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If you're feeling overwhelmed by the constant mess in your house, here are 5 daily cleaning tasks you can implement to keep it under control!
IMPORTANT: If you're not currently doing any of these daily cleaning tasks, don't try to implement them all at once. It will be overwhelming and you won't likely stick with any of it. Instead, choose one task to implement into your daily routine. Keep at it until it becomes second nature and you do it without even a thought. Once that happens, add a second task and so on. You'll find that, while together it sounds like a lot, these tiny tasks will actually help speed up your cleaning process and make your home look so much tidier!
1. Make The Bed
Not only does making your bed make your space look less cluttered, checking this task off your to-do list first thing can make you feel more productive! When you feel productive, you are more likely to continue doing productive things. It's a quick and easy way to motivate yourself to complete another small task, and another, and another until your to-do list is complete!
2. One Load of Laundry
If that mountain of laundry piling up on your bedroom floor is too daunting for you to tackle, get in the habit of doing one load of laundry each day. I don't mean throw it in the wash and forget about it. I mean one load washed, dried, and put away every day. This should take 5-10 minutes rather than the 30+ minutes you'd spend trying to put it all away at once. If you work full time, throw it in the wash before work, dryer when you get home, and then put it away after dinner or before bed. Those five extra minutes spent of an evening will save you so much time on the weekends.
3. Unload, Reload, and Run the Dishwasher
When are you running your dishwasher? I recommend starting it of an evening after dinner. Then it's typically not running while you're sleeping (which, did you know, can be a fire hazard!), but the dishes are fresh and clean for you to unload in the morning. I unload the dishwasher first thing after breakfast. Then I can load in our breakfast dishes and the dishes we use throughout the day. With our family of three, it's usually full and ready to be ran again at dinnertime. Sometimes, especially if I had company or am baking something, I'll have to run it after lunch. When that happens, I'll unload and reload while I'm cooking dinner and already in the kitchen. That way it's ready to be ran again after dinner so it's all ready to go in the morning! So, in short: run after dinner, unload after breakfast, and put dishes DIRECTLY INTO THE DISHWASHER as you use them throughout the day!
4. Kitchen Reset
The kitchen is the room in our house that gets the most use and is always the biggest mess. I have a two year old who still sees food as a sensory experience. She's also not always the most adept at using utensils, though she's trying and getting better! In addition, I'm pretty sure that I'm the world's messiest cook. So this means that my kitchen needs a good reset after dinner each evening. I'm lucky in that my husband's schedule allows him to be home for dinner every day, so we tag-team this chore. If your kids are old enough, get them to help too! How it works in our household is one person is in charge of our toddler and her space, the other will do the dishes/countertops. No matter who does them, these are the things that get done every night:
Dishes loaded into dishwasher or hand washed and put away
Countertops wiped down
Table wiped down
Booster seat wiped down
Sweep under table (at least where our toddler sits)
It probably takes a total of 10 minutes for us to complete all that, and the kitchen looks tidy and ready for another day's use - as opposed to letting food and grease become dried and caked on to dishes and surfaces, which takes longer to clean and can feel overwhelming as it piles up.
5. Put Away all Toys
Over the past couple of years, I've gotten very intentional about everything in our house having a "home" or a proper place where it belongs. This means that 90% of the time, if there is clutter making our home look like a disaster, it's probably the toys strewn all over the floor like a tornado went through multiple rooms of our house.
Get your kids in the habit of picking up their toys before bed - or better yet as they're done playing with them! This will reduce the visual clutter in your home AND prevent you from stepping on a lego when you zombie walk to the kitchen for your early morning cup of coffee!
Bonus Tip: Give Yourself Grace, Mama
No one is perfect, and you don't have to be either. There will be days where you don't get all (or even any) of these tasks done. That's okay. Just start again tomorrow and do what you can. These tips are only meant to make cleaning and maintaining your home easier and less time consuming so that you can spend your time doing the important things in life - like snuggling those babies.
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