The bathroom is the one chore no one wants to do and the one everyone is glad maid services does well—the whole prospect of cleaning the bathroom can make you want to give up!

However, if you want to keep the bathroom clean between maid visits or big cleanings, these tips can help you be quick and efficient as you clean.

1. Dry the toilet brush. Scrub the toilet with the toilet brush, then hang it from the edge of the toilet seat and let it drip dry into the toilet. Most people have dirty toilet brushes, but no one likes to clean with them. Do this trick every time, and your brush will go back into its holder dry and stay clean.

2. Simplify your cleaners. You can use one or two cleaners effectively throughout the bathroom rather than having different cleansers for each thing you want to do. One of the most effective is vinegar and water, which are a great cleaning and disinfecting combo when mixed in a handy sprayer.

Keep half a lemon or a little baking soda around for hard water stains, and you are set for cleaning!

Even if your living room looks great, you may occasionally find yourself home to a significant amount of clutter you didn’t even know you had. Things like magazines, remotes, phones, and books can get scattered easily and create a mess, adding to your house cleaning time every week. 

The best way to fix this is by finding ways to hide your things in plain sight. Baskets and trays will change the way your living room functions. Try these out when you’re tired of things getting spread around the room:

Put Magazines in Trays. Magazines left out on a table can easily get moved, knocked over, or start to look worn and rough as they get read. Instead, find a few trays that suit your living room, and keep your magazines in the tray.

This way, they’re more contained, but they are still all within easy reach.

Décor is all about interest and balance, but sometimes that can be hard to achieve, especially if you’ve been looking at something long enough.

For instance, how often does your coffee table change its look? Probably not too often! That’s why House Beautiful offers decorating “formulas,” and one of them is specifically for your coffee table.

Next time you want a new look in your living room, try following this formula:

Pegboards are an under utilized tools for organizing in most homes. Most of this is because homeowners are used to seeing pegboards in garages and workshops, not in their kitchens and craft areas.

The house cleaning and organizing potential of pegboards is too good to be wasted, though; so take a look at these other ways to make use of pegboards:

The Kitchen. All those little odds and ends all over your counter can be kept close at hand but out of the way by using small containers and pegboard. Paint the pegboard to match your kitchen décor, then hang small containers, tools, dish towels, and pot holders from it.

Crafting Corner. Is your crafting corner more like organized chaos? You can make more room for yourself by hanging things on a pegboard in your workspace (painted, of course!). From tools like hole punches and hot glue guns to frills like ribbons and papers, a pegboard can keep all of those things neatly organized for you.

If you spend a lot of time outside, you likely make good use of your outdoor furniture. On a nice night, it can be relaxing to sit outside, enjoy a drink, and chat with friends. It can be less enjoyable, though; if your outdoor furniture is dirty.

If you've done the house cleaning already, you might be tempted to just hose them off, but the dirt can actually cause damage to some furniture if not washed well, and a thorough washing means getting rid of germs, too.

Cleaning By Type 

Each type of outdoor furniture requires slightly different care. Here’s how you can make sure yours is the best it can be:

Want to feel like you’re at the beach every day? If you want your home to look like a coastal home, you can take some cues from other decorators who have achieved the style well.

Take inspiration from what you like and from your memories and create a room you love around those concepts. If your memories are filled with beach days and ocean water, try these tricks for bringing that home:

Do you have one of those cleaning tricks passed down from your parents or one you picked up from a friend? The crew at Remodelista recently went through their personal collection of tips and complied a list—all of which use things you already have in your house to get tough jobs done. For instance, did you know that vinegar can set colors in your laundry?

Which of these tips do you already know, and which will you try? Keep reading for the full list!

Clean your silver with toothpaste (including jewelry!). Skip gel toothpaste, though—if you only have gel, use a baking soda and water paste instead. Use a soft cloth to clean with the toothpaste (or an old toothbrush for nooks and crannies), then rinse with warm water, and dry with a lint free cloth. Your silver will sparkle again!

Area rugs are a great way to decorate a space. They can define a room, pull a style together, or just stand out as a vibrant attention-getter. Just like carpet, though; rugs need to be thoroughly cleaned. One square inch of rug fabric can hold up to 200,000 species of bacteria. Yikes!

You don't have to put up with those germs—good, frequent cleanings will put them out of commission. Incorporate rug cleaning into your housekeeping chores with these tips:

If you're the one who does the majority of the house cleaning, you know it can be overwhelming at times. When you're having a hard time getting through everything you need to do, a checklist can help a lot.

Setting goals and achieving them gives you a sense of victory, which helps motivate you to keep going. As you make your cleaning checklist, think of which things are most important to you and put those on the top of the list.

If you've ever come home and been greeted with an odor you weren't expecting, you know what it's like to try to find and get rid of an unwanted smell. The most despised household smells include:

• Garbage.
• Pet odors.
• Mold.
• Sweat.
• Tobacco.

That is not a pleasant list! The question is: how do you get rid of those smells? It's probably easier than you think.

Keeping the house clean goes a long way in keeping odors out of the house, so if you don't have time to clean, hire a maid service. If you've still got a lingering smell, read on for a couple of tips!