We guarantee this 4-step cleaning routine will make you feel very smug.

I've never been able to relax in an unclean home. 

But now that I have a 14-month-old who spends a lot of time playing on the floor, that's become even more important to me. 

Between work and parenting and a third family member constantly giving us new messes to clean up, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the constant to-do list.  

It's forced my husband and I to work smarter, not harder. 

This four-step routine helped us itemise and prioritise cleaning in our home, so now we do it on autopilot.

1. Upgrade your hardware.

There isn't a dinner-time to be had in our home that doesn't result in food scraps on the kitchen floor and under my son's highchair. 

We used to do a quick nightly sweep to keep on top of it, but the floor was always left a bit grimy and/or sticky.

Adding Kärcher FC 7 Hard Floor Cleaner to our routine has actually changed the game. It removes all kinds of dry and wet dirt and grime in a single step — the toddler's breakfast like cereal and berries, spilt drinks, tomato sauce, all the floor's collection of hair, fluff and dust balls... the works. It uses four roller technology that enables wiping without the tedious job of vacuuming beforehand.

With a 45-minute run time, the Kärcher FC 7 has two different cleaning modes plus a boost function.  

It has a two-tank system, so the rollers are always being wet with fresh water while the second tank collects the dirt. The intelligent tank level monitoring lets you know when they're empty or full.

Upgrading to the Kärcher FC 7 has been a game-changer. Image: Supplied.

It literally takes my husband or I about five minutes to do a quick run around of the main living area of our home with the Kärcher FC 7 — which means we're on the couch relaxing, chatting and decompressing before we know it. 

It has completely removed that stressful sigh I often used to feel when I emerged from my son's bedroom to the carnage left behind from the dinner/bath/bed routine.

For a deeper clean of the house, it has completely removed the two-pronged approach we used to have to make time for; lugging around a corded vacuum and then a sloppy mop that had to be re-wet every few swipes. 

The Kärcher FC 7 is hands down the smartest addition we've made to our cleaning routine.

Watch: A demonstration of Kärcher's FC 7 Hard Floor Cleaner. Post continues below.

2. Make a list.

Sometimes getting everything down on paper is the easiest way to make things feel less overwhelming. 

My husband and I sat down and wrote out all the things that needed cleaning in our home. So our kitchen list included; wipe down surfaces/cupboards, clean out microwave, clean out fridge and clean out oven. 

Then we itemised everything into daily, weekly and fortnightly or monthly tasks. Given we are both busy working and have a small child, we tried to keep things realistic — what would we actually get done? How frequently was realistic? 

No point creating something that's impossible to commit too. For us that looked like this:

Daily: A quick floor wipe of the main living space after dinner with the Kärcher FC 7. 

Weekly: Kitchen surfaces, bathroom surfaces/toilet, dusting surfaces, washing mirrors and floors (that we can see). 

Fortnightly: Dust skirting boards, deeper floor clean (under and behind heavy furniture).

Monthly: Clean out the oven, clean out the microwave, wash the windows, and steam clean the kitchen and bathroom (flooring and stove top surfaces).  

3. Create your schedule 

It's one thing to create a to-do list, it's another thing to actually put it into motion. This is the step where you lean into your strengths. 

There's two potential ways you could tackle it;

Smash it out: Pick a certain day and smash out your weekly clean all in one go. 

A task a day: If you know you're never going to be able to dedicate an hour or two, pick a few tasks a day. Maybe Tuesdays are bathrooms, Wednesdays are floors and Thursdays are for giving the kitchen a scrub.

For me, having a clean house to relax in over the weekend is important, so Fridays became our nominated 'weekly clean' day. 

We smash out our weekly clean on a Friday, just in time for the weekend. Image: Supplied.

For the more deep-cleaning tasks, we dedicate some quiet time on the weekend to tick those tasks off which usually ends up being a Sunday afternoon.

Everyone is busy. By having a rough idea of your 'cleaning time', it makes it easier to squeeze into your day-to-day schedule. 

4. Divide and conquer.

If you live in a home with more than one capable adult (or teen) this is where you divvy up the tasks.

For our daily after-dinner-once-over, we take it in turns. Whoever isn't in putting our son to bed is instead doing a quick clean. 

Every night, we do a quick spruce of the kitchen and living space after the chaos of dinner. Image: Supplied.

I generally tackle the weekly clean. I don't work on Fridays, so I smash it out during my son's middle of the day nap.

My husband can't do things in halves. He is a 'I'm going to scrub the tiles in the bathroom with a toothbrush to remove every morsel of dirt' kinda cleaner. To make the most of his hyper-fixation, he generally tackles the longer lead tasks in our home — the fortnightly and monthly deep cleaning jobs. 

By deciding who is doing what ahead of time, we've removed the annoying mental load that can creep into this particular domestic task.

I hate deep cleaning, and my husband hates doing things 'quickly'. This way, we each have our lane.

Following these four steps has helped us create a schedule that works for our family, eliminated any niggling at each other over who hasn't done what and most importantly we've managed to streamline the job itself. 

Now, I get to spend even less time cleaning. Just the way I like it.

Shop Kärcher's FC 7 Premium Cordless hard floor cleaner online or find your nearest retailer.

Feature Image: Supplied.