Condo life comes with a monthly homeowner association fee to cover, among other things, the expense of cleaning services to maintain the common area outside your condo door. The cleaning services, for instance, maintain building entryways and common hallways. With those cleaning chores handled by others, as a small condo owner you only have to handle the cleaning tasks on the interior of your home. Sufficient storage options, often an issue in a small condo, and the right cleaning tools can help even the most reluctant housekeepers maintain a squeaky clean condo.
Decorating choices impact cleaning commitment
I chose cream-colored carpeting for my condo, thinking the color would go with anything. Light colored carpeting, however, can be challenging to keep clean. My solution: take your shoes off at the door. When leaving shoes at the door is not your choice (or you have pet), choose a floor covering that matches your labor attitude toward cleaning. Wood flooring, for example, can take the abuse of dirty shoes and can be cleaned with a dust mop, broom or vacuum. Along the same line of thinking, look for window treatments that are easily cleaned, like curtains or drapes that are machine washable or blinds that need only soap and water to clean away grime.
A place for everything
Make cleaning easier by putting items away after using them. If storage space is limited, get creative. Wall or closet organizers, side tables with drawers, decorative stackable baskets, even a shallow drawer that slides under the bed or couch can provide additional storage space. With clutter out of the way, cleaning goes quickly.
The right tools for the job make cleaning easier. If you have carpeting, look for vacuum cleaner with a wand for use in cleaning spider webs from corners, a small utility brush attachment to clean blinds, and an attachment designed for use on hard flooring such as wood, tile or vinyl. The latter attachment on a vacuum cleaner can eliminate the need for a broom. To reduce the number of cleaning products needed, select cleaners designed for multi-surfaces (wood, glass, countertop). Hate dusting like me? A gadget, like one of those disposable dust grabbers that slips onto a plastic handle, can make dusting less tedious. Speaking of gadgets, those mops with disposable cleaning pads can also make cleaning easier. For the die-hard cleaner like me, a mop and bucket are a more cost-effective approach for cleaning floors.
As a kid, when it came time to help my mother clean the house, there were rules like no watching TV or listening to music while cleaning. Throw out the rules! Crank the music up or turn on the TV. It’s your condo and if takes you 12 hours to clean it because you stopped to order in pizza and watch a football game, then good for you. When we have fun performing a potentially boring task like cleaning, we are more likely to continue performing the tasks leading to a squeaky clean home.
