It’s always a problem trying to keep an apartment clean. Between work and play it becomes difficult, or troublesome, to keep your place up. Messes can build up quickly and often can become more trouble than they are worth. Taking a few steps can ease this burden and help you live in an apartment you can be proud of.
Setting a Schedule
One of the easiest and most difficult things to do is to make a cleaning schedule. Plans change, schedules become muddled, and general fatigue from work can set in. It can be hard to consistently stay on top of household chores, but if you can make them habits, it becomes second nature. It may be best to itemize your tasks and give them a time frame. This makes the larger, more time-consuming tasks seem smaller and doable in time. Break up each chore to give you a clear goal to reach and to make sure you don’t get overwhelmed and discouraged. Making a checklist can help with keeping track of your progress and give you a sense of what needs to be done. If you don’t do well with setting planned out daily tasks, you can set a day for cleaning or for general things to get done. Maybe have the kitchen set for one day and your living room for another. Giving clear and easily attainable goals will lead to good cleaning habits over time. Give it time and you won’t even realize that you are doing the tasks anymore.
Buying Cleaning Supplies
It’s hard to do any cleaning if you don’t have the proper cleaning supplies. When go shopping for them, you will find everything you need at the local drugstore. They have multiple aisles of products that will cover every all your cleaning. Obvious materials would be brooms, mops, soaps, and other normal products that you can find anywhere. Depending on your type of apartment you will need to buy certain products. Some apartments will have wood floors, while others will have carpeted living areas. Usually, the cleaning items are not expensive and can last you for quite a while until you need to refill them. They also come in different levels of strength and scents, so you can find the best one for you.
Cleaning Appliances
You can find every appliance you could need and a bit more at department stores in Japan. They have a wide selection of machines and items to choose from. Vacuum cleaners come in many shapes, sizes, and colors and can be optimized for storage or for faster cleaning. Larger vacuums will get the job done fast and easy, but they may not fit well in small apartments. They also tend to be the most expensive ones you can find, even if you use recycle shops to try for used vacuums. The smaller vacuums get the job done and take up very little space. They are usually at a decent price range, 7,000 yen for an average one, and can clean a small apartment with ease. There are lots of attachments and even a handheld model that allows you to get to harder to reach places. This helps reduces cleaning time and keeps you in a dirt-free apartment.
Hit the Hard to Reach Places
Only going after visible open areas will make your apartment look clean, but it leaves lots of other places dirty. There will be plenty of nooks and crannies that won’t be readily visible for cleaning. It’s best to get behind the bookshelves and refrigerator where there is the biggest build-up of debris. Corners of your rooms can be easily overlooked but can also be cleaned quickly with the right attachments on your vacuum cleaner. This is true for the toilet as well, as most people may only get the floor around it, but not under and behind it. The kitchen can be easy or hard depending on how you have it set up. If you’re using shelves to add more space, you’ll need to pull everything off and get all around the spot it was in. The stove depends on if you have a gas or electric one. Gas will usually accumulate more grease and burns, while electric will have some burn spots. The bathroom will require a little more attention, and a big brush to scrub the floors and the tub. Take your time when cleaning to ensure you catch as much dust and debris that you can.
When you finally get your new life in order, this can be one area that takes a small hit in quality. It’s so easy to put it off until later and then simply forget or not care. You never truly know how it feels to have a clean place until you have done the work yourself. Not only will it be healthier for you to live in, but if you plan to have company, it will impress your visitors. It will be tough to do at first and will take a lot of work to stay consistent with it. Eventually, you will garner the habits needed to keep your new place spick and span. Just give yourself time, and don’t be too hard if you take a while to get into the proper rhythm of things. It will come in time.