By nature, I am not the tidiest. It isn’t something that was really engrained in me as a kid. I am not saying my house as a kid was a hot mess, but I was never expected to keep my room clean or make my bed every day or anything like that. So it is not hard to imagine that as an adult, keeping a clean and tidy space has not come naturally to me. For a long time, it didn’t bug me.
That is until recently. Something about being at home basically 24/7 for the past year, has changed my perspective on tidiness and clutter. About eight months ago clutter started really getting to me. If a space was cluttered or messy, I would feel really frustrated and avoid the area until I had time to tackle these huge cluttered spaces. After lots of trial and error, I began realizing that changing some of my habits to be a bit tidier was more effective than getting frustrated after a space got cluttered. I wanted to share a few tips that helped me on my little cleanliness journey.
Everything has a place.
When I first went on my mission to defeat the clutter, I noticed that the same few areas kept getting cluttered. While some of this clutter was certainly just laziness (see point two), some of it was the same items getting tossed in the same area over and over again. Over time I came to realize that a big part of why these same items kept getting left out was because they didn’t truly have a place to be put away. Whether that was because there was simply no place for it to go or the place it went wasn’t super accessible or convenient.
When I finally figured this out, I started really assessing where we were putting things. Which led to me questioning all of the stuff we had. I came to the conclusion that we had a lot of things that I couldn’t remember the last time we had used them and that could probably be donated or thrown away. Once we started sorting through everything, organizing became a lot easier. It felt so good to get rid of random things we had accumulated and hadn’t used in the entire two years we have lived in our house. It feels even better for our home to be organized.
I know this seems so simple. Make sure all of your things have a place. But in reality, we get comfortable in our homes and can accumulate a lot of stuff. Once the accumulation begins, so does the squeezing and squishing to get everything to fit. Taking a step back and saying “Do we really need all of this?” can be incredibly important. Not only did this process alert me to just how much stuff we had accumulated, but it also made me even more conscious of bringing new items into our home. What started as a mission to find a home for all of our things, led me to reevaluate every purchase we make and every item we bring into our home.
Put it away. Now.
Once I started doing a lot of organizing and making sure everything had a place, I noticed that the bench in our entryway bench, dining room table, and sink were still getting cluttered pretty regularly. Not as bad as before, but it was definitely still happening. After a bit of reflection, I realized the clutter would normally start with one item. One item that I would set down somewhere random because “I didn’t have time to put it away.” In reality, I did have time to put it away. I can get from one point in my house to literally any other point in my house in 30 seconds or less. I have no excuse for not walking to where the item belongs and putting it away. So I stopped not putting things away. Lol. I made a place for it, so I might as well use it. I constantly tell myself, just put it away now or just clean it up now. Another huge improvement once this became more of a habit.
Start and end every day with a quick tidy.
This has actually become one of my favorite little rituals each day. I always try to start and end each day by going through the house and putting things away and doing general, everyday chores (like the dishes). Before I would just let things gather and worry about it on the weekends. When the weekend came and I would get overwhelmed with the mess, I wouldn’t want to clean and sometimes I just wouldn’t. Then the mess would build up for two weeks and so on. For the past few months I have been forcing myself to tidy in the morning and evening. Even if I don’t really want to clean, I do it anyways because I know tidying for 20 minutes is better than letting the mess build up.
I know a lot of these tips probably seem really basic to a lot of people. But as someone how wouldn’t have always considered themselves tidy, they are huge steps in the right direction. These simple tips have helped me have the clean and tidy home that has become so important to me. Even if they are basic, I hope they are helpful to some of you. Until next time, friends… CML
