In our busy daily life, cleaning can be a tedious and time-consuming task. Ever since I have a baby, all I want to know is how to get our house clean in the fastest way possible. The key to having a house that’s always clean and easy to keep clean is by having a daily cleaning routine and stick to it. But we all know, life happens. Sometimes we’re in a hurry or have someone coming over unexpectedly and all we have is just 30 minutes. So here are some shortcuts you can do that can help clean your house quickly.

Since I’m living in a 4-room HDB flat, in this post, I’m going to use HDB flat as the reference to the size of each room in the house that I’ll clean within 30 minutes time frame. But of course, the tips you’re going to find here are still applicable for any types of housings.

Preparation Cleaning

The first thing you need to prepare before we start our speed cleaning is your expectations. In half an hour, we’re not going to do deep cleaning or decluttering months of piled stuff that you’ve been postponing. Instead, we are going to spruce up your house in fast and efficient steps so that you can have your whole house clean enough and a little more presentable for guests to look and sit on.

Before we begin, you’ll also need to gather the right tools and supplies. Some rooms such as bathroom will have its own need for cleaning supplies to quicken the process but this doesn’t have to be complicated. I’m going to show you list of tools and supplies you’ll need as I clean each room of my flat and you can refer to it.

Once your expectation is set and your tools are ready, grab a timer, set it to 30 minutes and let’s get into it.

Step 1: Spray Bathroom with Bleach

When I’m doing speed cleaning, the first room I like to tackle first is the bathroom. This is so that I can clean the toilet bowl and spray the shower floor with bleach. The bleach will need to sit on the surface for at least 25 minutes to do its work so I can leave it there while I clean other part of the house.

I start by pouring toilet bowl cleaner and let it sit. After that, I spray bleach all over the shower floor area. The reason I use bleach is because shower floor is always damp so it tends to get mouldy and bleach can kill mould pretty effectively in the least amount of time. Bleach will not only clean tough stain but also sanitise and disinfect too. Of course, you can always use other cleaning alternatives if you’re allergic to or just don’t want to use bleach.

Step 2: Collect Misplaced Items and Free Up All Surfaces

For the next step, you’re going to need two large containers or baskets or even garbage bags, whatever it is, it has to be big because you’re going to dump random stuff into it. One bag is for dirty or useless items that are probably going to go to the trash, I like to call it the ‘dirty bin’. And the other is for stuff that you still want to keep but just not currently put at the right place, let’s call it the ‘clean bin’.

Carry your two big containers with you and start picking up stuff to free up all surfaces in your house, room by room. Just start collecting anything that doesn’t belong to the surface you’re cleaning and sort them to the right bin. For example, the drinking bottle you left on the bedside table last night, or your baby’s toy that’s left in the crib and needs a washing. Put these type of items into the ‘clean bin’. When you find dirty item such as used wet wipes or tissue, dump them into the ‘dirty bin’.

Just do it fast and don’t overthink it, we’re not going to decide anything important yet and your stuff are still going to be in the house for now. Your focus is to make all surfaces in the house free of clutter so you can start cleaning them.

Store or hide these bins in the storage room or the household shelter temporarily while you continue your cleaning journey. Later in the day when you have time to spare, look back into these bins and start sorting it properly, like wash the water bottle and throw the trash into the rubbish chute.

Once the surface is mess-free, we can now move on to the next step.

Step 3: Wipe down from top to bottom

Start cleaning your house from top to bottom in each room. I’m not a fan of duster because it tends to spread dust around. Instead, I like using damp microfibre cloth or vacuum cleaner.

To clean high places like ceiling fan or on top of cabinet, you can wrap microfibre cloth on the long duster so you can reach the high places quickly without dragging chair or step stool that will take up more time.

To clean surfaces, fold your cleaning cloth two times so you can unfold it once it picked up dirt and you still have other clean parts of the cloth to work with. Spray multi-purpose cleaner and start wiping down everything.

You can also use multi-purpose cleaner to clean mirrors and windows but I like using glass cleaning wipes that can provide a streak-free shine result quickly.

To clean curtain and sofa, I like to use handheld vacuum cleaner. Vacuum cleaner is efficient to suck dust and dirt off the upholstery furniture, especially if you have pets that shed hair.

Step 4: Clean the Floor

Once you’ve finished wiping down everything, it’s time to clean your floor. When you don’t have a lot of time, focus on cleaning the highest traffic area first. You can sweep or vacuum your floor, then mop it, or to make the cleaning process even more a breeze, invest on a good wet and dry vacuum cleaner. If you’re looking for one, check out my review on a recommended wet and dry vacuum cleaner that I’m currently using.

Step 5: Finish Cleaning Up the Bathroom

Now for the final step. Remember the bleach we started off with earlier? Let’s finish cleaning up the bathroom, flush the toilet bowl and rinse the shower floor.

Bonus Step: Add Some Fresh Scent

Now that your whole house is virtually clean, top it all off with this bonus step that will only takes seconds. Add freshness into your house by opening windows to circulate the air in the rooms and let fresh air in. And if you like to, you can also spray air freshener or odour-fighting products to the curtain, sofa, and carpet. If you like scented candle, light it up too or use candle warmer to make your house smell even more cosy and inviting.

This simple tip is especially useful if you have pets because when we live in the house, we sometimes get used to the smell and don’t notice bad odour.

So that’s it.

I hope you find this post helpful and feel free to share with me if you have any tips on speed cleaning your house. Thank you for visiting this blog and please make yourself at home.