Professional cleaning services, hotel maids and other housekeeping professionals all approach their work the same way: They work toward the same standard every time.

If you want your home to look as if it has been professionally cleaned between visits from your cleaning service, you can do the same thing.

Create a Standard 

The first step is to create a standard of what you would like your home to look like. This should be done for each individual room — including your kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms and other rooms in your house.

For example, in the kitchen you may want the standard to be:

• Sink is always clear of dirty dishes
• Floor has been swept clear of debris
• Counters have been wiped clean
• Refrigerator, stove and other appliance surfaces have been wiped clean.

Move from room to room and determine how you would like each to look every day. Beds should be made neatly, floors should be vacuumed or swept, bathroom sinks wiped out and dirty towels picked up, and so on.

Be as specific as possible, down to the tiniest details — such as the way towels should be arranged in your bathroom and which doors should be left open or closed.

Work Toward the Standard Daily

Then all you have to do is at the same time every day — perhaps first thing in the morning or right before the kids arrive home from school — move through each room of your home and make it the same as your standard.

It’s sometimes helpful to think of this daily housekeeping routine as a little puzzle for you to figure out. What do you have to do to each room to bring it up to your standard?

After a few days or weeks of following this daily routine, your eye will automatically spot what needs to be done in each room. You can then quickly and effectively knock out each task and your house will be spotlessly neat in no time at all.

Weekly Chores

When you become comfortable with your daily cleaning routine, you can add other tasks that need to be done less frequently, such as changing your bedding every Saturday morning or emptying all the garbage bins on the afternoon before garbage pickup day.

Professional cleaning services use these types of routines to keep homes clean. You can do the same thing between visits from your housekeepers.