Keeping your house clean and organized while working full time can definitely be challenging. We have so many things to juggle!
There are job responsibilities, after school activities with kids, homework, getting dinner ready, community events, and then we have the home management, where having a clean and organized space is one of the big goals.
How can we stay on top of house chores? There are a few things that you can implement, a few habits you can adapt, to help you keep your homes clean or at least cleanish 😉
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What is the Secret to Keeping the House Clean?
Do you know anyone who is just a naturally very organized person? Maybe you have a co-worker with a desk where everything is neatly organized and there is plenty of work space. Or perhaps you have a friend with a picture perfect house. Every time you visit is clean and clutter free?
Some people have that natural ability to keep things clean.
But most of us have to work for it! It does not come naturally to us.
The secret is to set some systems and routines in place to help us create and keep up with a clean and organized house.
Five Ways to Keep a House Clean
There are some practical ways to keep our household in order.
Clutter is your #1 enemy!
Keeping a clean house is impossible if you have a lot of clutter. Think about it this way – the more stuff you have, the more you have to clean! You have to start with getting rid of clutter. Dedicate some time each week to decluttering spaces in your house.
Cleaning Routines
The second way to help you keep a clean house is to create cleaning routines. You want to get into a habit of cleaning your house on a regular basis. That is the only way to ensure that dirt and mess doesn’t get out of control. It takes way longer to clean your house once a month than to do it each week.
Create some cleaning routines for your household:
- Daily cleaning routine
- Weekly cleaning routine
- Deep cleaning routine
Do what works for you and fits your family schedule! You can find some inspiration on Pinterest or grab a FREE Daily Routine Schedule.
Aim for 80%
Stop aiming for a perfectly clean house! Instead of perfectly clean aim for ‘cleanish’. We tend to set our expectations so high that it’s impossible to live up to them.
Concentrate on the areas of the house that bother you the most when they are not clean. Those should be your priority. Because that will make the biggest impact on how you feel in your house. Think of the other spaces of your house as ‘nice to have’.
For me, that space in my house is the kitchen. If my kitchen is clean, the whole house seem to be cleaner instantly.
RELATED: How to Create a Home Management System
House cleaning habits
There are a few small habits that can make a huge difference when you are trying to keep your house clean.
- Start the day with an empty dishwasher
- Create a laundry routine
- Incorporate quick tidy-up as part of your morning and evening routines
- Clean the kitchen messes as you create them while cooking
- Put groceries away when you bring them home (don’t let them linger on your kitchen counters)
- Teach your kids to put dirty dishes away after meals
- Get kids into habit of cleaning their toys at the end of each day
- Contain kids’ arts and craft messes to one area of your house
- Divide house chores among the household members
- Clean messes as they happen
- Wipe down your kitchen counters daily
- Clear out your ‘dumping area’ each evening
Make Your Spaces Functional
One of the ways to create less mess for you to clean up later is to make sure that your spaces work for you. Functionality is where it all begins.
For example, if your kids constantly bring the toys to the living room instead of keeping them in their room or a playroom – get a storage basket and keep them in the living room. It will be much quicker for them to clean it up at the end of the day.
Think about those problem areas in your house – can you make them more functional to help you keep them clean?
Keeping Your Home Organized
Cleaning and organization go hand in hand. The more you keep things organized in your hose, the less messes you have to clean.
Home Management System
The very first thing you need to considered when trying to answer the question: “How do I keep my house clean and organized?” is creating a home management system.
The easiest way to do that is to put all systems and routines into a Home Management Binder. This will be where you have all the ways you manage your house nicely documented.
This is where you can keep track of what cleaning tasks were completed, where you keep important information about the house (like contact information for different specialists and warranties on different repairs), and schedules for kids activities for the school year.
Having all those things in once spot will make running your household and keeping things organized much easier.
Home for Every Item
One of the best way to keeping the surfaces in your houses clutter free is to make sure that every item you own has its home. It means that you have to decide where each thing will be put away. Otherwise items end up cluttering our drawers, cabinets, and surfaces because we don’t know what to do with them.
However, if every item has a home, it makes it much easer to keep things clean and organized.
Have a Catch-All Basket
Now, this sounds contradicting to the previous tip. However, the idea behind the basket is to temporarily store things that you don’t have time to take care of right away. Think bills to pay, items that need a home, things you have to return.
See what types of things tend to accumulate on your counters or office desk the most throughout the day. Those are typically things that as much as you would like you don’t have time to put away right away. So instead of them piling up on your surfaces, get them into a bin or a basket – or at least one common spot in the house – and put them away each evening.
Family Commend Center
If you want everyone in your house to stay organized and be aware of what is happening each day, you need to set up a family command center in your house. That can be as simple as having a monthly calendar on the wall where you write done all the important appointments and kids activities.
The idea is to make it simple for all family members to clearly see what is happening each day so they can prepare ahead of time.
Time Management Tips for a Clean and Organized House
As a working mom, you likely are implementing some time management tools and techniques at work. And you can apply the same ones at your house to help keep it clean and organized.
Set Time Limits
Do you know the quickest way to clean the house? Invite someone to come over in half an hour. You will be moving incredibly fast!
Apply that same principle when you are trying to tackle some cleaning, decluttering, or organizing. Set a time for 15, 20, or even 5 minutes. I promise that you will be amazed how much you can get done in that short amount of time!
Time Blocking
Another time management technique that you can use to help you keep a tidy house is with time blocking.
Have a block of time each week to dedicate strictly to cleaning or organizing. It can be a longer block of time on the weekend or a sorter one each day. But the idea is that you only concentrate on cleaning and house management and are not multitasking.
When the time block is up, you simply move to other things. But during the time block you have dedicated to household chores, that is all you are doing.
