How to Keep Your Shared Apartment Tidy

By Victoria Robertson on August 30, 2018

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Most college students aren’t actually known for their cleanliness. In fact, more often than not, college dorms and apartments look like a mess explosion due to the number of people sharing the space as well as the large amount of time students spend on-the-go rather than inside.

That all being said, it’s not impossible to keep your living space clean while in college, even if you aren’t living on your own. So rather than live amongst the mess for another day, here are six tips to help you keep your shared apartment tidy.

Photo Via: Pixabay.com

1. Set a Cleaning Day

The best way to ensure that you and your roommates get started cleaning and keep everything clean is to set a cleaning day that you all follow, and the recommendation is to do this weekly. There’s no need to set something unreasonable (like a daily schedule), as it isn’t realistic and likely will not be followed for long.

Instead, setting one day a week in which everyone cleans together is realistic, manageable, and will keep your apartment the cleanest it can possibly be.

2. Keep Personal Items in Your Room

One of the biggest reasons behind messiness in shared apartments is due to individuals keeping their items in common areas. This can be entirely avoided by making sure that everyone keeps their things in their own rooms.

For example, they can keep items that are used in common areas there (i.e. blankets, kitchen supplies, etc.). However, clothing items, laptops and other personal belongings should and can be kept in each, individual room to make sure that the common area is always relatively clean, simply by lack of belongings piling up there.

3. Put a Mat By the Door

Messiness goes far beyond simply having your items laying out. In fact, most of the mess in apartments is due to tracking in mud and dirt on your shoes after class. The best way to avoid this problem in your shared apartment? Put a mat by the door (inside the apartment). This helps you in two ways: one, it helps to wipe off any dirt or mud after walking outside and two, it gives you a place to keep shoes in the entryway.

While this can be a problem if there are too many shoes here, it does prevent everyone from tracking dirt into the apartment by walking around with their shoes on. Trust me, your floors will thank you!

via Pexels.com

4. Use a Coat Rack

Using the same logic as the previous point, utilizing a coat rack in your apartment keeps your outerwear organized, in one place, and from dripping water and other dirt onto your floors. Yes, this feels like an outdated item to own. But, most apartments don’t have any type of front hall closet to hang your coat from, and more often than not students use the backs of kitchen chairs or their personal closets. Neither of these is ideal.

Having a coat rack by the front door is just another way to minimize the tracking in of dirt and water and another way to ensure your floor doesn’t get nearly as messy as it did before.

5. Keep Things Organized

Organization is key when it comes to keeping your apartment clean. When everything is organized, there is a place for everything and therefore less items are out of place during the week.

Granted, most apartments don’t have a ton of room, but by getting extra storage bins and other organizational tools, you can certainly ensure that your items are organized and put away at all times.

6. Develop a System

While these are all pretty straight-forward rules, it’s best to develop a system that all roommates agree upon when it comes to keeping the shared space clean. Pushing cleaning supplies onto your roommates isn’t going to be very effective, but setting up a schedule/routine that everyone follows will be.

This will not only ensure that one person isn’t doing all of the work, but it will also ensure that your space is clean, your roommates are all on the same page and that everyone’s working together to make sure your apartment looks the best that it can. So whatever works for everyone is what should be implemented.

Again, a clean apartment isn’t impossible, though it may have seemed out of the realm of possibility until now. The truth is, little things that keep your apartment clean can become habits very quickly, and before long, you’ll have the cleanest apartment in your complex.

So use these six tips as a starting point when it comes to cleaning your apartment, but also be sure to implement other methods that work well for you and your roommates to ensure your apartment doesn’t only get clean, but that it also stays clean.

Happy cleaning everyone!

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