Now you have some systems in place, you should find a little bit of time and energy freeing up in your day. Maybe you have a slight bit more energy in the evenings and maybe you are a little less stressed on the way into work.
The next thing to do is to tidy your home. This is crucial because a tidy home is a reflection of a tidy mind. More than that though, it can also create a tidy mind and here the correlation becomes ‘two way’.
Not only does a tidy home make it easier to find things, thereby saving time and stress as you’re no longer hunting for keys, but it also makes your space that much easier to relax in. Our brains actually crave order and organization and this is why we find things like tilted picture frames so distressing.
When your home is tidy, you’ll have a calming space you can use to relax. What’s more, you’ll have the confidence of knowing where everything is and being able to retrieve it as and when you need it and fewer occasions when you need to hunt for lost items.
So how do you start putting this into action? Here are some tips that will really help…
Get Ruthless
One of the single most important things you can do to make your home tidier and easier to get around is to get ruthless and to start throwing things out.
This sounds ruthless and at first you might object to the idea of parting with your possessions. Actually though, reducing your items can make your home considerably less stressful and help you to stay on top of your chores a lot more easily.
A good place to start is with your ornaments and knick-knacks. Go through all the things you have on display on your sides and throw out half of those items – or at least put them away somewhere.
By doing this, you have now created a much more minimal space, which is immediately going to feel less stressful to spend time in. At the same time though, you’ve also created less work for yourself – you now have surfaces you can very easily clean by wiping a cloth around instead of needing to first remove all your items individually.
And on top of all that, you have actually increase the average quality of the things on display. What’s left behind will now be only your very favorite things. That means that those favorite items will get much more attention and focus, versus all those other things that were detracting from them.
Another way to be more ruthless is to find all the boxes under your bed and on your wardrobe that you haven’t been in for the last 6 months. Remove anything valuable or sentimental and throw the rest out. If you haven’t used it in all this time, then you don’t need it!
What you’ll find is that you surprisingly don’t miss any of those items and if you find that you suddenly need a mini torch, or whatever else it was, then you can simply buy a new one!
Designated Rooms
Another thing to do is to try and create more separation between your rooms and to think about how they’ll affect you unconsciously.
For instance, if you currently iron in your living room or your bedroom, you’re actually making it harder to relax in that space. Why? Because now you associate those rooms with work. What’s more is that you’ll probably have piles of un-ironed clothes in the rooms and clothes horses.
Better is to make one of the spare rooms in your home your ‘chores’ room. That way, if that room becomes untidy, then it won’t spill out into the other rooms of your home.
Alternatively, if you have children and a dog and you find that keeping your home tidy is an up-hill struggle, then try keeping just one room in your hoes sacred. Let this be the room where you come to unwind with a book and make some rules that will help it to stay completely pristine: no food, no ironing, no chores etc.
Staying on Top of Cleaning
The tip that we all know very well when it comes to keeping the house clean is to wash up as you go, rather than letting your washing up build up.
This is a good tip but if it’s something you’ve never managed to stick to, then there are a few things you can do to make it easier. One tip is to reduce the amount of crockery you have.
You only need enough crockery to entertain the maximum number of guests you have. Above that and you just give yourself an excuse to keep reusing plates and dishes rather than washing them. If there’s nothing to eat off of, then you’ll be forced to stay tidy.
If you’re really struggling to stay tidy and if you’re a young professional, then consider getting paper plates. You can get a large number of paper plates for very little and if you eat off of these, you can just throw them out each time you’re done.
Generally, one of the best tips for staying on top of your cleaning is to automate and outsource. If you have the money, then hiring a cleaner will be one of the best investments you ever make.
Otherwise though, think about the technology that can help. Getting a dishwasher for instance will make it MUCH easier to stay on top of washing up as there will only be a few things that you can’t put in there. Likewise, you can look into a number of other devices to help you keep things clean:
- A small portable vacuum cleaner makes vacuuming MUCH easier than a heavy one you have to empty
- A robotic vacuum cleaner can make life even easier!
- A steamer can make ironing less of a chore
- A washing machine and drier is a must
Think about how easy it is to wash things up when you buy them. It’s very easy to say you’re going to use that smoothie regularly until you’ve tried washing those blades! There are smoothie models though that are designed specifically to remove this challenge, so that might be a better choice. Likewise, a colander is much easier to wash than a sieve.
Aim High
Finally, make sure that you aim high when it comes to your property. When many of us imagine what we want life to be like once we’re highly successful, we will often picture ourselves living in beautiful homes.
This should give you just some idea as to how important a good home is to our happiness and sense of accomplishment. The tips above will help you to make a home that’s much tidier and thus nicer to spend time in, but there are other things you can do as well to make your property more similar to the kind of place you dream of living.
For example, you’d be surprised at the things you can buy cheaply that will give your home a unique look or even more functionality. For example, you can make your home into a ‘smart home’ for much less than you probably expect.
Colored bulbs with controllers for instance are available from Amazon for as little as a few dollars (forget Hue!). Likewise, a cheap fountain can make all the difference to your conservatory. There are some very funky Bluetooth speakers you can get cheaply too to create your own surround sound.
Take real pride in your home and look at ways to make it a relaxing and comforting experience for less. If you have the money you can go much further and do things like installing a home sauna. This might seem expensive but the difference that a beautiful home can make to your mental state is huge. This is very much worth that extra expense.
Follow the tag THE STREAMLINED MIND to read the complete series.
