About a week or so ago I posted the picture below with the following caption: 'so I've been doing thist thing where I CLEAN SHIT UP AFTER MYSELF. My weekend routine of cleaning the house involved very little this morning. Now I don't know what to do with the house clean so early' I've always been a messy person. Literally always. You should have seen my room through my entire life up until now (well sometimes on the off chance, it might still look like a tornado went through - but I try to keep the tornado on the baby side.) I would always be so jealous of others who could just keep their things in place. I was never the organized person!
I've noticed that I've become a bit more organized with having an entire house to store my things in. If you're messy like me - maybe you're in college or just have one room to call your own - it's much easier to stay organized when you have a place for everything. When I'd just have one place like my dorm room or bedroom to store things, I was trying to do too much with my small space. It was a place to sleep, a place to work, a place to create, a place to lounge, etc & not to mention the fact that the closets were always sooooo small! Zach & I are both messy by nature - which is horrible. But I've noticed with a house & having multiple rooms our things stay in their respective places. It's amazing. So I'm here to tell you that if you're messy buy a house - no, if you're messy it's probably because you're using one space in too many ways. Now, I'm not saying that my house can be on the inside of Southern Living (side note: did you know there's a magazine called Midwest Living? What? No, Southern Living all the way) because I do like the house to look lived in. We live here, we love here, we're building a life here, there's going to be a bit of mess.
So what is the point of all this blabbing? I want to share with you 5 things I do that make cleaning up my shit a lot easier & helps when you don't want to clean up your shit:
Give Everything a Place - Now this might take a while but I've been going through drawers & cabinets in order to give everything a place. This is helping me clean out stuff we don't use & don't need and putting things where they go. I mentioned this in my affordable organization video here that if you can see that everything has a place then there's no room for anything else. The best example of this is our coffee table drawers - you can see where the remotes go, where the matches for the candles go, etc. Nothing that doesn't need to be in there isn't going to be in there. Same for our bathroom cabinets - I've found places to put extras, kept the cleaning supplies at the front so they are accessible, organized little bins with pins, face masks, etc. There is a place for everything so you know what you have, where it is, & where to put it back. If you have a generic drawer then shit goes in & never comes out. This is the biggest thing you'll need to dedicate time to doing but it's very worth it.
Put Extra Bags at the Bottom of your Trash Can - Does your bathroom trash can over flow because you don't wan to take it out? Yeah, I know, it never does. But if you have a friend that this happens to tell them to put extra bags in the bottom of the trash can so you can change bags in one swoop. I love this because I don't have to be running all around the house finding trash bags - I can stay in one room, lift the bag tie it up, pull up another bag, loop it over the top, & leave. This is something I recommend for smaller trash cans like in the bathroom or under a desk. If you have a bigger, kitchen trash can you can try this but I don't really want to reach down in a gross trash can to pick up another trash bag (that might be gross, maybe). Our kitchen bags are right there under the sink.
Pick up One Thing When you Leave the Room - This is a lot easier than it sounds. I always thought that picking up one thing means I'll start cleaning at 6pm and then have to clean everything when I just want to be watching YouTube videos. But it's actually not that serious. I try to pick up something that will be going to the room I'm going to. Like take a glass to the kitchen when I'm going to get a snack or putting the nail polish back in the bathroom when I go to pee, etc. Another way to think of it is bringing things to it's pair. Like right now I see my pencil case and it needs to go meet my planner in my purse. So when I get up from here that might be the thing I grab. I try to just do one or two things and be done. That way I'm not feeling like I have to clean. Starting out with a clean place though can help with this little tip. So go through & clean and do the first tip up there - this makes it less daunting.
Load the Dishwasher - I hate loading the dishwasher. It's not that hard & I'm not even doing the dish washing! But man it's my least favorite chore. I'd clean a toilet over load the dishwasher and I don't really like cleaning toilets. (My favorite chore is vacuuming, actually.) But a clean sink makes me happy so sacrificing the few minutes it takes to load & unload the dishwasher instantly makes the kitchen look cleaner. It also rounds up all the dishes from night stands, coffee tables, etc.
Keep Yourself (& others) Accountable - It's easy for me living with one other person to keep accountable for cleanliness. It's not like I'm forcing a child to please put his plate in the sink (literally that was me when I was little, sorry mom). Raising expectations between you and your family members helps a lot. I've always been good with room mate cleaning chart sorts of deals because if it's important to one person that the things are done then it's important to me because we share the same space. Continually put things away as an example & remind (not in a nagging way, because you're not trying to be annoying) others to do the same. Asking is the first step.
Those are my tips on keeping things clean & organized especially if you're a messy person like me! My number one thing is just putting things away! I still have a lot to go through in the house to get organized but we're on the way. You ever feel like you've had something in the back of your mind you've wanted to do but just haven't been ready for it? That's how I feel about this organizing/cleaning thing I'm on - I've always wanted it but never really succeeded at it!
How do you keep your home organized & put away? Let me know your tips!
xoxo, Moe
I've stayed in holiday lets that always leave a couple of rubbish bags at the bottom and I always think it's a good idea, yet never do it myself. Going to have to change my ways!
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