Forgetting About the ‘Right’ Way to Clean
Need a clean house but have no time? By using a manageable cleaning approach, you can find freedom by ditching the “right” way to clean … and have a cleaner home!
How many times a day do you stop yourself from doing something because you know you don’t have time to do it the “right” way?
- Do you put off planning meals because you don’t have time to create a menu for the week or month?
- Have you skipped calling or texting a friend because you only have a couple minutes – not nearly enough time to invest in a long conversation?
- When you have a few extra moments in your day, do you use them to hop on social media because you’d never be able to clean much in your house with just five minutes?
All too often, it’s easy for me to feel like if I can’t spend a huge chunk of time doing something, I should just skip it.
But a huge secret to productivity and accomplishing things – both in your home and in life – is to use the time you have, whether it’s a lot of time or a little bit.
Forget big … and focus on small
When it comes to caring for your home, it can be enticing to think you need to do huge things: Majorly remodel an entire room. Deep clean your whole house all within a weekend. Declutter your attic or basement.
Life has a funny way of crowding out your intentions, though. And if you simply can’t clean your entire house all at once or completely remodel a space, it might feel tempting to forget about it all together.
Yet so much good can come from focusing on – and completing – small projects.
You don’t have to do it all.
And you certainly don’t have to do it all at once.
In fact, if you give in to the fear that a little bit of improvement isn’t worth much, you might not ever accomplish what you’d hope.
What can you improve today?
Instead of living with an all or nothing mindset, try focusing on making some sort of improvement each day. If and when you have a few extra minutes, take on one small project in your home:
- Declutter one drawer.
- Wash the windows in one room.
- Organize one closet.
Try to break up any large homemaking and housekeeping projects you have into smaller, more manageable chores.
For example, instead of stressing over the fact that your entire kitchen needs a thorough cleaning, but you simply don’t have the time to devote to it, take a week or two to focus on cleaning that one room. And each day, add one small cleaning chore to your to-do list.
Simply by cleaning out one or two shelves or drawers a day, and systematically working your way around your room, you can make a huge dent.
You can clean your home — and keep it clean! You just need to know what to do and then follow through with a cleaning strategy that works for YOU and your home. From Mess to Success can help!
The “right” way isn’t the only way
Once you master the art of being productive in little pockets of time each day, you can also start experiencing freedom by letting go of the “right” way to clean.
Case in point from my own life: So often, it’s tempting to complain that my husband or kids aren’t helping out around our house as much as I’d like them to. Yet when they actually do pitch in and help out, it seems like they aren’t cleaning the “right” way.
Here’s the ridiculousness of this logic, though. If I truly want their help, and if they’re truly cleaning – just differently than the way I clean – then I need to gratefully accept it.
There’s more than one way to clean. And logically, this means there’s no one way to clean that’s “right.” Someone else’s style or method of cleaning may be different than your preference, but if it’s clean, it’s clean.
Accepting a different way of cleaning may stretch far beyond getting help from others, too. You may also need to give yourself some grace.
If you don’t have time or energy to clean the way your mother did or the way you think you “should,” it’s OK. (I promise!)
Your house doesn’t have to be spotless to be clean.
In fact, you don’t have to clean your entire house on the same day or weekend to have a clean home.
(Practically speaking, this could look like focusing on cleaning one room a week, and then rotating your cleaning schedule. Over the course of two months, every room in your home gets deep cleaned … and then you simply start the cleaning rotation over again.)
Forget about perfect. Focus on progress.
Just in case you have a tendency of not starting projects in your home because you’re paralyzed by a perfect standard, just remember – let go. Forget about perfect and just make some progress.
Start a small project, even if you wish you could tackle a bigger one. Make some sort of dent in your housekeeping jobs – and then continue working on small projects to make a bigger and bigger dent.
It may take a while to notice a huge difference, but that difference will come. Even if it’s not done in a way you’d necessarily consider to be “right.”
But when that difference does come, celebrate the fact that you’ve accomplished something – and hopefully found a little freedom along the way, too.
When you have a lot of work to do at home but so little time, what helps you the most? How have you let go of the “right” way to clean?
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All images courtesy of Deposit Photos and Unsplash.
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What a good reminder that there is no right way to clean. My husband approaches tasks very differently than i do, sometimes his way drives me crazy, but in the end the job is done.
In regard to the time issue I have created a list of small tasks for each room of my home so that when i have a time to do a few minutes of cleaning i can look at my list and choose one that can be completed in a short time. This is helping me tackle the concept that i can’t complete my house work due to time constraints.