Break These Bad Living Room Cleaning Habits & Transform Your Living Space
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Cleaning is a hassle. But you might be making it harder on yourself than is absolutely necessary. Whether you're tidying up your bedroom, kitchen or bathroom, banishing your bad habits can make it easier to clean — and easier to keep your place clean.
And nowhere will a truly good clean be more apparent than your living room. It's your space for relaxing and it's where you entertain guests. It's where your most statement-making decor will most likely live. So it deserves some TLC. And you can deliver it with a little help.
Break these five bad living room cleaning habits and you can get your space pristinely clean. So clean, in fact, that it might just stay that way for good.
Living with piles
Look around your living room. What's the state of your stuff? If you've got piles, it's time to reconsider. That stack of magazines and that heap of throw blankets aren't doing your aesthetic any favors. Plus, do you know what piles invite? Bigger piles. Now, that's not to say that your stuff might not benefit from being gathered in groups. But there's a difference between having your kids' toys piled loosely in the corner and neatly stored in a bin. If you can't part with your pile because it makes sense to keep the items gathered that way, invest in a storage system for those items to keep your living room neat. As an added bonus, it can clue your family members or roommates into where that stuff should go when it's not in use, helping them put stuff away so your living room stays tidy.
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Cluttering surfaces
How often do you dust and disinfect all the surfaces in your living room? If it's not often, you might be facing one of the most common bad living room cleaning habits: too much clutter. You're never going to wipe down your mantel if you have to move over a dozen items off it to cross that chore off your list. Streamline what you keep on your surfaces to make it easier to keep everything near looking and sanitized.Not dusting first
The living room tends to accumulate dust. So when you start by vacuuming without addressing the dust on your surfaces first, you're just moving the problem around. Instead, start by dusting. And do your highest ledges first, then work your way down. Wait to clean your floors last so you're catching all of that dust and getting your space truly clean. Bonus: making sure all of the dust is completely gathered throughout the course of your clean will help you space stay cleaner over time. Also, don't forget about the items that aren't easy to knock free of dust, like throw pillows and blankets. Launder them regularly to catch those dust mites.
A sparkling living room requires clean tools used on a regular basis. Image: FollowTheFlow/Getty Images
