Ok, if you are looking for a post that tells you how to have a perfectly clean home, you may want to keep looking 🙂 But if you are looking for a trick that might help you keep your sanity while your kids be kids, maybe this will help.
I'm not one of those people who gets embarrassed if someone stops by and there are toys all over the floor. This is a sign of living breathing kids that live in my house. I do however, get annoyed when my house starts to get cluttered. This would not happen if I always followed my husband's 1-touch rule for a tidy house, but sometimes it's just not my thing.
So clutter happens.
My problem, is that sometimes it seems that clutter has happened in 5 different ares of the home, and I notice them all on the same day, at the same time. What do I do in a situation like this, you might ask?
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I fake it.
You see, on days when clutter has got the best of me, taking the time to de-clutter would only send me to grumpyville. Because I have a 3-year old and a 1-year old in my house, and the moment I start to do anything productive, a little sensor goes off in their entire system that says “I want mom to hold me” or “I'm suddenly famished” or “I think I will choose this very moment to pee on the floor.”
So rather than attempt the impossible (spending an hour of uninterrupted time to clean everything up), I go downstairs and get my very largest laundry basket. Then, in 5 minutes or less I proceed to chuck clutter of all kinds and variety into this basket. I then take this very basket back down into the basement and put it in a “resting place.” Later, when price charming comes home and the littles are distracted or sleeping soundly in their bed, I go down to the basement and I put the clutter in its correct home.
Why This Works for Me: I believe that the look of my home affects the feel of my home. If my home feels cluttered, then my life feels cluttered. If my home is mostly tidy, I feel more able to be “in the moment,” and thus feel more productive. This leads to happy feelings which blesses all.
Why This May Not Work For All: The only way this will work is if you are motivated enough to take care of that lonely basket in the basement. If you don't, it will soon be joined by other baskets, and they will start their own little “Clutter Party” which will soon take over your basement. I have a rule of thumb that only one basket can be banished to the basement at one time.
How Do You Manage Clutter?
P.S. If you are more awesome than me, you might look into my husband's 1-touch rule. For real. It's his plan for world tidiness and one day he hopes that I will master it. And to his great delight, it happens to be today's top viewed article.
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sgarrison05 says
This is a great idea! I feel like I clean up the same things 100 times a day. Doing this would save me so much time! Thanks for sharing!!
Judy Campbell says
I totally use the same method when it comes to my house. An organized place gives the impression of a clean one. Keep up the good work!
Maria says
I found a great idea to keep my house tidy in this post. Basket cleaning is the hard task that I have to do every day