I'm a homes editor and spend my days interviewing experts in cleaning, organizing, home maintenance, DIY, and more, totaling hundreds of hours a year learning about the best tips from the best in the business.
This year, there have been many brilliant cleaning hacks I learned from professionals cleaners for the first time, that have not only stood out to me, but worked beautifully in my own home when I've used them to deal with spills, ordors, messes and chores.
Here, I share the seven best cleaning tips I've learned from industry professionals that I'll keep using at home in 2025 and beyond.
What I have learned from pro cleaners
1. Use baking soda to deodorize
When trying to keep my house clean with cats and a small child, I have accepted urine accidents can happen here from time to time. Recently, there was a bit of a mess on one of our deep foam velvet couches. I really thought that was it, and we'd have to get rid of our expensive seating before the area affected was substantial.
But then I remembered from interviewing dozens of professional cleaners this year that not only can you clean with baking soda around the home, but it is a brilliant and natural deodorizer.
I cleaned my couch as directed then, poured a lot of baking soda (available at Walmart in a 1 gallon resealable bucket), over the areas that had been affected by urine. I left it overnight and vacuumed the next morning, then putting the vacuum bag immediately in the trash.
I couldn't believe how there was zero smell left behind! I have a nose like a hound and there was no smell at all. The baking soda worked like magic to deodorize upholstery and is a cleaning trick from the pros I will always use moving forward.
You can also baking soda with cold water and vinegar for a gym-clothes-smell banishing trick. Use one cup baking soda, to one cup vinegar in enough cold water to cover the stinky items and soak for 30 minutes before washing as usual. We do this at home for gym clothes and it's the only thing that gets rid of that mildewy smell.
I also use baking soda to clean my carpets, in my laundry, and when cleaning minor blockages from the kitchen sink so a multi pack like this works brilliantly for me. It's inexpensive and has so many uses around the home, including when baking.
2. Homemade cleaning sprays are brilliant
I got totally sucked into an Instagram advert to try an essential oil based cleaning spray subscription to not only clean, but make my home smell expensive. It was on offer so I took it and really was amazed at how nice it was to clean using an essential oil blend. It not only was great for tackling grease and sticky stains on counters, but it left a divine, streak free clean across every surface in my home.
The only problem was the price.
Then I talked to cleaning professionals about cleaning with tea tree essential oil and others at home, and she mentioned how easy it was to make your own cleaning spray. I followed her instructions, adding 10-20 drops of my chosen essential oil, (geranium essential oil from Amazon), with water and a tiny drop of dish soap - your regular Dawn soap from Walmart will do just fine.
I bought a few amber glass spray bottles from Amazon with labels so they'd look uniform and nice around the house and now I have my own homemade, cheap, very effective essential oil cleaning spray in every room and it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg.
I have since ditched many of my all-purpose cleaning supplies and use my own mix. So far, I've tried citrus-y essentials oils, ylang ylang, geranium and absolutely adore the fragrance it leaves all over my home.
It also feels great knowing exactly what ingredients are in the solutions I am spraying around the home I share with my daughter and our cats.
These are very similar to the amber spray bottles I've bought and use around my home and I love how slick and uniform they look. It also feels good to reduce my plastic use as these are high-quality thick glass that I can reuse for many years to come. The trigger sprays have six settings and mist very evenly, and feel robust. I have added eraseable labels to mine so when I add a new mix, I can update the label without having to peel and use a new one.
If you don't know which kind of fragrance you like, give this set a go. You can use them individually or make your own mixes for a unique DIY cleaning spray fragrance you love. I used to work in perfume and my nose is finely tuned to picking up base notes and aromas and it's surprised me that I am yet to try an essential oil I did not immediately love the scent of. Lavender and orange, included in this set, are both in my top three, alongside geranium.
Use a label maker for all sorts of tasks around your home including when organizing cubbies, tins, mason jar storage, and even in your medicine cabinet and on cleaning spray solutions you've made yourself. This one is handheld, and comes loaded with variety of fonts, templates and symbols, as well as two rolls of printable tape to get started immediately. It's also one of the tools pro organizers can't do their job without.
3. Use microfiber cloths
I switched to microfiber clothes this year again as a result of interviewing lots of cleaning experts and I honestly don't know why I didn't do this years ago. I used to go through so many paper towels a week during cleaning tasks and it was so wasteful, and actually, not as good as a microfiber cloth, though you'll want to avoid microfiber cloth mistakes.
These are designed to be super absorbent, hard-wearing, machine washable and good for just about any cleaning task you can think off, without that linty-dusty residue some paper towels leave behind.
Now, I use microfiber cloths for cleaning tasks all over my home, from wiping down my collection of plants to rid them of dust, to dusting surfaces, cleaning kitchen counters, sinks, showers and baths, and even floors.
These have reinforced edges, and wash beautifully. Just remember to skip the fabric softener when you wash microfiber cloths as it will coat the fine fibers and reduce the cloth's absorbency. I also have a different color allocated to various spaces so bathroom cleaning cloths don't end up being used on kitchen counters. Washing at high temperatures (130+ Fahrenheit) will kill 99 per cent of bacteria.
4. Clean little and often
I live with multiple chronic health conditions that limit my mobility, ability to stand and walk from day to day, as well as bring me intense pain and fatigue daily, which has historically made it hard to keep on top of household cleaning chores weekly.
After speaking to the pros, I've shifted my mindset away from deep-cleans, to cleaning my house fast, little and often. This means I clean something for a minute or two whilst I'm waiting for my kettle to boil, as I'm waiting for the ping of my microwave, or whilst brushing my teeth. This has banished my feeling of cleaning-related overwhelm and I no longer feel like I have to vacuum, dust or deep-clean a whole floor or room of the house in one go. Just getting part of the job done is fine.
Overall, these bursts of little cleaning daily and weeks mean things are generally in good shape in my home. When I have needed time to recover from an injury (my joints dislocate a lot) or an intense pain flare, the clock isn't setting back to zero as I've been keeping on top of a lot – and my husband does this too so it's a constant team effort.
I also have taken on board what professional cleaners have told me about letting go of the shame of getting a professional cleaner in. If I need one, and I can afford to, I book one in and enjoy the deep-cleaning they can do instead of me. If you're experiencing one of the signs you need a cleaner, then go for it. You won't regret it.
Plus, it doesn't have to be forever. Just get what you need done, for as long as you need it, and get on with the other things you need to do without guilt or shame.
Start as you mean to go on with a whole house cleaning bundle. Simply add water and drop a concentrated Smartpac pod in away you go. This bundle gives you everything you need to tackle grime, dust, dirt, soap scum, windows, upholstery, surfaces and more across your home.
5. Clean my internal doors
I didn’t know cleaning your internal doors was a thing until a professional cleaner shared all the places you're probably forgetting to clean in your living room and beyond, and my eyes nearly popped out of my head.
Until then, I'd see one relative wipe down her doors but I thought that was a one-off quirky cleaning thing that person did. Then I realized, no, actually, this is a spot you definitely should have on your cleaning checklist.
And of course you would! People touch them daily, we use our feet to kick them closed when our hands are full and if like me you have cats, (or dogs) that like to rub themselves along the edges, it makes perfect sense they need to be cleaned regularly.
I now use my homemade cleaning spray (an all-purpose will work just fine) on my internal doors and with a microfiber cloth, clean them from top to bottom. It also leaves them smelling good and will be one of those things people with nice smelling homes do.
You can also use a wood polish to get yours super buffed up and clean.
Buy this aerosolized wood cleaning in a single or triple pack depending on how quickly you go through this cleaning product. Shines and protects wood furniture and smells like lemons, too so there isn't any of that 'bug spray' style odor of yesteryear!
6. Manually scrape fur from carpets
I thought the carpets in our newly-built home were well looked after, and despite two fluffy cats we vacuumed once or even twice a day as needed. But then we hired a cleaner to come every couple of weeks and give our home a deeper clean when my pain levels were pretty bad and my husband working flat out.
After vacuuming, she got down on her hands and knees and scraped the carpet with a pet hair remover from Amazon and oh my goodness. There were mini mountains of fur piled up all over the house where she'd gathered it all up, and I couldn't believe how much extra fur pulled up post-vacuuming.
The carpets also looked brand new! It made me decide to keep the cats out of our bedrooms for the most part and meant this little contraption shot to the top of my favorite items bought for pet removal. It works like a dream, but does take a little elbow grease my chronically in pain body can't quite hack. My daughter loves using it and my husband is happy to step in and put his back into it in my place!
It's definitely a cleaning tip that's firmly on our cleaning checklist for next year and we'll never go back to relying simply on our vacuum, though, in truth, I am now considering investing one of the best vacuums for pet hair to see if it makes a difference to my canister-style Miele.
This is the type of pet-hair scraper I have and I absolutely love it. It's brilliant for lifting the hair from your carpets that your vacuum doesn't suck up and has left our carpets looking crisp and like new. I first spotted it going viral on TikTok and gave it a go and have not been disappointed. My first one lasted six months before the textured ridge you see pictured above in orange peeled off and needed replacing. They're cheap so it's not a huge outlay and worth the spend, even if it does need replacing once or twice a year.
7. It’s a household effort
It’s easy and quite common for one person to take charge of the home’s cleaning but unless everyone is on board, it’s hard to make routines, schedules and cleaning maintenance stick.
Professional cleaners (and professional organizers in fact) have shared with me many times how important it is to get your household on board with an agreed and achievable cleaning schedule, or way of cleaning things so that it's not all falling on one person.
Being on the same page means your hard work isn't undone either.
Next, learn the things professional cleaners always spot in dirty homes and what you can do to keep them spotless in yours.
