How to Clean a Messy Room in Five Easy-to-Follow Steps

Learn how to clean a messy room with these easy steps that even your kids can follow. And the good news is that this method works on any room in the house!

Cleaning up a messy room can be a daunting task. It’s hard to know where to begin and what to think about first when faced with the clutter that accumulates on a daily basis.

And can someone please tell me how it is that I clean up the kitchen and living room every single evening and still wake up to a mess in the morning? Seriously!?

I guess real people living real life equals everyday messes sometimes. And when you throw in the clutter that has piled up over days, weeks, or even years, it can seem almost too overwhelming to handle.

But whether I’m tackling a long-overdue disaster zone or simply attacking the mess in my kitchen first thing in the morning, there’s a basic “formula” I usually follow. It helps me take the first step towards cleaning up, which usually leads me to take the next step, and the one after that.

What’s great is that these steps work on any messy room in the house, no matter how big or small it might be. And they’re so simple that the kids can even use them to clean up their own messy room!

How To Clean a Messy Room

1. Throw away any trash.

First things first, throw away the food wrappers, empty snack packages, junk mail, and unnecessary shopping bags to make the room look better with very little effort. You might want to use a timer and see how much trash you can find in just a few short minutes. The quick success will give you motivation to keep working.

2. Put away items that obviously do not belong in the room.

Put the vacuum away in the front closet, return the scissors to the kitchen drawer, toss the dirty towels into the bathroom hamper. Often, a quick look around will reveal things that can be removed from the room without much thought. This is a basic “grab-and-go” before you begin any kind of sorting and organizing.

3. Put away anything that can be take care of quickly.

If you see things in the room that just need put in their proper places, it’s usually best to take care of them first, before moving on to the more challenging cleaning, sorting, and organizing. For example, when cleaning up the kitchen return any food items to the fridge and pantry and put away the clean dishes before moving on to scrubbing the appliances or sorting the pile of paperwork on the counter.

4. Moving around the room, clean small sections at a time.

Pick one area of the room to start with and work on a very small section until its completely clean and clutter-free so you can easily recognize your progress. Work your way around the room from there so you can always see how far you’ve come and what is left to do. This way, if you have to leave the task to be finished another day, you’ll know exactly where to pick back up.

5. Clean up at the end of cleaning up.

If you’ve spent a lot of time cleaning a messy room, be sure you leave the area looking as nice as possible when you’re ready to call it quits, even if the entire job isn’t done. Toss the cleaning cloths into the laundry, take out the trash, and tidy up the room so it looks like you’ve been working as hard as you know you have!

Avoiding the mess doesn’t make it go away. But following these simple steps for cleaning up a messy room will help you tackle the day-to-day messiness or even an overwhelming disaster zone. Just keep at it a little bit every day and watch your progress add up!