How to Keep Your House Clean and Organized
How Not to Clean
You spent last weekend cleaning and making your house presentable. Now it's a week later and your sink is filled with dishes, the coffee table cannot be found and you cannot find the earrings you want to wear. Sound familiar?
With five people living in my household things have a way of piling up fast. It really does not take long before your overwhelmed or making excuses why people cannot come over to your house. It's a lot of work to clean up the mess all at once when someone is coming over to visit or your hosting some celebration at your home.
I cannot tell you how many times I've spent hours the night before a family gathering cleaning, with little or no help, into the wee hours of the morning, The next day I'm tired and cannot enjoy time with family; not to mention, all my hard work has been destroyed in mere hours. You really feel defeated so you let things slide until yet another event..
I have had enough of this pattern that leaves me tired, depressed and ashamed of the place I live in. I'm taking a new path now free of clutter.
Maintenance
The secret to getting your home organized is to set up a maintenance plan. It is extremely important to maintain the work you have done or plan on doing. You need to sort out your daily activities everyday.
How Do You Maintain Your Organization?
Today's dishes need to be done to day. If they were dirtied today they need to be cleaned and put away. If the trash is full it needs to be emptied. If you were working on a quilt your sewing supplies needs to be put away after you've completed the activity.
It is easier to keep up with the mail and dishes if you deal with them on a daily basis. It does not have to take a long time. You would be surprised by how fast you can get them done when your only dealing with dishes that were from one meal instead of like 21 meals.
Is your home disorganized?
You Have to Start Somewhere
4 Things to Do to Help You Keep Up with the Chaos
Idea
| Items
| Time
|
|---|---|---|
1
| Do Dishes after every meal and wipe down counters.
| 10 minutes or less
|
2
| Sort through mail. Throw out junk mail and put bills in a bill folder.
| 3 minutes
|
3
| Put away anything you used to day that you did not put away earlier.
| 5 minutes
|
4
| Clean off bathroom sink and pick up anything on the floor
| 5-10 minutes
|
Note: Times will vary depending on number of people in the family and whether you have help doing your cleaning.
Make a To Do List
Once you are able to maintain the days events you may want to start working on cleaning rooms or organizing shelves that are in disarray. Schedule when you will do this project and for how long. Set a timer to now when it is time to quit. If you still have energy you can continue on in your project but do not push yourself. Remember to maintain your house by putting things back when you take them out, and keeping up with daily activities. If you keep working a little at a time eventually you will end up with an organized and clean house.
Note: Like projects you will need to schedule time to do some deep cleaning like washing the floors and vacuuming; though, these activities will not need to be done daily because you are managing the daily clutter.
Remember to Take Baby Steps
Trying to do everything at once will leave you completely overwhelmed. Break tasks into more manageable steps.
When Your Ready to Branch Out
When your ready to take on an organizing project. It is a good idea to plan out all the steps you will need to complete the task and break it down into smaller tasks. Decide what you have to organize and then pick out the organizer. Do not do this in reverse order because you could end up with organizers that don't work for your space.
For ideas on how to organize your stuff I recommend checking out Alejandra.tv. This youtube personality is a professional organizer and has great ideas to help you live a more orderly life.
