Professional cleaner reveals the three tasks she does every day to help keep on top of clutter and mess

Professional cleaners Kate and Jack Croukamp clean homes daily for a living as well as their own home.

But it’s the little things the pair behind cleaning product brand Clean Like a Pro do regularly that help maintain a tidy space so that it doesn’t become overwhelming.

Kate learnt the value of keeping on top mess and clutter in the home at an early age as her parents were also professional cleaners.

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When asked in an interview with 9honey Living what lessons she learnt from her mum that she still uses today, Croukamp says it’s “keeping on top of things daily”.

“You don’t have to do a deep clean of your house every day, but it’s just small things every day avoid things becoming out of control in your house,” she says.

“It’s just making sure a dishwasher filter is cleaned once a month, or that you squeegee down your shower screen every day so you don’t get permanent damage on your glass shower screens. It’s just small things make a massive difference.”

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Croukamp has three main things she likes to do every day that keep the house neat and tidy.

The first is making the beds; she does hers while her children do their own.

“If I’ve left the house knowing the beds aren’t made, I think about it all day and I don’t want to come home to an unmade bed,” Croukamp says.

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Vacuuming is another task the pro cleaner likes to do daily.

“It’s amazing what a quick vacuum of your floors can do, especially if you have pets… even if it’s just one area of the house, just to get that done and it makes a big difference to how the house feels and coming in at the end of the day,” she says.

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And then there’s the kitchen bench and sink, which is cleared and wiped over at the end of the day.

“Making sure that the sink isn’t full of dishes, putting them in the dishwasher or packing them away. [When] I come home, I just want to walk into a clean kitchen, and [the bench] not just be full of stuff that is just overwhelming to walk into, especially at the end of a busy day,” she says.

Knowing cleaning isn’t something that everyone gets taught inspired the Croukamps to start sharing cleaning tips on TikTok a few years ago.

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It’s something they’re particularly passionate about and they’ve been moved by the comments they get from people thanking them for their advice.

“I didn’t realise it wasn’t something that people knew until I did a video that had 5 million views, and most of them were like, ‘I never knew you could take the oven door off’ and that was a video I didn’t many years ago,” she says.

While the Croukamps teach people to clean via social media, others on TikTok and Instagram are showing how they clean their own homes with catchy-sounding routines like ‘the closing shift’ or the ‘Sunday reset’.

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Croukamp doesn’t necessarily do these herself but she’s all for them.

“I think they can be good, they can be motivating and some people need that sort of thing to help them… so I think whatever works for you to help you get things done,” she says.

“And the room reset thing, I don’t mind it, it’s letting people have more pride and show off their before and afters of something [they’ve cleaned].”

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One thing Croukamp does admit to doing is getting into a decluttering “frenzy”, which we can all agree we’ve done at one point or another.

If you tend to be more into a decluttering frenzy as opposed to a home reset, Croukamp has one piece of advice.

“Definitely with those projects, once you start, you’ve pretty much got to finish it so make sure you have the energy to, to get through the whole thing,” she says.

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