Have a daily routine
Once a day take 10 minutes and improve something in your house. Whether it is the kitchen or the mail pile, the laundry, or a dirty toilet, choose something and improve it. That’s 10 minutes a day for 7 days a week, and you will soon start noticing an improvement, and so will the rest of your family.
Do small chores by habit
When you climb out of bed, turn around and straighten it. Before you leave the bathroom, wipe down one surface. Than your home will be maintained in small chunks without spending hours at a time cleaning.
Keep cleaning supplies where you clean
Keep cleaning supplies in the bathroom, and more under the kitchen sink. Then when you want to clean, you are not going to different locations to find your equipment and you will be more likely to spot clean. Just remember, if you have small children or pets in the house, to use child safety locks.
Tidy when on the phone
Do you make phone calls only to be put on hold? While you are waiting, move something and put it away. Use the time while you are waiting to improve your home in a small way.
Listen to music
Even when you don’t have a phone call to make, you can clean while enjoying music, or listen to an audiobook.
Clean with a friend
You clean her house one week, and then she cleans your home the following week. Have social time and improve the condition of your home at the same time and it won’t feel like work. Or you clean her closet one week and she helps you clean yours the following.
Deal with mail as it arrives
When you get your mail, stand over the recycling bin and drop in anything you don’t want. Avoid dropping it on a surface with the intention of dealing with it later, deal with it now.
Keep things you don’t want in your car
Have a bag in the trunk of your car and when you find something you don’t want, put it in the bag. When you drive around and pass a thrift store, drop off the bag and pick up a receipt. It’s that easy to reduce the stuff you have in your home.
Use the Internet more and papers less
Why keep papers when you have the same information on the Internet? If your electronics are easily accessible, then you don’t need pages of information. Reduce your paper pile by storing your information electronically whenever possible.
Don’t buy similar socks for different people
If sorting socks is a nightmare for you, then buy very different colors or styles of socks for each member of the family. Or better still, get them to sort their own.
Move stuff out of the house
Don’t constantly move stuff around the house, but instead move it out of the house. Ultimately you will have less to sort and clean. Moving things from place to place is a waste of time if you really don’t want them. Reducing stuff is the best way for future peace in your home.
If you don’t love it, don’t keep it
Why give shelf space to something you don’t love? Don’t keep what you don’t want, get rid of it.
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