How to Get – and Keep – Your Messy Home Under Control Every Day • Hilary Bernstein

Feeling frustrated with a messy home? Here are a few ways you can bring peace – and order! – to your home every day. (It really is possible to get your messy home under control!)

I don’t know if there are many things more frustrating that waking up to a messy home day after day after day.

After a while, you can begin to feel like you’re reliving Bill Murray’s film, Groundhog Day. You wake up and think it’s a brand-new day, but once you get out of bed and see (or trip over) the mess that surrounds you, you’re reminded of the sad reality that you need to get your house in order.

Since I fully believe an orderly home can add a lot of peace to your life, messy homes have the opposite effect.

Clutter adds chaos, and it can be hard – if not close to impossible – to feel like you’re enjoying the haven of your home when you can’t find where anything is because of the mess.

Even if you know that a tidy home brings a lot of peace, when you have a messy home it might seem like there’s no way to change.

But there is a way out.

It is possible to slowly but methodically change your messy ways and create a tidier home. It can even be as easy as making just a couple changes to your day.

Non-Negotiable Daily Chores

The game changer in caring for my own home came in the form of Non-Negotiable Daily Chores.

After thinking I’d be defeated if my entire home wasn’t clean every day it was so freeing to realize if I could just accomplish three chores a day, I could make a dent in my cleaning.

And I could consider those three completed chores a homemaking success.

Beyond Non-Negotiable Daily Chores

While Non-Negotiable Daily Chores are a fantastic way to make sure you’re making progress in your home each day, other routines also make a huge difference.

Depending on your schedule, choosing a particular time of day to work on your home is a powerful way to accomplish chores.

For example, if you’re running out the door on the way to work every morning, forget about cleaning in the morning. You’ll simply need to work on your home once you get home later in the day.

But if your mornings are relaxed, they could be a great time to get something done.

Morning High Fives

While my friend Jessica from Life as Mom suggests teaching children the Morning High Five (accomplishing the same five tasks each and every morning), this principle easily can be duplicated for adults.

If you know you’re accomplishing the same five tasks each day, you can always make one of those tasks home-related.

In her eBook, Child, It’s Time to Get Off Your Butt, author and mom Angela Davis shares how she’s taught her own children to care for themselves and their home every morning with five simple tasks.

Personally, I loved her idea of choosing a different weekly chore as one of your morning jobs – and rotating those jobs each day.

For example, you might spend five minutes on Monday mornings making a grocery list for the week, but five minutes on Tuesday mornings would include vacuuming your living room, and so on.

By the end of each week, you could accomplish a lot of maintenance cleaning in just five concentrated minutes a day.

Following the natural cues in your day

Along with your Non-Negotiable Daily Chores and Morning High Fives, also look to natural cues in your day for chores.

The most obvious example for this at mealtimes. Very simply, add clean-up to your meal routine.

For example, just as cooking and meal prep is part of your mealtime, make clean-up a natural part of your mealtime.

As you do this by clearing the table, putting leftover food away, and washing the dishes (or loading your dishwasher), your kitchen will be cleaner and you won’t need to find motivation to get back into your kitchen and clean it up.

Apart from mornings and mealtimes, taking 15 minutes before bed to accomplish something in your home is another handy time.

Maybe you need to gather things you’ll need for the next day – or maybe you should spend the time picking up a room in your home or sorting the day’s mail.

Whatever chore you choose to do, make your time count and spend a few minutes getting your home picked up before you head to bed.

Focus on four habits

As you focus on completing your Non-Negotiable Daily Chores and work on creating a:

morning routine,
after-mealtime clean-up, and
bedtime clean-up,

you’ll notice that your home is transformed from a mess into a place that’s under control.

What do you do to keep your (potentially) messy home under control?

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All images courtesy of Deposit Photos and Adobe Stock.

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Hilary

Hilary Bernstein is a Christ follower, wife, homeschooling mama, and writer who believes every Christian woman can live with peace and purpose. She's happiest when she's hosting friends and family for dinner, going on date nights with her husband, singing along to the radio, traveling with her family, and spending cozy nights at home. The author of fifteen books,Hilary also is Women's Ministry Director at The Chapel in Green, Ohio.