Spruce up your home in a jiffy

IS it time for a spring clean? Check out these tips for quicker, better cleaning.

Spray the cloth when polishing

If you’re using furniture polish, don’t spray the furniture directly. It can work well if you use lots of elbow grease and remove it all, but if you’re doing a general clean, you’ll leave lots of it behind. This sticky residue ends up attracting dirt, so you’re sabotaging yourself. Instead, spray the cloth and then wipe the furniture.

Chuck the feather duster

It’s a real shame because they’re so pretty, but the truth is that a microfibre cloth is specially designed to hook on to and stick to dust whereas feathers just sweep most of the dust particles around. If you love the read of your feather duster, stick the cloth over it to get to ceiling corners and high shelves.

Let it sit

Tile, floor and faucet cleaners work best when you spritz and then let them sit for a minute or so. This allows everything to moisten or penetrate so that you don’t have to scrub too hard. If you’re doing a room, work out a system that allows you to spritz and then tidy something small so you don’t end up standing about and thinking of all the other things you’d rather be doing.

Work from the top to the bottom

It’s better to work with gravity than against it, so clean the ceiling fans first and let the dirt and dust drop to the floor, then move to washing curtain rails before cleaning windows.

Only then do you begin on cleaning up the floor. Similarly, when tidying shelves, work from the top down.