While most people would probably like to say their house or apartment is always perfectly clean and they are always on top of it, that is just not realistic for most college students with busy schedules. A clean space, however, can help improve mental health and boost productivity. So, here are some tips on how to keep your space spotless, even if you have a busy schedule.
Cleaning your whole house or apartment can be intimidating, especially if you haven’t done it in a while. To help make things less intimidating, pick one room to start and focus on just that space. This is a good place to start because if your whole house is messy sometimes it's hard to even know where to begin.
Splitting up your cleaning into one room at a time can also help if you have a busy schedule. If you don’t have enough time in one day to clean your whole house or apartment, you can do one room each day. Maybe on Monday you clean your bedroom, then Tuesday you clean your living room, Wednesday you clean your kitchen and Thursday you clean your bathroom. If you can’t decide which room to clean first pick whichever room you spend the most time in, especially if you do a lot of studying or homework in that room, then work from there.
Once you choose a room, it is also helpful to split your cleaning up with different tasks. It’s best to start by picking up clutter or trash and putting it away or throwing it away. If there is a lot of clutter, you can even split that up into categories. For example, you could pick up everything of a specific color first or you could pick up everything that goes to a different room in the house first. After you take care of the clutter, you can straighten things up, like putting throw pillows back where they go or making your bed.
Now that things are all in order, you can actually clean. Start with the surfaces in your room, like coffee tables or bookshelves, and dust or disinfect those. Then you can move on to the floor and sweep and mop hardwood floors and vacuum carpets.
Finally, you can do any last touches, like putting anything else away that you missed or lighting a candle to make your freshly cleaned space smell nice. Breaking up your cleaning into smaller tasks like this can help the process be less daunting and before you know if you will have a spotless house.
Now that you have a clean space, the hard part is keeping it clean. Realistically, your place is going to get messy again, especially as the semester picks back up and you get busy. The best thing to try to do is to clean as you go. Do your dishes right after your meal so they don’t pile up, put your laundry away right after it’s done so it doesn’t clutter your room up and put all the things you used that day away before you go to bed. These things don’t take very long if you do it in the moment, but once they pile up, it can take you hours to clean.
The longer you wait, the messier your place will be, so put your favorite music on and get to cleaning.
This story was originally published in the Indiana Daily Student’s spring 2026 Housing and Living Guide.
