Keeping Your House Clean With Pets

If you have pets, you are lucky enough to know the unconditional love and comfort they provide. You also know the scent and hairy trail they tend to leave behind. So how do you cope with having pets in the home without sacrificing cleanliness? We have a few tips for your St. Louis home on how you can manage to have it all.

Hair

When keeping a house clean with pets, everyone has their own preferences for scooping up hair: Swiffers, hand-held vacuums, dustpans. But you can minimize how much cleaning up you have to do if you start with proper grooming. Brushing your pet regularly can cut back on the amount of stray hairs that fall from their coat. Ideally, you should brush your pet a few times a week, just a quick brushing to get the coat out. If you collect it on the brush, it’s not on the floor. Brush your pet outside if possible to allow hairs to be outdoors rather than in your home. Brushing a cat regularly can also decrease their health problems related to hair, such as constipation and hairballs -- something that will also keep your house significantly cleaner.

Bathroom accidents

Having a trained pet who knows to go to the bathroom outdoors is essential. However, you have to assume mistakes will happen—they are animals, they are not perfect. Most dogs, if properly trained, do their business outside; you’ll need to carry disposal bags with you on your walks to keep your neighborhood clean, but you shouldn’t have to be constantly cleaning up your pooch’s messes indoors. Cats, on the other hand, usually have their bathrooms indoors, in the form of a litter box. This small plastic rectangle can be the scourge of anyone trying to keep a house clean with pets. Regular thorough cleaning of the litter box is crucial to keeping a clean house and a fresh scent.

Boundaries

Decide which parts of the house you want to share with your pet and be consistent about enforcement. Restrict your pet to its own bed — not yours! In fact, pets should not be allowed on couches or other furniture. This is part of training your pet. Get the right bed for your pet and they will be happy to stay in it. A bed for your cat or dog has to be one that you can clean out and disinfect regularly. Failure to do so means that your pet's bed is likely to become home to mites and fleas that live to bite your pet, making that basket not so cozy after all.

Feeding

Water bowls and food bowls can translate into messes on your floor and tracked through the home. Have a mat under the bowls to catch messes and keep the floor dry, and if you can, feed your pets in an area away from the kitchen such as the garage or the patio. This keeps messes in places that are low-traffic and less likely to be tracked everywhere.

We hope these tips can help you keep your pet-friendly home in St. Louis clean and healthy.