All the Small Things My Partner and I Do to Keep Our Home Clean and Photogenic

This particular tip may be Marie Kondo-inspired, but I swear my boyfriend and I have been doing this long before we learned about the Konmari Method! The premise is simple: as soon as we come home, we put everything back in its rightful place. Not only does this minimize clutter near the entryway, it creates a good habit of tackling easy things right away instead of saving them for later. That means coats are hung up, shoes tucked away, and groceries stored, all within the first few minutes of entering our home.

From the bathroom to the kitchen to the dining room, we like keeping high traffic surfaces ultraclean and inviting in case of impromptu flat-lays or product shots (the life of an Instagram-obsessed couple). Instead of tackling all surfaces during a larger cleaning deep dive, we'll do a quick wipe down everyday or every other day. We'll spray Clorox® Clean-Up® Cleaner + Bleach, wait 30 seconds, then wipe clean. It just takes one minute, but ensures we'll always have a sparkling backdrop for any kind of photo.

In what is probably the biggest testament to our anal-retentive detail-oriented ways, we steam the curtains. And the comforter cover for that matter. There's just something so fresh about crisp-looking linens, and when they take up as much visual real estate in a room as ceiling-to-floor curtains or a queen- or king-size bedspread, you want to present them intentionally rather than as an afterthought.

You'll be surprised at how this 10-second task can change the appearance of a whole room. Once we're done using a throw blanket for the day, we'll neatly fold them up on the sofa, or if we're not using one at all, tuck it away in a basket. Yup, that means we do this at the end of every evening during Winter months.

If you're an avid online shopper like I am, you know the fastest way to clutter is cardboard shipping boxes littering the floor. Because of this, my boyfriend instated a rule in which we break down any shipping boxes for recycling immediately after we unbox them. No more unboxed shipments taking up valuable floor space (or mental energy)!

From piles of receipts and unused gift cards to spare cables and chargers, accumulating stuff is inevitable, and we're not immune! Instead of hiding or denying it, we own up to it and just make storage part of the decor in our home. To keep things tidy and visually streamlined, everything has a dedicated storage place and we use bins and baskets (that we're not ashamed to keep in plain sight) to corral similar items and hide smaller things. For example, we use a beaded basket to hold our remote controls on our side table. So instead of seeing a bunch of controllers lying around, you just see one decorative object. Even things that don't have a permanent place have a temporary place — we simply assign storage bins for miscellaneous items that we haven't figured out what to do yet.