning list

If you compartmentalize chores, doing different ones on different days, they become much easier to handle and you’ll never be bogged down with one huge day to clean everything. If every Monday is garbage day, and every Tuesday is doing a bit of a sweep, it’s more likely they’ll get done and you’ll never really have to worry about a lot of work.

Keep an organized space

It’s a lot easier to clean when everything is already in the right place. Get into the habit of taking things down from a shelf, then putting them right back. Put away dishes, clothes, books – any kind of clutter – right after you use them, and you’ll never catch yourself with any kind of build-up. When everything has a proper home, it makes your home much easier to care for.

Try a cleaning day

This works better with roommates, because two heads are always better than one, but also because it’s easier to keep up with the clutter when you’re by yourself. Hash out the details with your roommate and decide which day works best for both of you to clean the entire house. You’ll find that doing the chores together builds and strengthens your relationship, as well as keeps your house spotless!