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Favorite Housecleaning Tips + Tools
Many people ask for tips on how I keep our house and furniture clean with dogs. And most recently the question, how we were able to clean the rug that Finnegan spilled white paint on! What a calamity that was! A home with a puppy is both fun and messy. How to keep a perfectly clean home at all times with a puppy really isn’t a thing I can speak to (there is no housekeeper here except us!). However, there are some tools, systems and “guidelines” we’ve come up for ourselves over our many years of being dog owners (and in raising three children) that have helped us keep our sanity and a sense of sanctuary in our home.
First of all, let me address how we took care of the white paint that Finnegan accidentally pulled off the dining room table! It happened late at night and husband was there to witness it (you can read the whole story here).
This was a brand new rug that we had just laid out in our dining room. I hadn’t yet photographed it for Rifle Paper Co. so my husband knew immediately this was going to be a terrible mistake ha! I was already fast asleep upstairs and he didn’t want to wake me to tell me about it :).
Fortunately he thought immediately to run and grab our handy dandy carpet cleaner. We used this ALL THE TIME when Finnegan first arrived at our home and wasn’t fully potty trained yet, so he was very familiar with how well this tool works. But with spilled paint? He wasn’t sure the rug would be salvageable but this tool worked SO WELL that you can’t even tell the paint was ever there.
I’m a big believer in finding solutions and being prepared to take care of the specific kinds of issues that happen around your house. You know the messes that drive you crazy or happen so often that they make you feel like your house is always a mess? My housekeeping advice is to find a simple solution for each of those problems so you can take care of them quickly and efficiently.
I’ve learned that cleaning the ongoing messes around the house and tidying up has to be a part of the rhythm of my day and I need tools that are convenient to use.
With that said, I don’t buy a lot of gadgets or fancy cleaning tools. I see a lot of speciality cleaning tools promoted on social media promising a solution for every problem. While they can be tempting and I do have a few, I find that less really is more. I really only need a few tools to keep our house clean, so I’ll share those with you.
Here is a list of the cleaning tools that we use regularly in our home and then below I’ll share where we keep them and why they’re convenient.
If you want to feel like your house is clean, focus on the floors! And take care of surface clutter.
On our main floor, we use a robot vacuum. My husband loves it because it can just roam around the house cleaning up the floors while we do other things. It makes cleaning up the daily stuff and dust bunnies so easy. It has a HEPA filter, self empties, and you can even schedule it to go at set times.
We also have an upright vacuum with a hose so you can handle anything that the robot doesn’t do as well with.
The steam cleaner is our solution for quick cleaning of upholstery and rugs. We also prefer furniture with fabrics that are durable and easy to clean.
We avoid harsh chemicals and use Thieves for all kinds of cleaning (including in our steam cleaner).
I also have this spot cleaner which can work miracles as needed, too. We don’t use it as often, but I definitely find that having these solutions on hand and ready to go makes both the every day cleaning easier and prepares us to solve most of the occasional disasters that can happen. I want people and pets to enjoy our home, I know we can clean up just about anything!
This broom and dust pan is our favorite, we have one set in our pantry closet and one upstairs. A quick sweep of the staircase is one of my favorite ways to keep the house feeling clean! Messy stairs are one of my “pet peeves” — with dogs (and a beach nearby) there’s always sand, fluff (and even though our dogs don’t shed) and outdoor elements being tracked in. We loved this particular broom and dust pan so much we got it for our kids for Christmas and now they love it too!
Upstairs I’ve found the easiest and most convenient way for me to keep floors clean is this lightweight vacuum. I love it, I keep it upstairs so it’s really efficient for me to do regular clean ups in the bathroom, bedroom and hallway. It easily takes care of that fluff or hair or sand that ends up on our hardwoods and tidies up rugs so they look fresh again (a quick run through with this vacuum really makes the whole room feel much cleaner!).
Join me in HomeBody Gathering Place! I teach home and self care rhythms that will help you enjoy caring for your home (so it takes better care of you, too.)
