9 Things You Should Be Cleaning Every Single Day

Your kitchen and bathroom require the most daily attention. However, a little tidying in the bedroom and some quick decluttering in the living room go a long way toward making your home feel refreshed. Staying consistent means you’ll have less work to do when the weekend rolls around.

Here are nine areas of your home to spruce up every day.

1. Kitchen Counters and Dining Table

As some of the most heavily used surfaces in the home, kitchen counters and dining tables get messy (and dirty) fast. Wipe them down in between meals, and put away items like small appliances and the salt and pepper shakers to prevent clutter from building up.

2. Dishes and Kitchen Sink

Washing dishes daily doesn’t just make your space feel and smell cleaner — it prevents bacteria and pests from taking over the kitchen. After finishing the dishes, give the kitchen sink a quick scrub and rinse to keep it clean.

3. Shower Glass

To keep your shower glass sparkling between weekly cleanings, hang a squeegee in the stall. Use it to wipe away moisture, preventing soap scum buildup, hard-water spots, and the need for heavy scrubbing during your weekly deep clean. Work from the top down and remember to overlap each stroke. To stop soap scum before it sticks, mist the glass with a daily shower cleaner right after rinsing off, while the glass is still wet. Most daily-use formulas don’t require any scrubbing, wiping, or rinsing.

4. Bathroom Countertops

A quick daily wipe-down keeps bathroom surfaces spotless and pushes back your next deep-cleaning day. Leave a bottle of all-purpose cleaner (one that’s safe to use on your countertop material) in a storage cabinet with a roll of paper towels or a rag for convenient touch-ups after brushing your teeth or washing your face. Save the heavy disinfecting for your dedicated cleaning day or when someone in the house is sick.

5. Living Room Clutter

Cleaning your living room on a daily basis isn’t practical. However, because this is often the most frequently used room in the house, it’s prone to clutter. At the end of the day, treat this space like you would a closing shift at a shop and pick up items that are strewn about or out of order. Depending on the time of day, you can either place these “go-backs” in a basket to be put away later or return them to their proper spots right away.

6. High-Traffic Areas

The high-traffic areas in your home could use a daily vacuuming to keep the space feeling as fresh as it does on cleaning day. This is especially true for spaces with hard flooring, which is prone to dust bunnies, clumps of hair, and stray crumbs.

7. Hand and Kitchen Towels

You don’t have to run a small load of laundry every day just for towels, but switching them out daily ensures a more hygienic environment. Do this in your bathrooms and kitchen to prevent the spread of bacteria. To make the swap effortless, keep a fresh stack of hand towels under the bathroom sink alongside a designated bin for the dirty ones until laundry day arrives. You can do this in the kitchen, too, by stashing spare towels in a drawer and placing a small hamper in the pantry or a nearby closet.

8. Kitchen Trash Can

Between food scraps and discarded leftovers, the kitchen trash can is often a source of lingering odors, so emptying it daily is essential. If you don’t produce enough trash to fill a full-size bin each day, consider switching to a smaller container. This swap will save you floor space, too.

9. The Bed

Bedding should be washed once a week, but making your bed daily is the quickest way to reset your space. This habit keeps floating dust, lint, and pet hair from settling beneath your sheets. To avoid trapping moisture that dust mites thrive on, it’s best to let the bed air out for 20 to 30 minutes before pulling the covers up. Eliminating that disheveled-bed look also creates a calmer, more orderly environment. Plus, crawling into a made bed at the end of the day is much more inviting than wrestling with a tangled comforter and top sheet.