Do you feel like the mess in your home has gotten out of control? Are you embarrassed to invite family and friends over for fear of judgment? Do you look at other people’s perfect living spaces on Instagram and wonder how they do it ?
A tidy home is within everyones reach. Steal these 12 low effort tidy habits from people with super organised homes and you’ll soon see a difference.
1. They never go up or downstairs empty-handed
especially if you have children, you’ll probably spend so much time just putting things back where they belong. make life easier for yourself by keeping one basket at the top of the stairs and one at the bottom to save you from having to make multiple trips.
2. They open post straight away
and more importantly, they deal with it right away. Post is the one thing that comes into your home uninvited, so it’s important to keep on top of it. File, recycle or put it in a ‘to do’ folder (but make sure you do actually do ‘do it.’ (see No12)
3 . They have a place for everything
I’ll bet, If you woke in the middle of the night and your house was on fire, there are two items you’d be able to find in under ten seconds, in fact, you’d probably to able to find them in a complete stranger’s house in under ten seconds. What are they?
Your kettle and your toothbrush.
These items have a pretty much universally accepted place in the home. Even the most disorganized of us would struggle to lose our toothbrush. Apply the ‘kettle and toothbrush‘ principle around the home much as you can. Remember the old adage ‘a place for everything in its place
4. They avoid clutter hotspots
It’s a fact that clutter attracts clutter. Imagine the scenario, there,s a chair in your living room that nobody really sits on, you put the book you’re reading on it. a flyer comes through the door that you mean to cut a voucher from so you leave the day’s post on the chair too. when the kids come in from school, they see these bits of paper on the chair so they put their homework there too, and maybe their school jumpers too. Your husband comes in from work, takes his tie off, sees all this stuff on the chair so thinks it’s fine to pop his tie there too. At the end of the day you’re too tired to put all the stuff away, and the next day the process begins all over again. This is how clutter hotspots occur. The only way to avoid it is to be ruthless.
5. And they curb sentimentality
When my four year old comes home from school with yet another cute little drawing or ‘creation’, I thank her , I make appreciative noises, and then as soon as her back is turned i pop it in the recycling bin. You’ll think I’m completely heartless, but she’s my third child, if i kept everything they brought home, my house would look like one of those extreme hoarders. unless it’s particularly special (and after 10 years I have pretty high standards) it goes. I could write a whole book n the subject of clutter, (why knows maybe one day I will) but if I could give just one piece of advice it would be this.
The longer something stays under our roof the more emotional value we place on it. Your home is precious, it’s okay to be choosy about what you allow into it.
Same goes for unwanted presents, get them straight to be charity shop. If you have well-meaning family members who like to pop round with things they think you “might like for the home”, thank them politely but say you just haven’t got room/ it’s just not my taste/ I’m worried the kids would break it. Yes, there’s a possibility you’ll offend them, but they’ll get over it, and they’ll soon get the message.
6. They have routines
If the word routine sounds a bit daunting to you, switch it out for ‘habit’. You probably have some in place already; like putting a load of laundry on before you take the kids to school, or emptying the bin after you’ve washed the dinner dishes. Think if there’s any particular aspect of your housework that’s getting on top of you. Is there a little something you could do each day that would help?
7. They prep
This advice is certainly not new, but it’s worth repeating; planning in advance saves you time. Pick your work clothes out the night before, make you lunch, if you have children, make sure their homework is done and their uniforms are ready before they go to bed. Because I’m essentially lazy, I’ll do as much as I can for an extra few minutes in bed.
8. They edit
The process of organization is ongoing. it’s important that we’re always editing. Do we need 7 grey T-shirts? 50 coffee cups? I love getting rid of things; I’m always thinking of how i can streamline what i have.
9. They Automate
Automate wherever Possible. Paying your monthly bills by direct debit means you won’t get hit by dreaded late payment fees or have any interruption in services you rely on. Using subscription services for essential household items like cleaning products not only saves you unnecessary shopping trips, it could save you money too. Check out smol.com, or whogivesacrap
10. They make the best use of space
where possible, hang things up. Add hooks in your utility cupboard for hanging mops, your ironing board etc. Add extra rails in your wardrobe; freeing floor space creates the illusion of more room.
11. They ‘single task’
multi-tasking does not actually make you more productive. When you multitask in reality you’re just switching between several tasks very quickly, even if it’s just a few seconds, the time spent refocusing on each task is wasted time, and you’re more likely to miss something and have to go back to it later. It’s actually more efficient to focus on one task at a time.
12. They work in batches
We’ve heard about the benefits of ‘batch cooking’. You can ‘batch ‘ other areas of your life too. Batch your admin, set aside a specific hour every week to deal with your household paperwork and you’ll feel like a proper grown-up. Make sure children have school uniforms for the whole week and you won’t end up trying a dry soggy school cardigan with a hairdryer at 8.30 in the morning (yes, this was me, not my proudest moment.) Set aside 30 minutes at the beginning or end of your day to deal with emails, checking your inbox throughout the day is unusually unnecessary and will distract you from what you meant to be doing.
Do you have any organizing tips? Let me know in the comments
jesca
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