Anyone who leads a busy lifestyle knows how easy it is to let chores get away from you. As much as you try to clean up on the weekends, by Thursday it can look like a tornado tore through your home. So you look around, sigh, and give yourself a day to destress at the end of the week before spending Sunday cleaning everything up again.

Luckily, it doesn’t need to be this way. By keeping these tips and tricks in mind, you’ll be well on your way to having a clean and tidy home that lasts throughout the week.

Focus on Progress, not Accomplishment

It’s easy to get discouraged when you feel like no matter how much effort you put into cleaning, your home doesn’t look like the ones in Good Housekeeping. And with the average person spending 69% of their time at home, you want your house to be an inviting place to hang out. However, it’s important to remember that cleaning and organizing takes time – so be fair to yourself and have patience.

Unless you plan on pulling all-nighters to clean, getting everything in your home tidy can take days, or even weeks. Instead of beating yourself up over not finishing everything quickly, focus on the progress you’re making. Break your overall goal of a clean house into smaller milestones, like getting the clothes in your bedroom picked up or mopping the kitchen. This way, you can focus on the small victories and avoid getting discouraged.

Set a Routine

Maintaining basic cleanliness every day is the secret to keeping a clean home. Consider having a list of small cleaning tasks to finish daily, and schedule larger ones once every couple of weeks.

You’ll want to make sure you complete certain chores daily to keep your home looking neat. For instance, if you make your bed every morning, your room will look much better and you’ll develop a more positive attitude overall – in fact, although 59% of people don’t make their beds, 71% of bed-makers consider themselves happy while 62% of people who don’t make their beds consider themselves unhappy. You should also hang up your clothes, do a load of laundry, do the dishes, wipe down counters, and sort the mail every day.

The reasoning behind this is simple: if you do small, significant tasks every day, you won’t get overwhelmed with cleaning tasks or clutter. This will help you keep your motivation up to tackle bigger chores on the weekends, as well as keep your home tidy throughout the week. It might seem like a lot at first, but it will get easier once you set the routine and make it a habit.

Make it Easy on Yourself

There are also several ways to make cleaning easier on yourself, which will help you keep up your motivation to tidy things up and keep your time spent cleaning lower than the average 2.6 hours a day.

For instance, if you identify the high-traffic areas in your home – like near the front and back doors – you can stop the spread of dirt and other outside debris before it starts. Putting down mats and small rugs near entrances will trap incoming dirt from getting tracked throughout your house, so a quick sweep or vacuum every day in just those spaces will keep everything dirt-free.

You can also make cleaning easier on yourself by keeping your cleaning supplies easily accessible. Instead of storing all of your rags, scrubbers, cleaning solutions, and other tools in one place, keep sets of supplies in different locations throughout your house. It’s easier to quickly wipe up toothpaste from the bathroom counter if Clorox wipes are right under the sink, instead of trekking to the kitchen or garage and coming back.

Be Willing to Purge

Finally, it’s a lot easier to keep a clean home when it’s not cluttered with things you don’t need anymore. It’s common to have clutter; Americans spend about $1.2 trillion per year on unnecessary items. But by getting rid of unnecessary belongings, you can breathe some new life into your home.

The best way to go about this is to sort through your clothes and other belongings with an honest third party – they’ll tell you that it’s not worth hanging onto your old prom dress or those books you never read. Go through each room with a trash bag and a donation box, and be ruthless. Just remind yourself that the more you’re able to get rid of, the easier chores will be; it’s a lot easier to wipe down an empty counter than one cluttered with junk.

There are very few people who enjoy cleaning up. However, you can make tidiness easier by paying attention to common cleaning strategies. What strategies do you use to keep things looking sparkling?