What could you do with an extra month in 2018? That’s the amount of time you can get back by reducing or eliminating your house cleaning time.

A study by CLR revealed that Americans spend 13 hours a week cleaning. That’s 685 hours a year – almost an entire month! At least half of that time could be transformed into a dozen books read, a masterpiece painted, or a few thousand dollars in your pocket. These tips will help you make better use of the time you spend cleaning.

Just the thought of thoroughly cleaning your home can be overwhelming. It is so much easier to maintain cleaning once someone else has done the “heavy lifting” for you. Give yourself a clean slate by hiring a cleaning service to do a thorough, detailed house cleaning, so that it will be easier for you to maintain your clean home.

As our client Abby writes:

I have had Sponge & Sparkle once to do the head to toe hourly cleaning, and now I had them a second time for a regular monthly cleaning that I plan to continue indefinitely! The service is the best I’ve ever experienced, and the rate is worth every penny. The staff are so courteous and cheerful, and the work they do is truly stellar.

Put your cleaning products where they will be needed the most. This will save you running from room to room looking for them.

Here are a few ideas:

Put one or two bottles of green cleaning products in each room for easy access.

Instead of items up and down the stairs, keep one (ex., broom) on each floor.

Wear a cleaning tool belt or perhaps an apron with pockets to keep the cleaning items with you as you move from room to room.

Want to reduce the time you spend cleaning and scrubbing? Try using a steam cleaner. This is one of the ones we use. Steam cleaning not only gets your space cleaned quicker, the hot water also sanitizes.

A high-quality, lightweight vacuum will also make cleaning go faster.

Five-minute email breaks can end up lasting an hour. You can Facebook that you are cleaning after you are finished.

If you really need human contact when you are cleaning, call someone and use a hands-free headset. You’ll be surprised how much laundry you can fold during a half-hour phone conversation.

Don’t run around in circles picking up items here and there. You will only exhaust yourself.

Instead, work from one corner of the room to the other. Have a garbage bag and basket for things to put away. Put items that don’t belong into the basket as you encounter them, and take other items out of the basket as you reach the space where they should be.

Just as faster tempo music makes people exercise faster, having your favorite up-tempo tunes playing in the background may speed up your cleaning.

Dancing a little may also help: just make sure your kids and their smartphones are nowhere nearby. You don’t want to end up on YouTube.

Speaking of idle kids, put them to work! Assign tasks to each child and reward jobs well done. An added benefit is that they won’t be underfoot, so that you can clean and dance in peace.

Is all of this cleaning worth a month (each year) out of your life? As Bruce Lee said, “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”

If you’ve decided it’s not worth the time, energy, and stress, if you’d rather spend that time doing something that brings you joy, forget about it and hire a professional cleaning service.