The Best Time Saving Cleaning Hacks for Busy Moms

This site contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission, at no cost to you.

X Facebook Flipboard Pinterest Threads

Are you a mother with a packed schedule? Here are the Best time saving cleaning hacks for busy moms.

The life of a mother is hard, and a busy one at that. You talk of work, hitting work deadlines, kids, then school activities, keeping a tidy home can easily fall to the bottom of the pile.

In this part of Africa, the demands on women can feel even more intense. Consider my neighbour, Loveth. She juggles a demanding 9-to-5 job at a tech company with her side hustle as a real estate consultant, all while raising two children and caring for her husband.

We ran into each other at a Women in Tech event, and as we chatted, I was struck by how amazing she looked. I couldn’t help but wonder how she managed to juggle everything and still pursue her ambitions.

Her daily routine, as she described it, was packed. She’s up by 3:00 AM every day, spared a few moments for quiet reading and meditation. Then, it’s straight into prepping school lunches for her children, waking them up, and getting them ready for their day.

Just as the school bus leaves, she prepares for her work and drives off to work. Her job closes by 5:00 PM, but her day is far from over. It’s straight to the market before finally heading home to cook dinner and then help the children with their homework

As the kids wind down and head to sleep, she puts on her laptop to check her emails and reply to some of her real estate clients and book appointments.

Then, finally, she heads to bed, only for the entire cycle to begin again the very next day.

So I asked, “How do you find the time to keep your house and surroundings so well?” Her response, with a laugh, was that she employs a cleaner.

I began to think, what of people who can’t afford a cleaner?

With the cost of everything going up, the average working mum needs to hold onto every penny she can, all while still trying to maintain a clean home. After all, a busy life shouldn’t automatically mean living in a messy house

And that brings us here: the Best Time-Saving Cleaning Hacks for Busy Mums. These are a few smart strategies busy mothers can easily incorporate into their routines to maintain a cleaner home without spending hours scrubbing.

How do you keep your house clean when you are super busy?

1. Start with a Daily Reset Routine

It’s creating a short, regular habit to quickly tidy the main areas of the house, that way small messes don’t escalate into something big that you can’t handle.

This is done either at the beginning of the day to create a calm and organized starting point, or at the end of the day to tidy up from the day’s activities and prepare for a peaceful morning. This could be:

Making the beds as soon as you wake up, this instantly makes the room look tidy.
A quick tidy of the living room: Fluffing cushions, folding blankets, putting away any items left out overnight (toys, newspapers).
Gathering any dirty laundry and Placing it in the laundry basket.
A quick wipe-down of the bathroom sink to remove toothpaste splatters and water marks.

2. The Magic of Mini Cleans

The idea is to do small cleaning tasks during the natural breaks in your day, instead of big cleaning sessions.

The secret to having a clean house as a busy mum is clean as you go and tackle small tasks frequently rather than waiting for a massive cleaning session.

For example:

While waiting for water to boil for your morning tea or for Indomie, you can begin wiping down the kitchen counters, the stovetop (especially if there were any spills during breakfast), or quickly rinse and stack a few dishes.
After preparing a meal, immediately wipe down the chopping board and knife, and rinse the pots and pans before the food even hits the table. This prevents food from drying and becoming harder to clean later.
Before leaving for school runs, do a quick tidy of the kitchen table, putting away stray items.

While on a phone call, straighten cushions on the sofa, fold a blanket, or quickly put away any stray toys or books in the living room.

As you move from one room to another, take something with you that belongs in the next room (e.g., a stray toy, a dirty dish).

Regularly tackling small messes prevents them from accumulating into larger, more time-consuming tasks later. A spill wiped immediately is much easier than a sticky stain that’s been there for hours.

Micro-cleaning is like hitting two targets at once, quick tasks get done while you do other things, instead of worrying about not having enough time.

3. Assigning specific days for certain chores

Assigning specific days for certain chores is a strategic approach to managing household tasks. Instead of doing everything at once, you can break down the cleaning workload into smaller, more manageable chunks and spread throughout the week.

Start by listing all the cleaning and household tasks that need to be done regularly (daily, weekly, or even monthly). This might include things like:

Laundry (washing, drying, folding, putting away)
Vacuuming/Sweeping floors
Mopping floors
Cleaning bathrooms (toilets, sinks, showers)
Dusting surfaces
Kitchen cleaning (counters, gas top, microwave, oven)
Grocery shopping
Meal prepping
Taking out the trash
Tidying specific rooms (living room, bedrooms)

You can then group them and assign specific days of the week. For example:

Monday: Laundry Day (washing and drying all clothes)
Tuesday: Bathroom Blitz (cleaning all bathrooms)
Wednesday: Floor Care (vacuuming/sweeping all floors)
Thursday: Kitchen Focus (deep clean counters, gas top, microwave)
Friday: Tidying Up (quick tidy of all main living areas and bedrooms)
Saturday: Deeper Clean/Specific Tasks (mopping, dusting, changing bed linens, grocery shopping)
Sunday: Rest

Once the schedule is established, try to stick to it as much as possible. Consistency helps build habits and ensures that chores don’t get forgotten or pile up. Everything gets its turn on the schedule.

While consistency is key, life happens. If you can’t complete a chore on its assigned day, try to do it the next day or reschedule it.

4. Declutter Regularly

Less stuff means less to clean. When you have less stuff, it’s much easier to organise what remains. Everything has a designated place, making tidying up quicker.

So regularly go through your belongings and get rid of items you no longer need, use, or love.

5. Have a Place for Everything

Ensure that every item in your home has a designated space. For instance, a drawer for cutlery, a shelf for books, a bin for toys, a hook for keys, or a designated spot in the wardrobe for each type of clothing.

When everything has a designated home, it’s less likely to end up lying around on surfaces, floors, or in random piles.

6. Delegate and Involve the Family (Yes, even the Kids)

Instead of trying to do everything yourself, delegate and assign specific household tasks to other members of your family based on their age, abilities, and availability. What a toddler can do is different from what a teenager can handle. Start with simple tasks and gradually increase as they mature.

Toddlers (2-3 years): Putting toys away, placing clothes in the hamper, wiping up small spills (with help), carrying light items.
Preschoolers (4-5 years): Setting the table (with non-breakable items), clearing their dishes, making their bed, dusting low surfaces, helping to put away groceries.
Early Elementary (6-8 years): Loading/unloading the dishwasher (with supervision for sharp items), sorting laundry, sweeping floors, helping to prepare simple meals, taking out the trash (small bins).
Late Elementary/Middle School (9-13 years): Vacuuming, mopping, doing their own laundry, helping with meal preparation, cleaning bathrooms (sinks and toilets), taking out the main trash bins, yard work (raking leaves).
Teenagers (14+ years): Most household tasks, including cooking meals, doing laundry, cleaning the entire bathroom, washing the car, basic home maintenance.

Involving children, even from a young age, not only lightens your load but also teaches them valuable life skills, responsibility, and the importance of contributing to the household.

Be specific about what needs to be done and how you expect it to be done. Instead of saying “Clean your room,” say “Please put all your toys in the toy box, books on the shelf, and clothes in the wardrobe.

Doing chores together helps the family connect, talk, and feel like they’re a team.

It also Increases efficiency, when multiple people are contributing, tasks get done faster and more efficiently than if one person tries to do everything.

7. Stock up the right supplies for cleaning

Having the right tools and products on hand saves time, makes cleaning tasks easier and more effective.

Instead of having all the supplies stored in one central location, create mini cleaning stations. Such mini cleaning stations could be in the kitchen (under the sink), and Bathrooms (in the shower area).

This removes the barrier of having to fetch supplies every time a small spill or mess occurs, so that it is much likely that you’ll address it immediately.

It also encourages immediate action, so when a spill happens, the supplies are right there, making it faster to deal with it before it sets in and becomes harder to clean later.

Perfection is not the goal

As a busy mum, we are not striving to attain perfection, just “good enough” is okay. This mindset shift is crucial for preventing stress and burnout.

“Good enough” doesn’t mean living in filth or ignoring basic cleanliness. It’s about establishing realistic standards that prioritize health, safety, and a sense of order without putting in excessive time and energy

Yes, your plate is already full with a ton of responsibilities and ensuring the children’s well-being so trying to achieve magazine-worthy level of cleanliness is very unrealistic and unsustainable.

Pursuing perfection will drain you physically and mentally. Forget societal standards and social media images and stories. Most are unrealistic expectations of what a clean home should look like. It is not reality.

Your primary goal of your home is to create a safe, functional and comfortable space for your family. Yes, cleanliness contributes to this, but it shouldn’t overshadow the importance of quality time, connection, and creating lasting memories with your loved ones.

The secret to a clean house is not about spending hours cleaning, but about making small, consistent efforts, good habits, and having the right strategies in place to prevent the mess from accumulating.