I am not a natural homemaker, nor am I a perfect housekeeper. At all. Not in the least. There, I’ve said it. It’s sad, but true.
But it’s the nature of “adulting” that you have to do these things, among many other things you may not want to do, things you may not be good at, things you should do. And keeping your house clean and tidy is one of those things. Right? So since it isn’t second nature to me, I need as much help as I can get in making these chores stick.
So how do I change my colors and make these chores stick as habit? Good question… let me know if you have the answer! lol…
Create a Schedule
If you’ve read the blog for a while you may know that I’m a fan of alliteration. I like to use alliteration as a fun way to schedule my tasks. Sometimes it works (Toilet Tuesday, Wash Wednesday) and sometimes I can’t come up with anything clever. Why do we have repeating letters for our days of the week? It limits the possibilities lol… But that is a personal hangup, so you do you and schedule how you please.
You can spread your tasks out over the course of the week or month (depending on the task) so that you’re not going on a cleaning spree every weekend and using up your precious recreation time. If you can dedicate small amounts of time each day to tackle a task, it won’t feel as all consuming and you’ll be more likely to do them.
Use a To Do / Reminder App
Once you have a schedule plotted out, enter the tasks into a to do or reminder app. There’s a bazillion out there. I like the 2Do app (I bought the paid version) and have used it for all sorts of task reminders, including for this blog when I first started. There’s a desktop version as well that you can sync to your mobile device. It makes task entry a lot simpler.
You can set your tasks to repeat after a certain period of time or on certain days of the week or month. You can set alerts to remind you in advance. You can view today’s tasks only or look at everything that’s coming up. I had this set up a long time ago but stopped using it. I ignored my arch nemesis, the app badge. Or even worse, I marked the tasks complete without actually doing them, just to get rid of the badge :::face palm::: I think I will reattempt this.
10 Minute Clean Up
At any given moment if you ask me what I’m doing the answer very well could be “straightening up.” Does it ever end? No. Unless you’re on top of putting things back immediately or never putting things down where they don’t belong in the first place. So if that is you, you can ignore this tip.
Despite wanting a beautifully styled home, I have a bad habit of leaving stuff all over, piled up on flat surfaces. Then I’ll have a huge straightening session to put everything back where it belongs. Or I don’t, lol… If this is you too, try this instead: set your phone timer to 10 minutes (or more if you have the time and the desire) and put that stuff away now. Like, right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Okay, done? Now do this every day. I’ve used this method before and it works. As long as you do it. Will be reattempting this as well.
Organization
I will not pretend to be an organization pro, because I’m not. There are plenty of tips out there. I don’t necessarily have them to share. But I will say this, in order to put things back in their place, they have to have a place.
I’m always working on improving my organization solutions. This is especially important when storage space is limited. Whenever possible, I like to store things where I use them. Or in the general vicinity. Shelves, baskets, bins, boxes, drawer units, cabinets, etc help to camouflage storage in plain site.
Make It Fun
And my last tip is to make it fun! Blast the tunes or put on a podcast. Maybe even an audio book. It makes the time go by and you can multitask, and maybe even enjoy the mundane.