Setting a Routine

For most people, the problem is not finding a home for all their belongings but remembering to put them there.  Do you spend all Saturday or Sunday making everything perfect and by Wednesday it’s a mess again?  Does that sound familiar?  If that is the case then setting up a routine may help solve some of the problem.

The key to maintenance is doing a little bit along the way.  Not only is it going to cut down on the overall time you spend cleaning but it will also help eliminate the dread of tackling such huge projects all at once.  Even if the designated areas for your things are not ideal, don’t worry about that now.  Just have a place for everything and we will work on improvements later. You can spend an entire weekend tweaking your organizational systems to make them perfect but if you are not in the habit of maintaining them then it’s all a waste.  I strongly encourage you to get in the habit of daily maintenance before you move on to “beautification.”

The first thing to consider is what is piling up around your house?  Does junk mail seem to proliferate around your kitchen?  Do you trip over piles of shoes by the door?  Is your floor littered with clothes? If these examples sound familiar, here’s what you do:

For a paper problem, sort your mail immediately.  Take 10 seconds and pull out all the known junk mail.  It’s usually easy to spot so it truly will only take seconds.  Go ahead and put it in the trash.  You can leave the other mail in a designated spot to deal with later if you want to.  By eliminating the junk mail, your pile should be significantly reduced and easier to sort later.  My suggestion is to fully sort/file/organize your mail at least once a week to keep it fully at bay (every day is best but think baby steps!).

For piles of shoes/bookbags/etc and clothes on your bedroom floor, all of these things should be dealt with daily.  If you are the type of person that walks to your bedroom first thing when you get home then you are one step ahead of me.  I am not.  Personally, when my husband and I get home, we kick our shoes off by the back door ... then head straight for the couch.  So what I do is this:  Instead of fighting my natural habits (this is an important concept I will cover later), I work around them.  I pick them up daily and the pile never gets too big to handle.  Deal with the clothes in the same manner.  If you are only picking up a day’s worth of shoes then it will only be one or two pairs per person (and each person can take their own shoes to their rooms!).  If you couldn’t decide on what to wear to work and threw the clothes on your bed, then it will only be a few tops and bottoms.

Here is an example of how my routine looks:

-     Walk in the house and dump the mail, purse, keys, etc on the table.  Grab all the junk mail and throw it in the trash on the way to the couch. (10 seconds)

-     Empty the dishwasher (or get husband to do it) while preparing dinner. (3-5 minutes)

-     Load the dishwasher after dinner and wipe down the counters (or get husband to do it). (5-10 minutes)

-     When it’s time for bed, I turn off the TV/log off computer/etc, walk around checking doors and turning off lights and pick up dog toys and place them in his toy box (5 seconds).

-     Pick up the shoes and walk to the bedroom.  Put them in the closet. (5 seconds because I was walking to the bedroom anyways)

-     When I change into my pajamas I hang up the clothes on my bed (2-3 minutes).

-     Get into bed with a perfectly straightened house!

The total time spent picking up the pile of shoes, toys, sorting mail, doing the dishes and hanging up clothes was 10-15 minutes.  That’s it!  And that's if I do it all by myself.  I usually enlist the help of my husband so that cuts the time in half.  In your case, it will differ depending on what your particular chores are but the point is that it’s significantly less work than doing it all on the weekend. If the whole week passes, that's seven times as many things to put away which could be up to seven times the amount of time spent cleaning when you could be doing something else!

Once you have mastered the daily maintenance part, you can move on to making things “pretty” and more functional.  If you don’t have perfect shoe storage and just throw them in the bottom of your closet then that’s fine.  Don’t worry!  At least you know where to look in a hurry!  By doing this you also may discover better places to store things based on your natural habits I was referring to earlier.  Just stick with it and you will soon realize (probably during your free time on Saturday) that it was a well-spent 10 minutes of your day.