Are you familiar with the situation when relatives announce their arrival on the phone, but you only have half an hour before they show up?
Sometimes our friends or relatives who are passing through pay us a surprise visit, but our home is far from being presentable.
We have some tips for this specific situation to help you tidy up your apartment in less than half an hour.
The keyword for quick tidying is efficiency!
It’s important not to rush, but clean with decisive and quick movements. First, grab a trash bag, a dust cloth, a bottle of window cleaner, and if you feel the need, an air freshener spray.
In the next step, open the windows to let fresh air in. Don’t run around the apartment, go in order. Start cleaning in the hallway, then move towards the living room, followed by the kitchen, bathroom, and finally the bedrooms. If you expect guests who will only come as far as the living room, you can skip tidying the bedrooms quickly, just don’t forget to close the bedroom doors. 
Go around the apartment following the mentioned route and throw any trash into the garbage bag. Arrange the scattered shoes neatly, or if there is space in the shoe cabinet, put them all inside. Hide the rest of the scattered or left-out items in drawers, boxes, or the closet – preferably in their original place. However, if rearranging things would take too much time, neatly place larger items at the bottom of the closet and smaller ones in the drawers.
[After the guests leave, put these items back to their actual places so that you don’t create chaos in your drawers and at the bottom of the closet in the long run! ]
Once you’ve put everything away, it’s time to dust off the areas that are prominently visible and visibly dusty. Wipe the table, kitchen counter, dresser, and coffee table. For glass or mirror surfaces that are very dirty, wipe them with window cleaner. It doesn’t have to shine brightly, just make sure that major stains and smudges are not visible on the glass/mirror. This is especially true for a sunlit hallway or living room, where heavily stained glass surfaces are immediately noticeable.
Once you’re done tidying up and dusting the surfaces of larger furniture, it’s time to vacuum. Again, we’re not striving for perfection here, just vacuum the main areas to remove small pieces of dirt brought in by the kids or crumbs from dropped food.
When you’re done with everything, put away the vacuum cleaner and dust cloth, close the windows, and if you have a sofa or larger armchairs, chairs in the living room, fluff the cushions a bit, adjust the covers of the armchair or chair. Finally, spray some air freshener around the apartment, but don’t overdo it. A pleasant scent can be overwhelming if used too heavily.
And finally, remember, this is not a deep clean, everything doesn’t have to be perfectly clean. The key is to make sure the apartment doesn’t look like a hurricane just swept through. If you can involve the kids in the quick cleaning, you can get things done in no time with combined effort. As a reminder, after the guests leave, remember to put the things you threw into the closet and drawers back in their place, so that you don’t have to spend an extra half an hour rearranging them during regular cleaning sessions.