When you spend valuable time cleaning, you want your home to actually look clean, so why does it still look messy? There are a multitude of small things that add up and make your home look dirty even after you have worked so hard to keep it clean. Consider paying special attention to some of these items to make your home appear cleaner.
Baseboards
Baseboards get the brunt of the dust and grime that’s kicked up by foot traffic. In addition, when we vacuum, sweep and mop floors, we kick up more dust and grime and oftentimes forget to wipe the baseboards down afterward. To give baseboards a good clean, vacuum crevices and wipe down baseboards with a melamine sponge (magic eraser). To prevent dirt and dust from sticking to baseboards as easily, wipe them down with a dryer sheet.
Walls
Walls in a home take a beating. We put nails, screws, and hooks in walls to hang décor, kids wipe their hands on them, and paint progressively fades from the sun. Take time once a month to wipe down walls with vinegar and water or a melamine sponge. Fill holes from changing out décor items with spackle, sand down the excess, and repaint. When matching paint, consider taking in a small paint chip to your local home improvement store for a paint match instead of ordering the same color you used to paint them originally, because paint color fades over time and the same shade may not still match, causing a touch-up to turn into repainting an entire wall. Go over stubborn stains with a primer before painting to prevent the stain from coming through the fresh coat of paint.
Clutter
Some spots in a home are just clutter collectors. Any surface by the entry to a home can quickly become overrun with stacks of mail, items that need to leave home with you like briefcases and bags of items to be donated, and more. Shoes can become a problem. When you need them, maybe you can’t find them, and when you get home and kick them off they can quickly get in the way and even become a trip hazard. Prevent your home from becoming cluttered by doing a clean sweep. Grab a laundry basket or other container and walk around collecting clutter, then go through it, throwing away trash and putting items back in their designated space. If you have items without a designated space, consider logistically where those items fit best and look for attractive ways to store them such as a decorative container or a designated drawer of a dresser or built in. Regularly clearing clutter or forming a habit of putting items in their place immediately after use will go a long way in making your home appear more tidy.
Wires
Exposed wires can cause things to look messy. Consider ways to hide them such as a cable raceway, which uses a plastic cover hanging on the wall to consolidate and conceal wires, like those wires hanging out from behind the TV on the wall. Plastic cord raceways can also be used directly above baseboards to discreetly conceal wires in plain sight. Another option for TV and speaker wires is to run the wire inside the wall. If you find this daunting, hire a handyperson to help or purchase a kit online with the instructions you need to do it properly. Routers and other wired equipment can be concealed inside of furniture or closets. Using zip ties to keep wires together and sticky hooks on the back of furniture can keep wires from peeking out.
Window Treatments
Curtains and blinds are oftentimes high-touch items in a home and can become the source of not only a dingy look but a source of unwanted dust and debris that can cause allergies. Regularly use a dry duster to clean blinds and take fabric window treatments down to throw in the wash or take to a dry cleaner. This simple task will make your home appear brighter and instantly.
Laundry
Laundry can feel never-ending. If you’re doing laundry for the whole family, it may especially feel like laundry is a constant burden. Consider marking a specific day of the week on your calendar as laundry day and completing all the washing, drying, and folding one to two days a week. Keeping a laundry schedule prevents clean laundry from sitting in a basket for days and potentially getting mixed in with the dirty laundry. Another way to conceal dirty laundry is to purchase decorative laundry baskets and place them in each bedroom to prevent the appearance of clutter from the laundry.
Décor
Less is more. It’s fun to show some personality in your home, but too much décor can give the illusion of a cluttered home. The same goes for furniture. Too much or unbalanced furniture (too much on one side of the room) can cause the room to look cluttered and messy. Try to find ways to keep surfaces clear of unnecessary decorative items.