With house cleaning there are some jobs you can’t get away from and can’t really make easier, dust will always end up settling on surfaces and men will never learn to lift the toilet seat it seems. With other jobs though you can save yourself a lot of work by planning ahead and through how you clean. One of these house cleaning time saving opportunities is your hardwood floors.

Hardwood floors are a big job within anyone’s house cleaning regime and so there is a lot of potential time to be saved.

One obvious option is to have a no shoes policy, this isn’t always practical and with dogs and children especially it may have little effect, dogs especially bring in dirt on their paws normally but children aren’t perfect.

Rather than a no shoes policy a clean shoes, and paws, policy may be more practical. Make sure you have floor mats at every door, don’t forget your back door. Not all mats are the same though and some are great at soaking up moisture, others good at brushing off dried on mud and dirt. The best option is to have a brush mat outside each door on the doorstep to get the worst off shoes and then another mat to soak up moisture on the inside. Then of course you have to make sure people use both: this can be tricky with dogs though.

The moisture soaking doormat will help if your dog doesn’t just leap over it, keep a towel by the door though and try to get up the worst of the dirt and dog scented moisture as possible to make all of your house cleaning and not just the hardwood floors much cleaner.

Other ways to stop your dog bringing in as much dirt includes trimming the fur on their legs that soaks up mud, water and also grass burs and other organic matter that then gets strewned around your home. Also trim your dog’s nails often to stop getting scratches on your floors that then allow in dirt to the unprotected wood.

When it actually comes to cleaning your floors within your house cleaning routine start with sweeping and vacuuming, sweeping makes vacuuming easier and better at getting up the little bits of dust and dirt with any larger bits and pieces gone.

After vacuuming clean any remaining marks and dirt, this may seem nonsensical to do it this way round but if you try to wipe up marks when the vacuuming isn’t done you can actually make matters worse by getting dry dirt damp that would just vacuum up otherwise.

You may not even need to clean up any extra dirt after sweeping and vacuuming, if you do then a quick damp cloth may work, don’t forget though that a lot of spills will mop up much more easily if done sooner rather than later. Rather than try and clear up a mess while the rest of the floor is still dirty though if possible bring forward the hard floor part of you’re your house cleaning so you can do the job properly straight away.