The thought of cleaning your house when you’re exhausted can be overwhelming. After all, focusing on the everyday essentials is more than enough when you’re out of energy, so who wants to throw cleaning into the mix too, potentially end of tenancy cleaning in London too?
If you find yourself needing to clean but you don’t have the energy, hopefully these tips below will be useful.
Cleaning When You’re Exhausted: Energy-Saving Tips for Parents
- Anything is Better than Nothing
There are different ways to summarise this point: 10% is better than 0%; something is better than nothing; better than it was, etc. In short, if you don’t have the energy to completely deep-clean a room, then don’t. Just do a little bit.
Over time, short bursts of low-energy cleaning will add up. This might be tidying away some toys, making the bed, or sorting out some washing. Focus on getting a little something done and you should notice the difference.
- Break Jobs Down
Similarly, breaking large and potentially overwhelming jobs down into smaller segments can make a difference. Let’s take the dishes for example. If there are mountains of washing up in front of you, just do the cups. Come back later and tackle some plates, or some cutlery.
While you might be frustrated that there’s still a lot of washing up to do, there’s at least less than there was 10 minutes ago! Apply this logic to other jobs, such as cleaning the bathroom, doing the laundry, and so on.
- Focus on the Essentials
When running a family home (or any home for that matter), there are a few jobs considered essential. These mainly relate to hygiene: a clean kitchen, a functioning bathroom, and clean clothes. As long as you can keep these under control, forget about everything else.
Hoovering, dusting and mopping can wait until you have more energy. As long as you have a sanitary place to prepare food, somewhere acceptable for everyone to wash, and clean clothes to send your kids to school in, you’ve got the important things covered.
- Set Up Clutter Baskets
This tip is super useful for exhausted parents: have a clutter basket in important rooms and just throw stuff in there that you can’t be bothered to deal with right now. Bonus points if the container has a lid and can be hidden away.
While this goes against normal cleaning advice, it’s great for when you can’t be bothered. Rather than tidying and decluttering the living room, just chuck extra stuff in the clutter basket. Then, when you have the energy, you can empty it, sort it, and put everything where it belongs.
- Tidy as You Go
Tidy might be a bit of a strong word for this point. Put simply, bring stuff with you if you leave a room, such as rubbish to go in the bin or washing up. You might already do this, but taking things with you when you’re passing its destination helps prevent clutter from building up. Assuming you’re going in that direction anyway, you haven’t really expended any more effort!
- Focus on Things that Make the Most Impact
This could be different for everyone, but focus on cleaning the things that you think will make the most impact on the appearance of cleanliness in your home. For example, this might be rearranging cushions in the living room, ensuring coats and shoes are neat on the coat rack, tidying up dishes, etc.
The point here isn’t to make your house clean, but rather to make it look clean. Focusing on appearance can help with your perception of the problem: if you see a clean room, you’re far less likely to get stressed about it actually being dirty.
- Cut Yourself Some Slack
Perhaps the most important tip is to be kind to yourself. As long as everyone is fed and the important rooms are hygienic, everything else is unnecessary. Sure, you might want to properly tidy up if you have guests coming round, but other parents will likely understand your situation!
If you’re low on energy and really don’t have the capacity to clean, just don’t. Make sure the important things are done and you can just tackle everything else (perhaps with the help of others) when you’re feeling up to it.
Final Thoughts
Cleaning when you’re exhausted isn’t entirely necessary. Get other family members involved in the essentials (bathroom, kitchen, clean clothes) and everything else can be pushed to one side for another time.