I am a mess. Literally. A naturally messy person. And I live with several naturally messy people. Left to our own devices, we can clutter up our living spaces in nothing flat. Unfortunately, it takes awhile to realize how bad it is, and then I and the family have to devotes hours to restoring order. But I have a new system that is giving me a cleaner house every night and allows me to reduce the amount of housework time on the weekends. And it only takes me 15 minutes!
Pick your sore spot
I picked the kitchen as my most problematic area (it keeps getting dirty!) so that is where I choose to focus my time. Choose the area of the house that is your biggest headache. It might be the living room with the laundry piles or the entryway. Whatever is your sore spot, start there.
I set my timer for 15 minutes, and clean like crazy. I can get the dishwasher loaded, the cabinets wiped down, and a few dishes that didn’t fit washed by hand. If I have extra time left, I take a pass through the living room and put everything back in order. You may even find that when the timer goes off you are close to finishing another area, so you give that just a few more minutes and have a couple (or more) areas cleaned up!
The payoff
The payoff for me comes not just in having the kitchen clean before I go to bed, but seeing it still clean as I am getting my lunch around and leaving the house the next morning. Of course, sometimes my son that works night shift has cooked a pizza. But he tries to not mess up a clean space!
Keeping short accounts in the kitchen has freed up my time so that I have a cleaner house all week and can start the weekend with only a few chores. So the little bit of time during the week saves me an hour or more of my precious weekend.
The timer effect
Another thing that surprised me was how effective it was to use a timer. I used to think that it took at least half and hour to clean up the kitchen (and it may have if I let things pile up). Now I know that I can get the kitchen and living room both back to neutral in 15 to 20 minutes. I started using the timer to see how long it took for other chores as well. I found that I tended to overestimate how long a chore would take based on how little I wanted to do it.
Timing chores can also be a way to help motivate kids to help. ‘Just clean for 10 minutes’ is a lot more motivating than ‘pick up all these toys’. When my kids were little, we used to play the “clean up song”. We then cleaned up for 5-10 minutes before daddy would come home. That way he came home to a tidier house and I wasn’t having to do it all myself or nag the kids.
Cleaner house, calmer life
To my fellow “messy moms” take heart! Regardless of how tiring the day has been, most of us can find just 15 minutes. And those 15 minutes spent tackling your biggest problem area can put you on the road to a cleaner house. And a cleaner house, quicker, can give you those extra moments for you!