How to Make a Your Messy House Presentable in 10 Minutes Flat

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I have so much to do this evening. When I took a look at our kitchen after a long day of running errands and working on our bedroom remodel, the last thing I wanted to do was spend half an hour cleaning up downstairs.

So I decided to try something new – I set the alarm on the oven timer for 10 minutes and set out to make our house presentable in that amount of time.

I’m pretty proud of myself at what I actually accomplished!

This is how I did it:

Before Pictures of My Messy Kitchen & Living Room Area

This isn’t the worst our kitchen ever looks, mostly because we were only home half of the day. Usually it’s twice this bad 🙂

There were papers, toys, old food, dishes, and cleaning supplies laying around. And the floor was pretty crunchy, although you can’t really tell that in the picture.

How to Clean in 10 Minutes…Timed

I set the timer for 10 minutes and then started cleaning strategically.

I decided right off that the dishes weren’t going to happen in 10 minutes, so I might as well skip those and see if I could get everything else done in 10 minutes. If I could just have the dishes and only the dishes left for later, then I would feel accomplished.

So I cleaned off the counters, stove, and kitchen table, then wiped everything down with a wet rag. Then I grabbed the broom and dustpan and gave myself 4 minutes to get all the dirt up. It was quite a bit!

I even had time to straighten up the couch cushions a bit and put a few toys from that room into the playroom, and I still finished it all with 10 seconds to spare, so I grabbed my phone and snapped this pic of the timer. 🙂

After Pictures

And here’s the final result! A presentable kitchen in 10 minutes flat. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but apparently it’s possible!

Even with the dishes still in the sink, I think the place looks pretty good and I wouldn’t feel embarrassed if someone were to walk in my door right now. 🙂

So I guess the takeaway of all of this is that you CAN make a fairly messy house presentable in 10 minutes, but you have to let something go and bust it on the other aspects. For me, this was not doing the dishes.

Even though it’s a visible aspect, I think getting the counter tops clean first and then getting all the dirt up off the floor makes a bigger impact. If I had done it the other way around (only dishes, nothing else), then I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t feel like this place was clean at all!

Oh and to make the house smell cleaner than it actually is, I used some of my favorite scented cleaning spray to wipe down the countertops – Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day in Lavender.

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