5 Tips For A Clean Home When You Have Pets

Keep­ing your home clean is more than just a week­ly chore, it ensures that you feel good in your space and start your days off on the right foot. But as we all know, clean­ing can be a bit of a has­sle. This can be espe­cial­ly true when you have a pet at home. Pets bring their own mess when it comes to keep­ing things tidy. Here are some tips for keep­ing your home clean with your fur­ry friend in tow. 

Identify Your Ins and Outs

The first thing you will want to do is iden­ti­fy the most used entrances to your home where dirt and germs are most like­ly to build up. If your home has mul­ti­ple entrances, select the ones where your pet will most like­ly be com­ing in and out. These areas could be the front door, back­door, garage, or a dog­gie door. You should lim­it the entrances your pet comes in and out of to make less work on your­self, and train your pet to iden­ti­fy these areas as their go-to. 

Try set­ting up a small sta­tion out­side the door to clean your pet’s feet, or dry them off if they have been in the rain and snow before they’re allowed to come back inside. Anoth­er option is to hang a small rack to keep their out­door items close by the door with spaces for leash­es, har­ness­es, brush­es, tow­els, and rain gear. To keep any missed dirt or mud from being tracked inside the house, place heavy-duty or wash­able rugs down on the floor. This will help with any dirt or mois­ture that they may bring in on their paws. You can even keep extra sup­plies in your garage, back­yard, or car so you don’t have to con­stant­ly go back inside for things when you and your pet are out­side enjoy­ing the weather. 

Corral Toys and Treats

Most peo­ple with pets can agree that it’s too much fun pre­sent­ing your pet with a new toy or treat. You get to dote lov­ing­ly on them and in return, you get to see your pet play and get excit­ed over some­thing bet­ter than their cur­rent favorite box or piece of plas­tic. But these col­lec­tions of toys can start to become over­whelm­ing as they migrate to every cor­ner of your home and under every piece of fur­ni­ture. Not to men­tion, they don’t always match the aes­thet­ic you’re going for in your home. 

Invest in stor­age bins or bas­kets to keep the toys togeth­er. Iden­ti­fy where you and your pet spend the most time play­ing togeth­er and set up your toy bins or bas­kets in that room for ease of access and clean up after. 

When it comes to stor­ing treats and foods, you can look for bins with tight-fit­ting or lock­ing tops to keep curi­ous noses out and hun­gry claws from rip­ping open bags. If your pets can smell it they’ll try their best to get into it, so make sure food and treats are stored in a cab­i­net or cup­board to reduce the chances of a mess. 

Know Your Fabrics

One of the most com­mon issues when own­ing a pet is their hair or fur get­ting every­where. Dogs and cats nat­u­ral­ly shed their hair, and some breeds are more prone to heavy shed­ding than oth­ers. It can be dif­fi­cult to train your pets to keep off fur­ni­ture, but if your pet has made your couch their favorite spot, some fab­rics and mate­ri­als will work bet­ter than oth­ers when it comes to keep­ing fur­ni­ture clean and hair free. 

Microfiber is a great option and comes in a vari­ety of col­ors and pat­terns for couch­es, chairs, blan­kets, and pil­lows. It is easy to clean, doesn’t stain eas­i­ly, and is scratch resis­tant. You can also buy microfiber fur­ni­ture cov­ers that wrap around your exist­ing fur­ni­ture. If your pet loves one chair in par­tic­u­lar, you can buy a microfiber cov­er for that piece instead of hav­ing to plan all your fur­ni­ture around your pet. 

Leather can be a great option for peo­ple who own pets that nat­u­ral­ly shed more. Leather is hair resis­tant and any shed fur can be eas­i­ly vac­u­umed up or col­lect­ed with a duster. How­ev­er, leather can be scratched by overzeal­ous pets, so this may not be the best option if you don’t like to trim your pet’s nails often.

Out­door fur­ni­ture can also be uti­lized inside for your pets. Out­door fur­ni­ture fab­rics are usu­al­ly water resis­tant and antibac­te­r­i­al to with­stand the ele­ments, mak­ing for eas­i­er clean up than most com­mon fabrics. 

If you’re unsure of what kind of mate­r­i­al you want you can also just focus on fab­ric pat­terns. Try stick­ing to bold­er and larg­er pat­terns on fab­rics, they tend hide stains and acci­dents bet­ter than sim­pler pat­terns. Stick­ing to these fab­rics and mate­ri­als can make qual­i­ty time on the couch with your pet more comfortable!

Safe Cleaning

When it comes time for a deep clean­ing or week­ly chores you’ll want to take a look at the sup­plies you use around your home. Many com­mon house­hold clean­ing prod­ucts can be tox­ic to pets, so it’s worth going through your clean­ers, soaps, and deter­gents to see what could cause issues. 

Harsh chem­i­cals like bleach and ammo­nia can cause res­pi­ra­to­ry issues and skin irri­ta­tion, and most clean­ing prod­ucts have some kind of dis­in­fec­tant includ­ed in their prod­ucts which can also be a prob­lem for your fur­ry friend. There are many pet-safe non-tox­ic clean­ers on the mar­ket or you can make your own home­made clean­ing prod­ucts if you have the time and resources. 

There are oth­er pre­cau­tions you can take when using com­mon prod­ucts around your home if you can’t choose alter­na­tive prod­ucts. When clean­ing a room make sure to keep your pet out of the area so they’re not exposed to fra­grances and chem­i­cals. Make sure you have as much ven­ti­la­tion as pos­si­ble by open­ing win­dows and uti­liz­ing fans and vents that can help odors dis­si­pate faster. After you have fin­ished, con­tin­ue to keep your pet out of the room until all sur­faces and fab­rics are com­plete­ly dry to pre­vent irri­ta­tion to their paws if they acci­den­tal­ly get chem­i­cals on their feet. And as always, remem­ber to keep all sup­plies locked up or in a space that your pet can’t eas­i­ly get to. 

It All Starts with Health

The health of your pet will have a big impact on the clean­li­ness of your home. Pets, just like peo­ple, will inevitably have their fair share of ill­ness­es and strug­gles. Pets can come down with every­thing from stom­ach bugs, to pneu­mo­nia, and even men­tal health issues like anx­i­ety. These ill­ness­es can man­i­fest in ways that can be messy, and cause some issues for you and your family. 

Tak­ing your fur­ry friend to the vet for care can be over­whelm­ing, but it’s nec­es­sary for keep­ing them healthy in the long run. Look into pet insur­ance and how it works to add an extra tool to your belt and keep their fur, skin, and insides in tip-top shape. A healthy pet is a hap­py one, and a hap­py pet makes for the best home to come back to. 

Hav­ing a clean home doesn’t have to be over­whelm­ing. It can take time to find the prod­ucts you like and a rou­tine that works for you. But tak­ing these steps with your fur­ry best friend can help reduce the amount of stress and time you spend clean­ing up after them, leav­ing you more time to play and spend qual­i­ty time togeth­er with­out wor­ry­ing about the cleanup after.