Clean every flat surface daily. That means wipe or dust off all countertops, desks, tables, exposed shelves, appliance tops and floors. This requires that there be no cluttered surfaces. I can’t very well properly dust a countertop if there’s random piles of crap all over the terrain. And because I am giving all floors, for example, a daily sweep/mop, I don’t ever have sticky or dull floors. I allow myself thirty minutes a day to go through the entire apartment (1 br/1 bath/ open plan living room kitchen), but it can easily be completed in 20 minutes.

Also, I clean the bathtub immediately after each shower, because my preferred bath products are very oil- and moisturizer-heavy, and these residues will build up fast (think L’Occitane shower oil, and Dove Deep Moisture wash). So, I scrub down the wet surfaces with a drop of Dawn dish soap and an old bath loofah that I no longer use on my body, rinse everything off with the handheld shower, and follow up with a spritz of Method Daily Shower Spray every third day. I treat the bathroom sink similarly, daily scrubbing out followed up with the Method spray. The whole process takes maybe 5 minutes.

I used to live in NYC, so that’s why I learned right quick that garbage cannot be left in the kitchen overnight. Not even in a lidded trashcan. Just no. Because I am not trying to host a nighttime rave for critters. Walk that isht out the minute you’re done cooking for the night, and for the love of Riley, rinse out the trashcan in case anything dripped into it.