Keeping your home clean and tidy is hard. There are dishes, laundry, dusting, sweeping, the list goes on and on. Add in a four-legged mess machine and cleaning can become a full-time job. But it doesn’t have to.
We can’t help you with the dishes or the laundry, that’s all on you. However, we can help you maintain the pet mess with these six life-changing cleaning hacks for homes with pets.
Housekeeping With Pets Hack #1: Get a Pet Mat
Your pet eats every day - multiple times every day. When your pet is eating, they are not necessarily concerned about being tidy. Therefore, one of the most common everyday messes made by your pet will likely take place at their feeding station.
Pet mats are great for corralling the mess and making clean up a breeze. There are so many mats on the market. Some are flat like a placemat. Some have elevated lips around the edge for extra protection against liquids. And some can even be customized to showcase your pet’s name - a pretty cool perk!
Once a week (or more often if needed), all you have to do is move the food and water bowls off of the mat, and you can discard any stray pieces of food and clean the mat. Utilizing one of these mats is a great way to prevent your pet’s food and water from traveling to places it shouldn’t be.; thus, reducing the overall mess you have to clean.
Hack #2: Get a Litter Trap
This hack is very similar to the previous hack except instead of catching and corralling food and water, you are catching and corralling cat litter. If you share your home with a cat, you know how real the struggle is with litter. It is a necessary evil in that your feline needs a place to do their business. But wouldn’t it be nice if those tiny little pieces of clay didn’t get tracked all through the house?
Enter the litter trap or the litter mat. These are mats that sit in front of a litter box and are designed to catch stray litter. It’s really pretty ingenious. No matter how careful your kitty is, some litter will travel out of the box on their paws, and instead of that litter landing in your carpet or on your hardwood, it is trapped in the mat.
To clean, just pick it up and shake it out. It is recommended that you wash it with soap and water from time to time as well to ensure there are no lingering odors or bacteria. In the meantime, however, you won’t be stepping on as much kitty litter.
Housekeeping With Pets Hack #3: Keep your Pet Clean
Most of the pet mess in your home comes directly off your pet in the form of hair and dander. You can eliminate a decent amount of necessary cleaning just by employing proper grooming techniques. Brush your pet often to remove any stray hairs, wipe their paws when they come in from outside, and give them regular baths.
It may seem like more work initially, but you will be surprised how much less pet hair and odor are present. Plus, it gives you an excuse to spend a little more quality time with your furry friend during their regular grooming sessions.
Hack #4: Buy Machine Washable
When you buy something for your pet, anything at all, make sure it is machine washable. Pet surfaces especially need to be machine washable. Your pet’s bed collects a lot of hair, sweat, and dander during its use. It is important for your pet and your indoor air quality that it gets washed frequently.
Buy pet beds with removable machine-washable covers. If you have a bed that doesn’t have a washable cover, consider investing in a cover for that bed, or a blanket you can fashion into a cover.
This is also a good idea for toys, clothes, and accessories. Many pet toys are made to be dishwasher safe now which is very useful in killing germs and eliminating odors. The goal here is that anything that your pet uses regularly needs to be cleaned Having items that are washable makes your job that much easier.
Housekeeping With Pets Hack #5: Get the Right Tools for the Job
A home with pets has different cleaning needs than a home without pets. If your home has pets, make sure you’re not making your life harder than it needs to be.
A vacuum is the tool for you. There are countless quality vacuums on the market, but not all of them will be good for a home with pets. Consider buying a vacuum that is made specifically for pet homes. This oftentimes means it will have additional useful attachments or has otherwise been designed to capture pet hair.
Pro-tip: Invest in an automatic vacuum and you’ll never think about it again.
Hack #6: Set a Routine
We get it, life is busy, and this is all great advice, but when are you going to have the time?
You are not likely going to have the time to do a big deep clean in your home, and if you do, you certainly won’t be able to maintain that with any regularity. The trick is to create a routine, so this all becomes second nature.
Break your tasks into small, manageable pieces. Maybe you wash your pet’s bed cover when you wash towels on Sundays. Maybe you groom your pet when you get home at night during the same time you would usually spend petting them.
When you break the job of cleaning your home into small, bite-size chunks, it becomes much easier to maintain. Many people use this idea for cleaning their homes.
Pto-tip: Search Youtube for cleaning routines, and you will not run out of options.
A home with a pet may be tougher to keep clean and tidy, but for many of us, it’s the pet that makes your house a home.
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