After cleaning homes for 24 years, Faith Horsman has learned that houses that look the tidiest aren’t always the cleanest— they are just better at hiding the mess.
In fact, Horsman admits her own home isn’t always spotless. “As a cleaning lady, I don’t clean my house a lot. I actually pay someone sometimes because I just don’t want to do it,” she tells TODAY.com.
“And so my house doesn’t get cleaned very often, but it always looks very tidy. I keep it very organized and very simple, so that when people come over, they’re like, ‘Wow, your house looks amazing.’”
So, what’s her secret? Strategic storage and smart hiding solutions.
Horsman, co-owner of Knight and Day Cleaning Corp., recently went viral on TikTok for sharing her top tip for making homes appear cleaner. It mostly boils down to one tip: Eliminate open shelving.
In her video, she warns viewers with open shelving: “If you have open shelving, get rid of it now. Throw it to the curb.”
The advice resonated with over 300,000 viewers who struggle to maintain that clean aesthetic between deep cleans. TODAY.com spoke with Horsman to learn more about her strategies for making homes look cleaner, even when they’re not.
Reconsider open shelving
According to Horsman, open shelving creates visual clutter, even when items are organized.
“I kid you not, I’ve cleaned homes that have the exact same square footage and the difference is usually how much they can hide their stuff,” she explains in her video.
Even items you use on a daily basis can add to the perceived mess of a space if they have a lot of color, texture, and overall “business" to them, as Horsman describes.
Her catch-all solution is to “make everything have doors or drawers so you can hide as much as possible.”
Everyday items that create clutter
Horsman, speaking to TODAY.com, identifies specific trouble spots that can make homes look messier than they are.
Horsman says that people often have their everyday items lying around which can make a space feel messier.
Think: shoes thrown by the front door, medicine left out on the bathroom counter and jackets strewn along the backs of chairs.
The biggest culprits are entryways and areas around favorite chairs, which Horsman refers to as “big hot spots” where daily life accumulates.
She describes these areas as places where people “like to live on the outside,” keeping frequently used items visible for convenience.
Swap out your favorite things
Decorative knickknacks can also contribute to visual clutter. “It’s not that their knickknacks look bad, it’s just when you add knickknacks and daily life that gets very busy, very fast,” she explains.
For those who don’t want to part with their knicknacks for good, Horsman suggests rotating your favorite items rather than displaying them all at once.
“Don’t have all 50 of your favorite ones. Put two of your favorite ones out (at a time),” she says.
The same principle applies to countertops and other surfaces. For homes with limited storage, Horsman recommends maximizing vertical space with inexpensive stackable shelving inside cabinets.
Creative solutions when you can’t hide everything
Horsman acknowledges that replacing furniture with closed storage isn’t always feasible. That’s where creative compromises come in.
She practices what she preaches in her own home, too. She has no upper cabinets, but her husband is a “spice lover” who owns hundreds of spices, so she needed a solution that would keep them accessible without creating visual chaos.
To keep her husband happy and herself sane, she bought matching spice containers with identical clear labels and spent hours transferring all the spices into the uniform jars, then organized them on the open shelf spice rack. The transformation was immediate: What had been a chaotic collection of mismatched bottles became a streamlined display.
The key principle: reduce visual noise by creating cohesion. “It feels good to have it be the same instead of 47 different colors and lids,” she says.
For other storage challenges, Horsman recommends baskets, especially ones with lids, to instantly make spaces look cleaner. Use them on kitchen counters to corral chargers and everyday items, or place them on open bathroom shelves to hide toiletries and create a more cohesive look.
What to clean when you’re short on time
If you need to make your home look cleaner but don’t have much time, Horsman recommends focusing on high-impact areas that will be noticed by guests the quickest.
These areas include countertops near the entryway or the guest bathroom bathroom they’ll be using.
Consider walking into your house as if you were a guest. What rooms do you plan on using? Where do your eyes travel?
According to Horsman, whether you’ve vacuumed recently won’t be as noticeable as the piles of stuff you left out.
The key to making quick cleanups easier? Constant decluttering. “I pick up so much that when people come over, cleaning is actually easy because I don’t have any picking up to do," she says.
