Cleaning your home can be overwhelming, complicated and time-consuming, particularly if it is quite large or if you have children and pets. Here are two steps you can take to simplify this process.

Don't buy an excessive number of 'specialist' cleaning products

In a typical supermarket, you can usually find dozens upon dozens of different types of cleaning products, each of which supposedly has unique properties which make it suitable only for a specific area of your home.

If, like most people, you believe the claims on the labels of these products, your house is probably filled with a large collection of different cleaning items, including, for example, a kitchen cleaning spray, a bathroom cleaning spray, floor cleaner, grout cleaner and a variety of other 'specialist' goods.

The reality is that this is largely just a marketing ploy, designed to encourage people to buy lots of cleaning products. Falling for this ploy will not only leave a dent in your bank balance, but will leave you with a very cluttered cleaning cupboard and, most importantly, will complicate the process of cleaning your home.

If you're fed up of having to rifle through dozens of bottles of cleaning fluids in order to find the 'correct' product and having to lug ten different products around the house when you're doing a deep clean, it's worth purging your existing collection and taking a simpler approach. All you really need to clean most, if not all of your house, is three products: namely, a cheap bottle of bleach, a mild surfactant (washing up liquid is ideal) and some vinegar.

When diluted in water, the bleach can be used to disinfect any areas which may be harbouring bacteria (such as your kitchen worktops and the surfaces found in your bathroom). Some washing up liquid squirted into a bucket of warm water can be used to safely and effectively remove any dirt, grime and oil-based stains from most surfaces, whilst the vinegar can be sprayed onto mirrors and other glass surfaces to give these items a shiny finish.

Hire a professional cleaner to handle the harder cleaning tasks

There are certain cleaning tasks which can only be done properly by a professional cleaner who has the equipment, cleaning chemicals and the skills needed to do the work thoroughly.

Carpet cleaning is one example of a chore that usually requires the involvement of a professional. You could easily spend hours of your free time and use multiple household cleaning products on this task, and still end up with a stained, unhygienic and malodorous carpet. As such, if you're determined to simplify your current cleaning routine, it's worth hiring a professional cleaner (ideally, one who specialises in carpet steam cleaning) to sanitise and remove the stains from your carpets.

They can use their steam cleaner, along with their commercial-grade cleaning chemicals, to extract all of the dust, grime, dander and other debris that is currently trapped inside the deeper layers of your home's carpeting without damaging the carpet fibres or leaving you with a sopping-wet floor.