Live plants are cleaning up their area around their roots don't forget. Unlike plastic plants which do nothing, live plants are actively turning that muck (fertilizer) into new leaves and shoots. Just leave them be and vacuum the gravel where you can. I generally will leave a bare patch of gravel as a regular 'feeding' place where food drops down and food pellets will fall that I deep clean each time. the rest of the tank, I will reverse siphon the new water using the hose to squirt water into the back areas and into the plants to 'wash' them out. The filter then sucks up the crap. Always be careful of the roots when planting because they are very fragile, otherwise once planted you try to avoid touching the roots because that can loosen the plant from the gravel. LOL we all end up doing that but then you just cover them again with gravel.

All aspects of the tank are working parts of a 'living' aquarium, including the fish. Everything has a role to play keeping the tank working. Get it set up right and you practically have nothing to do but regular water changes and feeding the fish. Do it wrong and you end up doing that missing part as extra work that you shouldn't have had to do.

For example live plants. Tanks without live plants are harder to keep water parameters stable and require extra water changes to remove the fish wastes that produce the ammonia which the plants would have removed for them etc.

A clean up crew of cory catfish and shrimp pick out (scavenge) uneaten bits of food that get stuck in between the gravel and then rot causing ammonia. They eat up the unused food and that keeps the gravel cleaner so that you won't have to do thoe extra gravel vacuumings. Otis and snails eat algae and so on.

The filter traps particles of gunk (detritus) in their filter pad or sponge or floss (mechanical filtration) and the nitrifying bacteria process the dissolved organic wastes (let's call it ammonia on the hoof) and remove the ammonia so that you won't have to do a water change every day. The light makes the plants grow etc. The more they grow the more they have removed stuff that you would have needed to remove yourself. They just turn it into leaves.

So leave the plants once you've planted them (You'll need more than a few to make it work but you've seen pictures of these tanks with lots of plants. Your tank is established so just go buy a bunch of plants and 'green up' your tank and let them do the work instead of you.

Lighting is important though. If you have fluorescent bulbs then buy the ones recommended for growing plants or daylight type bulbs. If you have incandescent bulbs then you can buy compact fluorescent bulbs (which last a long time) and put them in the hood. A really great way to upgrade a light hood without buying a new hood. I strongly recommend getting rid of the incandescent light bulbs and replacing them with those twisty compact fluorescents. Probably the one thing that you most need to do if your hood uses regular bulbs.

Feel free to ask questions anytime about anything aquarium related because someone here will have the answer and can help out. I also suggest checking out the videos about aquariums and aquarium equipment on YouTube. They are really great sometimes. Lots of ways to do things DIY and How Tos etc.