Ultimate Cleaning Hacks for a Clean and Fresh Home

I get it, I know. It’s so hard to keep your home clean and smelling fresh 24/7! All those beautiful homes we see on Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube… **long sigh* if only right? If cleaning could only be as fun as Cinderella or with the use of magic like Harry Potter. If we could just flick our wrist and swish our magic wands we would have the whole house clean! Unfortunately, cleaning requires physical labor but who says it can’t be magical? Especially after having a clean and fresh-smelling home that lasts.

I’m a big sucker for clean and fresh-smelling homes. In fact, I started cleaning my family home as young as 5 years old. In other words, I’d like to call myself a semi-professional home cleaner. However, now living in a 540-square-foot apartment with my husband I’ve realized that having a bigger home can hide away so many messes and any lingering smell! It’s harder to hide the mess when you open your bedroom doors and you automatically see your washing/dryer machine, bathroom, and kitchen!

I love my apartment but it definitely challenged me and my knowledge of what it means to keep a home clean, especially one that lasts. After trying multiple cleaning hacks, I have narrowed it down to 6 cleaning hacks that are now my most FAVORITE and time-worthy tips and tricks! These tips have allowed me to keep my home clean and smelling fresh for good and I’m so excited to share these tips with you!

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In this blog post, I share with you the 6 ULTIMATE cleaning hacks I use that helps me keep my home clean and smelling fresh for good. In this post, I’ll be covering:

The 10-Minute Rule
How to Get Clean, Fresh, and Bacteria-Free Counters
The Importance of Cleaning Your Oven
How to Keep Your Bathroom Smelling Fresh with Laundry
How to Keep Your Seating Areas and Trashcans Fresh
How to Get Smooth and Shiny Floors

So if you’re tired of cleaning your home for HOURS, having a stuffy home, and trying different hacks to get your home clean and fresh with no results, then you’re in the right place! All of that is about to change FOR GOOD!

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cleaning hacks for a clean and fresh home

Hack 1: The 10-Minute Rule

This is probably the closest thing to magic and stops you from cleaning for 3 or more hours in a day. The first time I heard this rule I was skeptical but after putting it into practice it has done so many wonders to our home and I truly couldn’t be grateful.

All you have to do is choose a specific room to clean for the day and focus on that one room for 10 minutes. This could be the living room, dining room, bathroom, bedroom, etc. Before you know it, your house will be clean by the end of the week instead of dedicating a whole day to cleaning! Here you can download my FREE 10-Minute Cleaning Checklist so that you can have a clean home by the end of the week!

Hack 2: Clean, Fresh, and Bacteria-free Counters

Did you know that a kitchen countertop has 18x more bacteria than your dog’s food bowl? In fact, the number one bacteria that can grow on kitchen countertops include Salmonella and E. coli and over time a build-up of bacteria equals odor! To prevent this, I always wipe down my tables and countertops to get rid of all the build-up of gunk throughout the day.

I’ve had my fair share of disinfecting wipes and sprays but my FAVORITE spray of all time is the Microban 24-Hour Sanitizing Spray Fresh Scent. This is an all-around product that not only smells subtle and clean but also disinfects 99.9% of bacteria for up to 24 hours, sanitizes, deodorizes, and cleans making the countertops bacteria-free and apartment smell SUPER fresh. Let’s just say this product blew my mind! I like to use it on almost anything where contact is made including counters, tables, doorknobs, keyboards, etc. This is THE ultimate spray that has now become a necessity in my cleaning supplies!

Hack 3: Cleaning Your Oven

Is your oven looking greasy with burned scraps of food? Or does it smell bad when you use it? If so, it may be time for you to clean your oven. In fact, some say that an oven should be cleaned once every 3 months. However, this can be difficult to follow especially with the busy lives that we live! So how do you know when it’s time to clean your oven?

Below are 4 signs that you’re oven needs cleaning:

You see smoke coming out of your oven
Grease Build Up is Evident
Your food doesn’t taste the same
You don’t know the last time you cleaned it

If any of these apply to you, make sure to clean your oven ASAP because there could be smoke or harmful gases such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon monoxide.

Hack 4: Keeping the Bathroom Fresh with FRESH Laundry

This is probably my FAVORITE hack to keep our bathroom smelling clean and fresh without using candles or essential oils. I have learned to make the most out of my living space after living in an apartment and that includes hanging clothes on the bathtub rod to dry.

To do this, I like to separate my delicate clothing such as silk and polyester, put it on a hanger, and hang it on the rod. Not only does this protect the delicate fabric but it also makes the bathroom smell like your laundry detergent as your clothes dry on the rack. By far, this is my FAVORITE cleaning hack as I get 2 things done at once- freshen the bathroom and have clean clothes.

cleaning hacks for a fresh and clean home

Hack 5: Keeping Your Seating Areas and Trashcans Fresh

Another way to prevent your apartment from smelling like trash and to keep your seating areas smelling fresh is to place dryer sheets throughout your house. For trashcans, I like to use the Hefty Fabuloso trash bags and place 2-3 sheets at the bottom of every trashcan in my apartment. Similarly, I like to place 1 dryer sheet inside each of my pillow covers in the living room to freshen up our seating areas and lightly spray Febreze on our futon.

Additionally, to help freshen up my home I like to use an air purifier to help circulate the air and remove the stuffy feeling and smell inside my home. Since using one, I’ve noticed how crisp my home smells each time I come home. Here you can check out my all-time favorite Slevoo Air Purifier that has been a game changer to my home and health!

Hack 6: The Magic in Mopping

Growing up, my favorite Disney princess was Cinderella and to this day she remains my favorite princess. In fact, I loved her so much that my mom nicknamed a cleaning style after her to get me inspired to clean at a young age, something she called mopping in “Cinderella-style” (AKA scrubbing the floor on all fours).

For the longest time, I’ve always mopped the kitchen floors like this. The first time I was introduced to an actual mop and bucket I HATED it. It wasn’t until I tried the O-Cedar EasyWring RinseClean Microfiber Spin Mop and Bucket Floor Cleaning System that changed my world…

Unlike other mop buckets where the dirty water is reused to mop, this product allowed me to mop my floors using clean and fresh water! It was HEAVEN in a bucket! Not only did my floors look cleaner and feel better but the smell of my apartment improved ten-fold. The atmosphere just felt so clean and fresh and my floors felt like smooth marble. Pure serenity!

I know this product sounds super hyped (for all the good reasons) but it really does the trick to getting a clean and fresh-smelling apartment.

Once I found these cleaning hacks and implemented them into my daily life, our home has been the cleanest it has ever been and always smells and feels fresh and serene. No longer do we smell our trash when we open the front door, see grease smudges on our floors, or have a stuffy and smelly bathroom. Instead, our apartment is clean and smells like fresh clean laundry on a daily basis without me having to clean it for 3 hours or more. I’m so grateful to have found these hacks that work and get to share them with you!

I understand that cleaning can be difficult and maintaining a home can be even harder no matter how many times you clean it. So if you’re ready to spend less than 3 or more hours cleaning, live in a fresh and clean environment for good, and create a home you love and deserve, I urge you to get started now by clicking on the links below to get the products I mentioned throughout the blog.

Happy Cleaning!