Budget-Friendly Ways to Keep Your Home Clean During Back-to-School Season

With schools reopening, you may be wondering where to start because of all the activities that suddenly come up. The whole family will become busier, with homework and after-school activities which seem to take up all the free time. If you are in need of a few tips, here are five budget-friendly ways you can keep your home clean during this period.

Set Up A Homework Zone

It is great to have routines in place for your children, and one of these is setting up an area where they can do their homework. This should ideally be close to a window so they make the most of natural light, and it should also be kept clean with regular dusting and wiping. The office supplies company, Viking, checked a number of desks, 60% of which were found to have the Staphylococcus bacteria. This is worrisome, and the survey further went on to say that there may be up to 10 million bacteria living on your desk, which makes it mandatory to disinfect working surfaces regularly.

Come Up With A Meal Plan

Good nutrition is important for any family, and coming up with a meal plan can help you ensure that everyone in the household is eating well. Search for recipes online and write down or print out those that you can work with depending on your family's meals. Ideally, choose meals that are easy to prepare for weeknights and save the more elaborate meals for weekends. A little creativity will go a long way, ensuring that fussy eaters clear their plates and you remain stress-free.

Declutter and Organize Your Pantry

Part of coming up with a meal plan, this next tip will help make meals easier to prepare. When you know exactly where everything is, you will not spend a lot of time searching for ingredients. You will also be sure not to run the risk of having foodstuffs and spices that expired a long time ago taking up space on your shelves. Last but not least, you will make it harder for disease-carrying vermin and pests to set up their homes there. With the healthcare expenditure of the U.S. about three times more than any other country in the world, it is important to avoid issues that could put your family in the hospital.

Write a Duty Roster

There will almost always be something better to do than chores, but with some ingenuity, you can come up with a system that works with minimum griping. Everyone will have their hands full during the back-to-school period and so it is only fair to share duties. With a rewarding system of stars that can be redeemed for a treat, for example, you will have your children lining up to do the dishes or clean the windows.

Clean the Bathroom

The bathroom is out of sight most of the time, making it an easy room to skip when cleaning. It often gets topical cleaning when other rooms are being cleaned, yet it is the space with the biggest potential of spreading germs to everyone. Legionnaires' disease, for instance, is fatal to 1 out of 10 people who catch the disease. It is important to ensure that there are no potential breeding grounds for viruses and bacteria to avoid grim scenarios.

You may be exasperated just thinking about the back-to-school period, but you need not be. You can plan in advance on how to handle it and when things are in place, you will be surprised that it was ever an issue.