What pro cleaning tips can you use to keep your house clean? Here are 7 tips, tricks, & secrets from a former commercial cleaner.

This week we’re talking about some little-known cleaning tips & tricks professional cleaners use. These are simple, but effective methods I used myself, during my years as a commercial cleaner.

But the beautiful thing is these are not just office cleaning tips. They work so well, you can use these same tips to keep your house clean, in less time.

(Below you can read the post or play the podcast version- about 11 mins.)

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QUICK LINKS:

✅Download our FREE Printable Daily Cleaning Roadmap. This will show you exactly what tasks to include in your daily routine, which order to do them in, and it includes pages to write down your customized daily/monthly cleaning schedule.

✅The Ultimate List of Cleaning Supplies You Need (Without the Fluff You Don’t!)– (We referenced this previous Podcast or Post in today’s info.)

Personally, although I was a commercial cleaner, I struggled for a while to keep my house clean.

Once I started a daily cleaning routine and also used the methods I’m sharing today, I was able to get and keep my house under control.

Even if my house- or your house- gets out of control again, these are some good tips that can help us to focus and get it back in a clean state again.

So now without further ado, here are the professional cleaning secrets you can use to keep your home clean.

1.) Clean from top to bottom. 

Always dust higher surfaces first, before cleaning lower surfaces, and clean the floor last.

If you clean lower surfaces or floors first, there’s a good chance they’ll need to be recleaned. Dust and other debris naturally fall onto them when you dust or wipe down higher surfaces.

For that reason, the order you do cleaning tasks in is important. This is one of the best cleaning hacks people should be aware of to avoid wasting time.

2.) Focus on one area at a time.

Out of all the areas in life multitasking is helpful with, cleaning is not generally one of them.

If you want to listen to music or an audiobook while cleaning, that’s one thing. But you don’t want to jump back and forth between different areas. It will waste time and energy when you don’t focus on one area/task at a time.

The only exception to this is if you are using a cleaner that needs to sit on an area for a certain length of time before scrubbing the area or rinsing it off. For instance, this may be the case with certain toilet cleaners or sprays.

When you need to wait for a cleaner to work, you can often clean other nearby areas while you wait. For example, you might clean the rest of the bathroom while the toilet cleaner needs to work for a few minutes.

(Note: Make sure the room is well ventilated enough and safe for you to stay in the room while the cleaner is on the surface. This will be dependent on the type of cleaners you use & how ventilated the rooms are that you use them in.)

3.) Work around each room in a circular motion so you aren’t backtracking.

When I cleaned offices, I would work in a circular, (usually clock-wise,) motion, when dusting or cleaning surfaces, taking out garbage, and so on. And I still do this in my daily cleaning routine at home.

Try to avoid zigzagging when you do your cleaning routine, because this will waste time.

4.) Bring your cleaning supplies with you or store them where you use them.

Some people use a cleaning caddy they take with them as they clean.

Personally, as a commercial cleaner, I would hook cleaning sprays on my belt loops, along with the cloths I would use to wipe down surfaces & windows.

The only things I would have to grab to use would be the broom, vacuum, and mop & bucket when it came time to do the floors. (Of course, these are the exceptions, as they are too big to bring with you before you actually need to use them.)

And the bathroom cleaning supplies were stored either in or next to the bathrooms.

When it comes to house cleaning, I recommend keeping the cleaning supplies you need on each level of the house you need to use them. And it’s even better if you can keep supplies you use for specific rooms right in those rooms.

Note: Be careful when storing cleaning supplies that they are out of reach of children that could get into them.

Most of our carpet is upstairs, so that’s where I keep our main vacuum. (We do also have a smaller vacuum downstairs.)

I keep bathroom cleaning supplies in each of our bathrooms. And I have the kitchen cleaning supplies in the kitchen.

5.) Make a daily cleaning routine & do tasks in the same order each time.

If you feel like it’s boring cleaning the same things over and over in the same way every single day, you’re right.

It is boring, (at least in my opinion it is.)

But it is also efficient.

Doing cleaning tasks in the same logical order every time saved me a lot of time as a commercial cleaner.

You too will save time maintaining areas regularly and cleaning in a routine. Naturally, you’ll begin to get through your routine faster and not even need to look at your cleaning checklist anymore.

If you don’t already have a cleaning checklist with all the tasks you need to include in your daily cleaning routine, you can download our Daily Cleaning Roadmap.

This suggests the tasks you should do daily and the best order to do them in.

How to Make a Daily Cleaning Routine Less Boring

To make it less boring cleaning the same things in the same order over & over, I recommend listening to music, an audiobook, or a Podcast you enjoy.

Usually the only times I listen to music, audiobooks, and podcasts are when I’m either cleaning, working, or driving. Since I listen to things I enjoy, it makes cleaning less boring. But it also motivates me to get started and keep going.

6.) Clean what needs to be done & skip areas that are still clean.

Sometimes there’s a misconception that if you have something on a daily checklist, that means you have to do it every day.

But that’s simply not true.

By all means, you should maintain & clean the areas/tasks on your list on the days you clean, when they need to be done.

But if you just dusted your surfaces yesterday and they still look good, you don’t need to dust again today.

When I used to clean a bank 5 days a week, I would not dust every day. I would dust 2-3 days max, when it needed to be done.

And you know what?

Even though I didn’t dust every day I cleaned, the ladies at the bank still thought I did a good job.

They told my boss that it was the cleanest it had ever been out of everyone who cleaned it.

This wasn’t because there is anything special about me. I don’t have ‘amazing’ cleaning skills.

It was because I thoroughly did the tasks that needed to be done when they needed to be done.

Interestingly, the girl who cleaned there before me would not do everything every day either.

But the problem was she would sometimes skip the wrong tasks. She’d skip things when they needed to be done, whereas I would only skip areas that were still clean.

This was unfortunate for her, as I ended up getting hired to replace her as a cleaner. (The good news is she still had a job working as a teller there. And I believe when I moved away they rehired her to clean, so she actually did get the job back.)

But anyways, the point is to skip what can be skipped that is still clean, maintain the things starting to get dirty again, and reclean what needs to be cleaned.

Keeping Areas Clean Involves More than Appearances

Be careful, though, not to skip things that look clean but actually need to be recleaned.

A kitchen counter may still look relatively clean after preparing raw foods on it, but need to be disinfected. Certain areas in a bathroom may still look clean when they aren’t. Dust and dirt can accumulate in a carpet that hasn’t been vacuumed recently, but still looks relatively clean.

It is also possible for an area to develop an odor even if it still appears to be clean.

At my cleaning jobs I never skipped vacuuming or cleaning the toilets, even if the areas looked clean, because I wanted to make sure they actually were clean.

(A lot of people walked on the carpets each day at the bank & office where I cleaned, so I vacuumed thoroughly each time, even if parts of them still looked clean. Note: I’m not saying everyone needs to vacuum every day at home, as this will depend on each person’s unique situation.)

So yes, there are areas you can skip in your cleaning routine on days where they still look clean/presentable. And I recommend you don’t waste time recleaning areas that are still presentable and sanitary.

But be careful about skipping areas that may pose dangers to you or your family’s health if you skip them or skip them for too long.

Some factors to consider for how often you clean areas for sanitary or health reasons should depend on the area itself, how frequently it is used, and what it is used for.

7.) Don’t overcomplicate things with too many cleaning supplies.

Of course, you’ll need different cleaning supplies to clean different areas of your home.

But getting a specific cleaning supply for each task and area of your home is often unnecessary.

When I worked professionally as a commercial cleaner, I used a general all-purpose spray & cloth for almost all of the surfaces.

Granted, there are certain surfaces that are delicate and should be cleaned in a specific way. And of course, you do want to clean things in a way that won’t ruin them.

Everyone has different surfaces in their home made up of different materials. So you’ll have to consider what areas in your home you personally need a specific cleaner for.

But sometimes people go all out and get so many different cleaners that are not necessary.

The result of having too many cleaners is often that people either:

1. feel overwhelmed by all their cleaning supplies and have a hard time getting started,

2. they don’t use them all and waste money on things that just sit in their cleaning supply closet,

Or

3. they DO use all of their supplies, and it takes them longer to clean than it would if they had just used the basic supplies needed.

So just try to keep it simple with what you actually need.

The main cleaning supplies I recommend for everything from dishes to laundry, floors, surfaces, the bathroom etc., I actually discussed in Podcast or Post episode #11.

So those are 7 house cleaning secrets & pro cleaning tips from a former commercial cleaner. By cleaning in an efficient way, using only what you need, and not getting distracted, your home will look cleaner and you’ll get done faster.

That’s all for today.

Our next Podcast or Post (now published,) discusses how to organize paper clutter and the supplies you need, (even without a file cabinet.)

✅Before you go, don’t forget to download our FREE Printable Daily Cleaning Roadmap.

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Thanks for reading & have a great day!

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