Find the Energy to Clean an Impossibly Messy House
There are few houses which are "impossibly messy". Some can be so untidy as to make the thought of getting to grips with cleaning it daunting. However, it can be done, but it may need you and others involved to unlearn bad habits. A tidy house is, believe it or not, easier to manage than a messy one (as well as being generally more pleasant to live in).
Steps
- Identify the reason for the house being impossibly messy. Is it because you are the messy one or does someone else contribute to the mess?
- In either case establish rules for tidiness and standards of cleanliness and stick to them, e.g. no food in certain rooms, all laundry to be kept in designated baskets and not left lying around.
- Start with one drawer or cupboard at a time in, say, the kitchen and follow the steps below for each one.
- If there is a room in the house which is exclusively yours, such as your bedroom, start with that.
- Declutter. Move everything out of the room (including your bed) and give the room a thorough cleaning. Wash the paintwork, vacuum floor coverings and dust all surfaces. Turn the mattress and vacuum the bed!
- Wash all bedclothes, including duvets and clean all clothes.
- Put ONLY the essentials back in the room - the bed, clothes, toiletries.
- Take a long hard look at what's left. Ask yourself, do you really need any of it in the bedroom? If not, get rid of it. This could simply mean putting things which ended up in your bedroom back in their rightful place, such as books and DVDs you've finished with.
- Recycle unwanted items. If they have any life left in them, take them to a charity shop or sell them on line.
- Repeat the exercise for every room in the house until it stops being messy.
- Repeat regularly e.g. a good Spring Clean! Or before things start to get out of hand again.
- Bask in the afterglow.
Tips
- "Little and often" is better than having a complete blitz on the whole house when you can't face doing it all at once.
- Don't get discouraged; the effort involved will really pay off with a brighter, more attractive home which you are more likely to enjoy living in.
- Be quite strict with yourself. Take a critical look at all the objects in the house. If you haven't used items for six months or more (other than obviously seasonal ones such as skis or winter clothes), then get rid of them. The chances are you don't really need them.
- Start with what you judge to be the hardest room to sort out; everything after that will seem easier.
- If you have children, assign them tasks that are suited to their age and MAKE IT FUN!!! Chores, when looked at as necessary evils, are very hard to find the motivation to do for you. More so on the kids! So, turn on some music, and make it a game! Even if you have to go back behind them, show them what they missed and reward them for a job well done. Positivity goes a long way, for them and you!
Warnings
- Changing habits takes time, so don't expect to get things right first time. Getting others to agree to change can be harder, but worth persisting with.
- Be prepared to regret disposing of things. Sod's Law says that the tool you haven't used for five years is the very one you need a week after you got rid of it. Live with it.
- Don't get overtired; if you lose the energy to complete a task you might not finish it, so take a break and have a cup of tea and then get stuck in again.
- Rules are NOT meant to to be broken whatever anyone else says, so try not to lose sight of them or compromise on them.
- It's easy to blame others, so don't avoid your own responsibility for the completion of the task you set yourself.
- Don't get obsessive. Try to maintain a home and not a show house. Armchairs are made to sit back in, not to keep immaculate all the time.
