A couple of weeks ago, I looked dismally 'round my humble abode and realized, Good Lord, I'm living in a trash pit. Clutter, toys, laundry, books, and dirt dirt mud and more dirt. It was unbelievably depressing, and I determined to Do Something, Straight Away.
I wrote a while ago about Saturday cleanings, which (oh too clearly) I'd let slip. Last Saturday, I made it my only priority to clean the house from top to bottom: dusting, floors, bathrooms, clutter. It somehow didn't take as long as I had feared, and the outcome was glorious! Best of all: I was able to start my whole week with a clean house. I wasn't looking at the dust on the mantle, cringing and feeling horribly guilty for being so slack. And as I noticed things throughout the week: a place I'd forgotten to dust; one picture that was sliding out of its frame and another that needed to be put in at all; various toys that needed a home, I was able to say to myself, No need to deal with that now. I'll take care of it on Saturday. So Saturday came 'round, and once again I made it my only priority to clean the house, from top to bottom. It took even less time this week, because I'd done it last week.
Here are some things I did to make this a manageable task:
1) Start from top to bottom.
I do this in every possible way: start upstairs, and with the dusting, in all the rooms, tidying as I go, then sweep everything.
2) One room at a time!
If I find something belonging to another room, I take it there and then leave, returning to the room currently in progress. Only once I finish do I move on to the next room and, if need be, move the out-of-place item to a different place. If it doesn't have a proper place, I wait until I'm in that room to give it one.
3) Do the same rooms in the same order.
For the upstairs, I start left to right: master bedroom, hallway, boys' room (they help) and office (this is my husband's domain, so I leave a lot of the tidying for him to do, as he has his own system.), then bathroom. Downstairs is the opposite: kitchen, dining room, entryway, mudroom, family room. Establishing a specific order helps my ADD self stay focused.
4) Choose one extra "project."
There is a lot I want to do to make the house more livable and naturally tidier. I'm not at all happy with the way the office works: it ends up being a catch-all clutter room. The dining room doubles as a play room and, while we've done a lot to facilitate those kind of at-odds purposes, it still doesn't flow well. Trying to change everything at once, though, is so overwhelming! Especially when trying to maintain some sense of order in a house with three very young children.
So keep it small! Today I switched my desk, which was in the office, with my husband's, which was in the master. This makes the office more "his" space, and gives me a more defined work space as well, rather than overflowing and cluttering into each other's. One tiny small thing, but definitely an improvement, and manageable!
5) Don't cut corners.
I had to go back upstairs to clean the toilet bowl, because the borax is downstairs. I was tempted to ignore the kids' potty seats. It would have been so easy not to see the dust on the bookshelves . . .
Don't do it! It will drive me crazy during the week, and feed into the guilt thing, and also make more work for next weekend. Making sure it all gets done every week is part of keeping the house from falling apart.
I'm still super new at this, obvs, but I'm hoping that by establishing this routine and sticking to it, I will be one step closer to peace, because peace follows upon order, both inside and out.
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