How To Keep Your Home Tidy

Keeping your home tidy may seem a lot like those new Year’s resolutions. It’s a good goal but just seems to fall apart shortly after beginning it. 

When you are wanting to get your house from chaos to tidy and keep it that way, focus on small, consistent steps, rather than perfection. 

Break down your big goal into manageable parts. Start with just committing to making your bed every morning, and putting on a load of laundry. Then slowly add more and more tasks as the habits are developing. 

Below are a 10 tips to start implementing towards a consistently tidy home. 

Quick tidy every morning and evening: 15 mins

This is a game-changer. It’s just a simple trick but putting a timer on for 15 mins and just going for it will make a huge difference to the start and end of your day. Plus, you will be amazed at how much you can accomplish in a focused 15 minutes. 

Some main tasks that I cover in my 15 minute morning tidy are: 

• Making my bed (if you don’t do anything else, do this one).
• Putting away the clothes from the day before. 
• Cleaning and putting away my coffee items in the kitchen.
• Washing up and putting away any dishes from the morning (I don’t have a dishwasher). 
• Putting on a load of laundry 
• Tidying up any miscellaneous items. 

For the evening I focus more on making sure the kitchen is clean and the house is put back to order to start my morning off the next day on an organized, positive note!

Tidy up after every task before going to the next. 

This is something I remember being told all the time as a kid but I feel like fell through the cracks as I got a bit older. There was always this song: “clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere, clean up, clean up, do your share”. 

It’s still a really valuable concept. Just like we tell our kids to clean up with one activity or set of toys before moving on to something, we should also be doing the same thing! 

Use your clock to your advantage.

This is such a great tip for when your struggling with motivation or getting pressed for time because of another engagement. It can also help keep you focused on the task at hand by designating it with a time limit.

Put your timer on for 15-20 mins and just get as much done as you can within that time frame. It is a small enough amount of time that it is manageable without being overwhelming. But also long enough to be able to do some serious damage to your clutter. 

Another great way to use this concept is by having it as a “reset” timer. Use it a couple of times throughout your day. For example, right before you transition into lunch or an afternoon outing. Try to have a set time in your day that way it just gets built into your routine and you don’t need to think about it. 

I think the reset timer works particularly great if you have children. They can help you out by tidying their own toys and because it is put regularly in their days, it becomes normal to them so you won’t have the same fuss. 

Have a cleaning list designated by day 

To start, write down all of your cleaning tasks that need to be accomplished throughout your week. Tasks like cleaning the bathroom, doing laundry, vacuuming and mopping the floors, etc. Now take those tasks and spread them out throughout your week. 

For example.

• Monday: Dust and water plants
• Tuesday: Vacuum and mop floors
• Wednesday: Laundry
• Thursday: Clean bathrooms
• Friday: Change bedding
• Saturday: Clean out the fridge

Designating tasks throughout your week will make everything more manageable and less overwhelming. Plus, it helps keep your family on track because everything is consistent and clear. 

Make a daily cleaning task list

Just like it’s great to have a cleaning list for all your weekly tasks, making a daily one is also just as beneficial. Even though they may be very standard chores like washing the dishes, or making your bed, they help ensure that it’s getting done. But even more importantly, they give you a motivational boost to start your day off right to tackle those “bigger things”. Checking off an item on a checklist is incredibly rewarding, no matter how small the task may seem to be. Use those smaller tasks to their full potential!

Have a place for everything

This is such an important factor for when you want to have a tidy home. 

When an item doesn’t have a home it ends up just being stuffed in some random corner or drawer. Or, more likely, just left out on the counter. Without a home for your items, it takes up a lot more brain energy and motivation to deal with them. Think about it, for every single item that you come across in your home you have to actively think about what you should do with it and where it should go. Having a categorized place for all of your items eliminates the thought process, and helps your family contribute to the tidying process because they will also know where to put everything. 

Have your cleaning supplies organized

I remember growing up, things were not quite so well organized in our home. Plus we had a fairly big house. One job I had was to clean the main bathroom (we had three). However, the cleaning items would just be left in whatever bathroom happened to be last cleaned. So before I could even start with my task, I had to go through the whole house gathering all the cleaning items that I needed. Let’s just say it wasn’t the most pleasant task on top of already having to clean a bathroom! 

Using a large cleaning bin or bucket is a really great idea to be able to store all your cleaning items and be able to transport them as well. 

Start with one room at a time/biggest surfaces

A great way to put in minimal effort for big impact towards a tidy home is to work on the big surfaces and anything that is more dominant in a room. For example, the bed in your bedroom or the island in your kitchen. Getting these larger things taken care of will instantly make a greater difference than if you just put the clothes away from your bedroom floor or swept the kitchen floor. It’s about working smart, not hard! Plus, seeing a significantly more tidied room will always promote more tidying!

Another tip is to work from room to room. Try not to jump around all over your house because it increases the chances for distraction and a less thorough tidy. 

Get good at delegating your items

With every item that comes into your home, you have a decision to make. Is it to keep, or just to throw away? If to keep, does it go in storage or is it for ready-use. What category does it then fall under? A kitchen gadget or a toy? Then, find a home for it accordingly. 

Getting into the habit of going through a delegation process for every single item that comes into your home will reduce the decluttering time, and keep stuff from being left out on the counter.

This tip is especially important if you live in a small place. It’s so much easier for clutter to enter into your nice living spaces because theirs just less room to put all your stuff! Do yourself a favour and make that delegating decision to every single item!

Don’t have everything on your plate