Have you ever been caught short by the arrival of unexpected visitors to your home? Has a friend ever called you to say they’ll be at your home for a coffee in 10 minutes? Most of us have been forced to perform a hurried clean and tidy in readiness for an unexpected visitor — and it can be a very stressful experience.
But if you have a set plan in place for such events, the emergency cleanup operation will be a lot easier — and a lot less stressful. With that in mind, here are a few tips for cleaning your home in a hurry.
Dump the trash
The first thing to do is grab a refuse bag. Walk through your home quickly, and pick up any rubbish or unnecessary clutter. Don’t mess about; simply grab everything and put it in the bag. And don’t worry about recycling now, as you can do this later when your guests are gone.
Prioritise
You can’t dust and perform detailed cleaning jobs like you usually do, so don’t try. Prioritise your main reception room (where your guest will sit), your bathroom and your kitchen. Rather than clean everything, however, give each area of these rooms a brief visual inspection. Only concentrate on areas that obviously need a clean.
Walk and wipe
Spray a microfibre cloth with the appropriate cleaning agent, and wipe down smooth surfaces as you go. If you’re cleaning wood, use a dry dusting cloth, and scoop rather than wipe — this will ensure you catch dust instead of sending it elsewhere.
Fire up the steam cleaner
In situations like this, any tool that saves you time and effort should be embraced. A steam cleaner, for instance, can clean almost any surface. If you notice large accumulations of grease or dirt, the quickest will to deal with them is to fire a jet of superheated steam at them. Research the best steam cleaner for quick cleaning, and make sure it’s always ready to go.
Spend most of your time in the bathroom
In most areas of your home, a little mess and dirt will probably go unnoticed. After all, your guests know that they’re catching you unawares, so they won’t expect a pristinely clean home. But it’s often the cleanliness of a bathroom that creates the lasting impression. If your bathroom is spotlessly cleaning, tidy, and well equipped, your guest’s lasting impression will be a positive one.
Quickly wipe and polish taps, your sink and all your main surfaces with a cloth and your chosen bathroom cleaning agent. Where you notice large accumulations of limescale, soap scum, dirt, grease etc, use a handheld steam cleaner to cut through them as quickly as possible. Replace your towels, empty the bin and generally tidy things up.
Vacuum
Assuming you don’t have time to vacuum your entire house, you have to concentrate on the high-traffic areas. Your hallway, your stairs and your main reception room should be the first rooms you clean. Don’t mess about with attachments and tools at this stage — they’ll just slow you down. Remember: you’re not looking for perfection here… just a reasonably tidy and presentable home.
A few final tips
Don’t wait for cleaning agents to work. Normally, you’d have to give the likes of sanitisers and cream cleaners some contact time, but this isn’t a normal situation. Go around your home, and spray what you need to. When you’re finished, retrace your steps and start wiping/polishing. By the time you return to your sprayed surfaces, the cleaning agents will have had time to work.
This is an “all-hands-on-deck” situation. If you can, assign everyone their own room to speed-clean. If you have lots of storage space, use it. “Out of sight, out of mind” is a very apt outlook to adopt in a situation like this. Finally, manage your guest’s stay in your home. If you haven’t managed to clean or tidy certain areas of your home, close the doors leading to them and make sure they’re out of bounds.
Act quickly and prioritise the next time you have unexpected guests, and cleaning your home in a hurry shouldn’t be too much of a headache.
