The Lazy (Or Just Busy) Person's Guide to a Clean Home

To-do lists swell this time of year, and let’s be real: Cleaning the house ranks dead last. It’s boring, thankless, and takes time, effort, and energy that we’d all rather spend doing pretty much anything else … like napping!

But even if a good flop onto the couch is loudly calling your name, who wants to live in a pig sty? Even if you’re no neat freak, tidying up still has to be done regularly. Closing your eyes to the mess just isn’t a solution.

There’s reason to rejoice, though, lazy house dwellers. We’ve come up with a bunch of smart tricks, tools, and time-savers to get you ahead of the cleaning curve. None of these truly replace a good deep cleaning — there’s no way around that one — but they will keep your cleaning efforts to a minimum, help you get certain items in place that reduce the workload, and help keep your home (reasonably) tidy.

And some of them, we swear, are even fun.

Seriously: Sliding around on your hardwood floors wearing fluffy socks to dust your floors can, with the right music, turn into a dance party! And when you’re done, toss those dusty socks straight into the washing machine … and take that nap feeling you’ve accomplished something.

P.S. Share this guide with your significant other, as we’ve recently learned that couples who do chores together also connect better in the bedroom (just sayin’!) After all, studies have found time and time again that an ‘expectation gap’ exists between which gender handles the household work (women, naturally), and which doesn’t.

Let’s make cleaning an equal opportunity task for the lazy ladies and men among us … and then take that much needed nap with a vengeance.

Also on Yahoo Makers:

6 Places You Forget to Clean (But Really, Really Shouldn’t)

9 Cleaning Tasks You Can Tackle in 5 Minutes

Spend Less Time Cleaning With These 5 Simple Tips

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