Whether we like it or not, household chores are an essential part of our life. Having a clean and organized house is important, and to achieve that. some chores are unavoidable. In fact, spending time on those chores is also good for your overall health as they keep your body and mind engaged. That being said, not all the cleaning tasks are equal. You may be spending more time on some housework than is needed.
According to cleaning experts, some household chores can be done less frequently. While some things like kitchen counters or the basin in the bathroom may need daily scrubbing, there are many time-wasting tasks that may be taking up your precious minutes and hours and can even be damaging for your home. To save you that unnecessary effort we rounded up the household chores that you can skip more often than you thought.
1. Washing the floor
Unless you have sensitive allergies or have a curious baby in the house, you don’t need to be employing elbow grease to wash your floors regularly. The truth is that unlike the more germy parts of your home, like the kitchen or the bathroom, your floors can look clean even for a few months without any scrubbing. So, instead of sweeping and mopping every part of the floor strategically, you can use a handheld vacuum for a little spot-cleaning every once in a while. Any visible patches of dust or trails of crumbs you see on the floor can easily be picked out by the vacuum cleaner. If something spills, or if you find a sticky spot, just spot-clean it right away rather than bending your back for mopping the entire floor.
2. Polishing wooden furniture frequently
Most of us automatically reach for the furniture polish when it comes to cleaning the various furniture of the house. After all, the dust on them needs to be wiped up from time to time and the wood needs to maintain its shine, right? Wrong. According to experts, most kinds of furniture have a certain finish coat that can get removed if cleaned too often. In fact, polishing your wooden furniture every week may cause its surface to get dirty and duller faster. Moreover, furniture polish contains water, and waxes contain naphtha. Both of these combined can raise a wood veneer after a while if you keep using them too often on your furniture.
So, unless you have dark furniture, on which dust may be more noticeable, or antique furniture that is already covered with oil and wax, you don’t need to polish your wooden items regularly. Every six weeks is often enough.
Most of the time, you can just wipe the stains from any part of the furniture with a wet cloth instead of cleaning the entire thing. For taking care of most of today’s furniture, the general rule is that the less you do, the better.
3. Washing clothes after one wear
While some clothing items like your innerwear and socks need to be cleaned every day, items like shirts or jeans don’t need to be washed after just one wear. Sleepwear, bath towels, and clothes that you wear only occasionally, can be worn multiple times before being washed. This will not just make your clothes last longer and also cut down on your laundry time.
What you can do is to keep a separate place, maybe a specific drawer, where you only keep the clothes that can be worn again without frequent washing. Ideally, such clothes should be hung as that will keep them aired. As for bath towels, just make sure that they are hung up and dried properly between uses and you won’t need to wash them regularly.
4. Wiping washed dishes with a towel
Hand-drying dishes may seem like a good idea to get them squeaky clean, but you might actually be spreading more bacteria on your dishes this way. Even if your kitchen towel looks clean, it will always have some germs on it that can get transferred onto the plates when you wipe them with it. So instead of wasting your energy on wiping those dishes, you can simply let them air dry. That’s a much more hygienic and effortless way to dry your dishes. If you have a dishwasher, you can use the heat dry cycle to dry the dishes.
5. Cleaning windows every weekend
Have you been washing your windows every weekend? You don’t really need to. Most cleaning experts agree that washing your windows every quarter or at the start of each season is enough. Even doing it more than just once a year will be sufficient. But when you do clean the windows, make sure you do the job properly. Use a natural or organic cleaner designed for windows and scrub inside and out until you feel all the built-up dirt and grime has been removed.
6. Folding underwear
Regular underwear doesn’t wrinkle, so there’s no real need to fold them neatly and carefully. That is just a waste of your time. Unless you have thin underwear, which can be easily damaged, you can simply place the general ones in the drawer without putting any extra effort into folding and organizing them. If you must keep your underwear organized, then try stacking them flat. This will make them look neatly arranged and won’t suck up your precious time unnecessarily.
7. Ironing all clothing items regularly
Many of us tend to believe that regular ironing of clothes is necessary and increases their lifespan. While ironing some of your special shirts or trousers before you are about to head out is good, you don’t need to waste your energy in ironing all clothing items in your house constantly. Many fabrics like denim, spandex, polyester, wool, cashmere, knits, and lyocell, don’t need to be ironed. Even your general casual clothes don’t really need ironing; you can just remove them from the dryer and then fold or hang them. That should be good enough. Also, try adding some wrinkle-resistant clothes to your wardrobe to save yourself a little more time from any unnecessary ironing.
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