Through the last four months, I've learned some pretty good homekeeping tricks of the trade from various magazines and books. Here are a few that I hope will make your daily lives a little bit easier :)
1. Wipe down the counter/sink every time you use the bathroom or kitchen.
It may sound silly, but it really keeps the rooms looking neat and tidy. And with my little man loving mud puddles and mud pies so much this summer, this one task has kept my bathroom from becoming a mud puddle.
2. Put your clothes away every. single. day. Put it where it belongs after you take it off (hamper, hanger, drawer) and put away clothes as they come up from the laundry. I am queen of living out of a hamper and since starting this, you will very rarely find my clothes lying around. My husband on the other hand? Well, I won't start on this topic today.
3. Open your mail over a recycling bin.
That way you can dump the junk in the bin right away and file the other stuff. Keeps piles from, well... piling up :)
4. If you use it, put it away.
After a while, this become so easy and second nature. It really helps to keep the clutter down in the house. If the rest of my family practiced this, it would really make a difference and save me some clean up time every night so that I'd have more time to read The Pioneer Woman at night while drinking tea wearing my favourite yoga pants while I sit in front of the AC unit that has become a part of me this summer. But I digress. Just do it, you will see results.
5. There is no try. There is do and don't.
I know this isn't related to homekeeping, but I found this saying to really get me through it. After doing a bit of research I found out why. When people are told to try something, they don't try as hard because they are not sure if the task is in fact do-able. When a person is told to do something, they try harder because they feel they are expected to finish the task and put in more of an effort to find a way. I find this very true when I do a task at home. If I say I'm going to try, in the back of my mind I can feel doubt that I am going to complete the task. If I say I'm going to do it, I just do it and it seems to get done. May take a while, but I persist a lot longer and always work through road blocks. If I were trying, the road block would pretty much be the end of the road, and easy way to give up.
6. Spend five minutes a day working on a long-standing task.
This has become more than five minutes a day for me, but the general meaning of it is this. If you have a gazillion books that you need to organize and sort through, but never seem to have the time or energy or desire to do so, spend five minutes a day doing it. After a while you'll see how much it can add up to. If you have no long-standing tasks to do, then spend five minutes checking for things that are out of place and replacing them. I do this frequently throughout the day so I don't have to do one big clean at the end of the night. I play a game with my little man called "find something and put it back" during this five minutes. He loves it, although sometimes he finds things in their correct spot and puts them in a new incorrect spot, but hey, he's three. He can only commit to doing so much, lol.
I hope these little tricks help you as much as they have helped me! I have learned that every big journey is made of teeny tiny little bitty steps. I'm hoping that all these bitty steps will help me meet my goal.
Time will tell.
Cheers!
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