Cleaning Pros Share Their Favorite Shortcuts For Saving Time & Sanity

What rooms does your family use the most? The living room and kitchen are usually the most high-traffic areas of any house. At night, take a few minutes to put away toys, wipe down counters, and get the dishes into the dishwasher. “Waking up to a clean room makes mornings a breeze,” says Jessica Gonzalez, chief operating officer of Sparkly Maid San Antonio (she’s also a mom.)

“Every night before bed, I set aside 10 minutes to reset ‘visual clutter zones’ in the kitchen, entryway, or living room. A quick reset helps the next morning feel calm and manageable,” adds Scott Schrader, a parent and cleaning expert at CottageCare.

You don’t have to burn through paper towels or buy special dusters. “Before you toss ‘em, run old dryer sheets along baseboards, blinds, and electronics. They pick up dust and leave behind anti-static magic that actually repels future grime. It’s like sorcery, but smells like fresh laundry,” says Ryan Knoll, owner of Tidy Casa.

I typically fold my laundry at the dining room table, so I can definitely see myself grabbing the used dryer sheet out of the load and wiping down the window sills really quickly before throwing it away.

“Toss a sheet of foil or a silicone liner under the oven racks (but not touching the heating element). When the pizza cheese goes rogue, you’re not scraping charred dairy out of the oven floor later,” Knoll says.

Most of us keep all our cleaning supplies in one location, like under the kitchen sink, but it’s a lot easier to clean on a whim when the tools you need are already in the room.

For example, Schrader keeps microfiber cloths and cleaning wipes in the kitchen and bathroom, and tends to wipe down mirrors and sinks while he’s doing something else, like brushing his teeth or heating up food in the microwave. “Over time, these small acts add up,” he says.

Knoll says you could also try using a little caddy to corral your most-used cleaning essentials — like some cleaning cloths and a multi-surface spray — so those items are easier to grab and tote around the house with you.

If you’re letting something simmer or waiting for water to boil, that’s when Gonzalez likes to wipe down counters or load what she can into the dishwasher. It helps with the cleanup after eating, when all you really want to do is relax, not feel like such a big task.

“Keep a small catch-all basket in every main room. End of the day? Walk around, toss stuff in, and relocate it later,” says Knoll. As someone with a basket that lives on my staircase, I can attest to how much I love this hack. It’s easy to gather everything that needs to be put away elsewhere in the house, and then carry all those items around easily while you put them back where they belong.

For Gonzalez, the basket method looks like having a catch-all basket for each of her children. They can toss their random socks, toys, or artwork in there throughout the day — and so can she — and they can put those things away when they go to their rooms at the end of the day or during downtime.

Decluttering by default — that’s what Schrader calls it. He keeps a donation bin in the back of his closet, and if an item is no longer useful or loved, it goes straight in there. This helps reduce not just the clutter of your home, but also the number of items you have to clean and organize. The more you have, the more work is required to care for it all, you know?

“If you’ve got pets (or long-haired humans), a plain rubber squeegee will pull up so much hair from your carpets it’s disturbing — but also satisfying. Like a weirdly fuzzy archaeology dig,” Knoll says.

Yes, this process will obviously take more time than vacuuming, but if the amount of hair your vacuum pulls up is never enough to make your rugs feel clean, this might be the trick that saves your sanity.

Laundry is my arch-nemesis, and I am quite literally always trying to get caught up on the weekends as it piles up all week long. That phenomenon can only be prevented by doing a little bit each day, Schrader says. “I do one load of laundry every morning: wash, dry, and fold. It never builds into a mountain of laundry to tackle.”