6 Tips For Cleaning and Organizing Your Home

1.  Make cleaning more fun!

If you’re like me, cleaning just isn’t fun. But you can apply a bit more playfulness into the process of mundane cleaning to help keep boredom at bay. For starters, crank up your favorite tunes start dancing and see yourself motivated to move. There’s no rule that says you can’t dance and sing around the house while you clean it! You can also put on a cheesy movie (Sleepless in Seattle) while you work to help pass the time away, or involve your kids and pets and make a fun filled cleaning a game — whoever completes their task first gets a prize (gummy bears!). The point is to take some of the snooze factor out of cleaning and organizing. Who says cleaning can’t be fun!

2.    Stay on top of things

Trying to tackle the entire home from top to bottom in one day is daunting. Also can keep you from ever wanting to clean. Who wants to spend the entire day with a mop in hand? Not me! Which is why I’m a big advocates of doing a little bit of cleaning every day so you don’t ever have to feel compelled to spend the day inside scrubbing and polishing, when you’d rather be doing anything but. Decide on an amount of time you’ll spend each day (whether it’s 15 minutes or 35) and use that time to keep on top of the cleaning. Possibly come up with a weekly check list for each day. If you stick to the plan you will never get behind! Put things away, wipe down counters and sinks, spot clean any sticky spots on the floor — do whatever you can fit into that time. Set a timer if it helps keep you motivated.

3.   Create a cleaning schedule — and stick to it

One of the biggest challenges many people have (including me!, just ask my wife) when it comes to cleaning and organizing is doing it at random times, rather than on a schedule. If you really want to keep your home in order, the easiest way to ensure it happens is to create a checklist of whatever needs to be done each week and allot a specific day to each item. You can also post a checklist on the wall for your kids to follow and use the old fashion gold star method!   Post your personal list on the fridge or the home message board and consult it through the week so you know what needs to be done, whether it’s mopping the floors, changing the sheets, doing laundry or dusting. The more you can keep chores on a schedule, the more consistently they’ll get done. Every day you will appreciate the sparkles you see in every direction!

4.  Donate or have a garage sale

Want to spend less time lamenting how cluttered and disorganized your home is or even garage! Do a good evaluation and get rid of as much as you can. The less you own, the easier it is to keep your space looking great. If your kids have too many toys that you always seem to pick up just sell them. If your child abjects to the idea of getting rid of toys, let them know the money goes to their college fund… just joking, take them for a movie and ice cream with the profits. Or buy one expensive toy with the money made from five. I suggest going through each room of your home and pulling out anything you or no one else no longer use or like. From there, decide whether you want to sell some of it at a garage sale or whether you’d rather donate it. If you donate it you can consider it a tax write off. Once you’ve committed to getting rid of something, it goes. If you haven’t looked at or used an item in at least a year (or forgot you even owned it), there’s no need for you to hang onto it.

5.  Store what you don’t use

Books, remote controls and toys can easily end up throughout the house long after they were in use, but the more you let things like that pile up, the messier your house is going to look.  There is an easy way to solve that problem by implementing a rule for everyone in the family that says anything you take out needs to be put back or else you store them away for a while. This also means stocking up on more storage if you don’t currently have enough bins, baskets or boxes to hold the items in question. There are lots of cool looking storage solutions to choose from to make that process easier.

6.  Add hooks and shelves if you need to

Look at using hooks and shelf space so that nothing is left on the floor. Go through your home and see where hooks are lacking, and then add some to the backs of bedroom doors, in the bathroom, and in the entryway, so things like coats, towels or bathrobes can be neatly hung versus tossed on the floor or shoved into a closet. The same goes for shelves. If you have more books than shelf space, it’s time to add more storage space. Floating shelves make for an easy way to increase space for things like books and home accents you want to display. If you don’t want to add shelves and have too many books than simply find the books you already read or will never read and simply sell or donate.