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Top Cleaning Tips for Students

Moving into student accommodation is always a bit of an adventure. Even if you’re moving in with friends, the reality of living full-time with other people can be trickier than you expected. Friends you might have thought were tidy may turn out not to be, and some housemates may spend more time out than they do at home. So, how do you negotiate this and keep your home clean?

At Why Bother Cleaning, we make cleaning as easy as possible. Read on to discover our quick, easy, and affordable tips!

Essential Cleaning Items That Make Student Cleaning Easier

Student cleaning tips and products

When it comes to choosing the right cleaning products for your home, stocking up on the essentials is important. To keep your home clean, it’s important you constantly have the following cleaning items in stock:

  • Multi-surface anti-bacterial spray
  • Glass cleaner
  • Microfibre cloths
  • Bleach
  • Bathroom spray

For a list of the best cleaning products of 2019, click here!

Create a Student Cleaning Rota

If you want to stay ahead of the game, it’s important to create a cleaning rota. This will help you share out the chores equally with your other housemates and encourage the jobs to be done. Cleaning rotas are also a great way to manage the cleaning for those housemates who are out most of the time.

Clean Up Spillages as Soon as They Happen

Student cleaning tips for red wine stains

Spillages are never pleasant. Whether it’s dropped pasta sauce, a little red wine, or a glass of milk, there is no point getting upset. Spillages happen but what needs to happen afterwards is the cleaning up! If you don’t clean up spillages after they happen, they can harden onto your floor or seep into the carpet, causing all manner of unpleasant smells. Make your life easier by cleaning up spillages straight away and get on with your normal life.

Keep the Bathroom Clutter to a Minimum

One of the top cleaning tips we have for student bathrooms is to keep the clutter to a minimum. Ask everyone to keep their toiletries in their rooms. This way, there will be less clutter on the side and fewer places for dirt to build up, making it easier to clean.

Top tip: we know it doesn’t sound overly appealing, but you have to clean the floor around your toilet as often as possible. Otherwise, it will become the most disgusting and unhygienic area in your whole house.

Wash Your Dishes with Hot Water

Student cleaning tips for dirty dishes

Maybe this is an obvious tip or maybe you’ve never heard this before, but it is extremely important to wash your dishes with hot water. Hot water and plenty of soap means your dishes will be thoroughly cleaned. If you wash your dishes with cold water, they won’t be properly clean and you could be packing away dishes that are still crawling with bacteria.

Don’t Pour Used Grease Down the Sink

Although it can be a quick fix, don’t pour grease down the sink as it can cause blockages and even broken pipes! To avoid these expensive problems, keep a cup near the sink that you can tip leftover cooking oil into – then you can feed it to the birds or throw it in the bin.

Don’t Leave Your Dishes Piling Up

Student cleaning tips don't let your dishes stack up

Dirty dishes are inevitable in student accommodation, but when they start building up in the sink and on the side – you’ve got a problem. Dirty dishes covered in leftover food and piling up on the side can be hugely attractive to ants and mice. But you can avoid an infestation altogether by cleaning up your dishes as you go.

Yes, washing the dishes can be unappealing. But what’s five minutes of washing-up compared to an hour spent scrubbing dirty plates that have been sat out for far too long?

Wash Tea Towels and Bath Towels Regularly

The humble tea towel is often forgotten about in student housing. However, tea towels harbour crazy numbers of germs, if not cleaned regularly, and can spread sickness and germs extremely quickly. Avoid getting sick and wash your tea towels once a week – this is also how frequently you should wash your bathroom towels, too.

Replace Cleaning Sponges and Cloths Regularly

Student cleaning tips and sponges

Did you know that your washing up sponge harbours more bacteria than your toilet seat? Yes, it’s true! And the older your sponges are, the worse the problem gets. To avoid catching any nasty germs it is important to replace your cleaning sponges as regularly as possible. We suggest replacing old sponges once a week to avoid any nasty sicknesses.

How to Automate Certain Elements of Cleaning

There are some things you can do to help automate certain elements of the cleaning process that help make cleaning so much easier. So, we thought we’d share some of those automated cleaning tips with you:

  • Use toilet blocks that release cleaning agents into the bowl every time the toilet is flushed. This helps keep your toilet clean – even when you don’t have time to give it a good scrub.
  • Aerosols that release fragrances automatically in your home are great for neutralising any nasty odours and keeping your home smelling fresh and clean.
  • Keeping your cleaning products and equipment in easy-to-access places, rather than hiding them away, will remind you to clean more often. And it might help your flatmates to wipe down surfaces or sweep the kitchen floor more often.

Clean as a Group when Necessary

If you want the cleaning to get done quickly (perhaps your parents are coming to visit), then it may be necessary to clean as a group. While the thought of this may make you cringe, doing the cleaning as a group is a great way to tackle numerous cleaning tasks in literally half the time. Not only is it less tiring, but it means that no one can be accused of not pulling their weight – so there may be less arguments!

Consider Hiring a Professional Cleaner

If this sounds expensive, don’t worry! At Why Bother Cleaning, we provide domestic cleaning services that are affordable – even for students. Depending on how dirty your flat is, you can get our cleaners in once every two weeks (or perhaps just as a one-off) and we will have your flat clean in no time.

And if you ahte cleaning, why not check out our cleaning hacks for people who hate cleaning?