Cleaning shortcuts for new mums

My mum came over to visit today before she travels through Europe and the USA for eight weeks (if jealousy is a curse then  I am cursed!). I love my Mum, she has helped me through some really tough times, but it's always stressful when she visits. I *know* she's casting her concerned gaze over the house and looking for signs that I'm struggling with a new baby.

Let's face it, between sleep deprivation and the hours taken up with feeding, nappying and rocking, it's hard to keep up your usual standards. So I wanted to share some great little shortcuts I've picked up, starting with housekeeping.

Believe it or not, cleaning is another thing that I miss! I hate general tidying but love to clean. The cleaning supplies aisle at the supermarket makes me giddy- all of those bathroom cleaners and different sponges and brushes! I love to get lost in the scrubbing and hot water and repetition. No time for that at the moment though. But I don't want standards of cleanliness to slip, especially in the kitchen and bathrooms where hygiene is super important. So I've replaced my buckets and brushes with cleaning wipes which are great because I can stash the toilet wipes in the toilets, the kitchen cleaners in the kitchen and the bathroom cleaners such as these in the bathrooms and use them if I have a spare 30secs and notice that one of my older children has painted handwash across the mirror, for example (we have a playroom full of toys, honestly!) 

Another tip is to purchase an extension cord and plug that into the end of your vacuum cleaner cord. Hey presto, super-long vacuum cleaner cord. Which means that if you manage to find time to vacuum, you don't need to plug and unplug the vacuum as you move around the house, just plug-and-go.
 

And once you've vacuumed, boil some hot water in a big stock pot and use that to mop the floor (I mix the hot water with a few drops of detergent and a few drops of eucalyptus oil in a mop bucket, others prefer to mix it with white vinegar or commercial disinfectants). As you can see from the edges of the picture below, the heat of the water means that it evaporates quickly and so dries very, very quickly. Life is too short to wait for floors to dry!
 

Of course, the other great alternative is to hire a cleaner, at least for the first few weeks! They generally cost $25-$30 an hour. But if you'd rather save that money for yourself, and keep your sanity, try out some cleaning shortcuts.

Do you have any other brilliant cleaning shortcuts or hacks? Any tips that saved your sanity when you had a newborn in the house and dust bunnies growing in the corners of rooms? I'd love to hear them.

xx Laura