I love the “Dust if you Must” poem by Mrs. Rose Milligan.
And, I also have been wanting a cleaner house and watching videos (Clutterbug, But First, Coffee, The Minimal Mom, Dana K. White) on other’s recommendations in this endeavor and reading books including “Outer Order, Inner Calm” by Gretchen Rubin and other such titles.
I notice being calmer when the house is cleaner, I notice liking to be able to find things. I notice wanting choice about whether my house is messy or not; I do not want to be at the mercy of our stuff.
So here’s my list for today–
- Do a little every day.
- Set a tidy alarm after dinner and before bed and induct anyone in earshot into a 5 or 10 or 15 minute session of cleaning up.
- I try to find something to recycle or throw away every day – clearing out the clutter in the “we don’t need this and no one else is going to be able to use it either” dept. Donating or re-selling is great if it is a good useable thing (creating a donate spot helps).
- Do the dishes – if you wash them right away it takes less time because of scrubbing and moving stuff around.
- Any amount of cleaning is more helpful than none.
- It doesn’t have to be perfect
- If it’s hard to keep tidy, you likely have too much stuff.
- If something doesn’t have a home – make one –
- Put it away in the “first place you’d look for it” (the floor or in a pile doesn’t count).
- Cleaning is not more important that creativity, but being a creative person doesn’t mean that you have to live in squalor.
- Tidy people clean even when they are not “inspired” to do so, just because it needs to be done.
- You can change your “clean go button” so that just a few dishes means that it’s time to take care of them, or just a little dirt means that it’s time to sweep — instead of waiting until your whole body is itchy and you want to scream because your house is such a mess.
- To tidy is to put things into place of the stuff that a human has moved out of place (or just brought into the house).
To clean is to take care of the dirt that naturally accumulates and will continue to need to be tended no matter how tidy your home, double especially if you have kids and/or pets.