The eternal stress of organize home
The sock is hanging over the back of the chair, the decorations on the shelf are covered in a fluffy layer of dust, and the fruit on the sideboard is happily molding away. The mess is getting on top of your head? Don’t lose heart! With our tips, organize home works even in stressful everyday life.
Organizing the home doesn’t work – what’s the problem?
Our everyday life is generally strictly timed: meetings at work, appointments, doctor’s appointments, training – we are given all of this to a certain extent. Organize home is out of the ordinary, because here we are usually solely responsible for whether, when and how something is done. If you don’t feel like cleaning and taking out the garbage yourself, your family or roommates are usually not much help, because they are usually just as unmotivated. Another point is lack of efficiency, because let’s be honest: How often do you think about whether there would be a way to do the house cleaning faster?
What’s the point of a home organize weekly plan?
No more stress by planning ahead
If tasks keep piling up, you’ll eventually lose track of them and won’t be able to keep up at all. That’s why it makes sense to make a plan at the beginning of the week. Write down what needs to be done and when you want to do it. This way you will have an overview and won’t be overwhelmed by the amount of tasks, and you won’t forget anything important.
Estimate the time needed
So that you don’t overload yourself, it’s important that you get an idea of how much work lies ahead of you at the beginning. After all, a huge laundry basket is not ironed as quickly as a few shirts. That way, you can estimate roughly how long it will take you. To know how much you still have to do, you should also set yourself a goal. This can even be made concrete by taking a photo of the ideal state, for example of a tidy living room.
Plan for frequency
Next, you should categorize the tasks you’ve collected according to how often they need to be done. For example, plan to wash the dishes, clean up odds and ends from the floor, or make the bed every day. Other chores, however, such as doing laundry or dusting, only come up once a week.
Distribute the tasks during the week
Here it depends on your personal daily routine. Spread the tasks over the week so that you don’t have too stressful a day. For this, you should definitely take into account appointments, doctor’s appointments or possible overtime. This way, you won’t have the dreaded cleaning day and you can relax and do the tasks in small batches throughout the week.
How is organizing home easier for working people?
Especially after a hard day at work, dirty laundry or a filthy range hood are the last things you feel like doing. That’s why it can help you to bring structure into home organizing.
Organize your home with lean strategy
Many companies rely on so-called lean strategies to make their operations more efficient. Eva Jarlsdotter, a Swedish journalist, also uses the method in the home – flow instead of frustration is the motto. The goal is to continuously improve the way you organize your home. Become aware of what is going worst for you in the home. To find out the cause of a problem in the home, you can apply the Japanese principle Hadome. You ask 5 times why. So: Why is my living room always a mess? – Because the children leave their toys lying around. Why do they leave the toys lying around? – Because they have no storage space for them in the living room. Why don’t they have any storage space? – Because the kids are supposed to play in another room? Why don’t they? – They want to be close to mommy and daddy… This way you can gradually get to the root of the problem and start there.
Sandwich method
Our brain is very simple: When we have a sense of achievement, it makes us happy. That’s why it’s especially important for tasks like organizing the home, where you’re not so motivated, that you reward yourself with success. You can do this, for example, by scheduling a particularly unloved task between two easy activities that are quickly completed, like a sandwich. This gives you an immediate sense of accomplishment and makes you more motivated to get the more annoying stuff done.
Clean-up sprints
You can’t find the time or motivation to clean up for days or maybe even weeks, and when you finally schedule it, you don’t know where to start. Therefore, schedule small tidying snippets on a regular basis, preferably daily. The important thing is that you focus on one activity. Otherwise, you’ll start cleaning out the pantry, and in the middle of it all, you’ll get your hands on the package of hummus that should have been processed a long time ago, which you’ll do. In the process, you notice that the kitchen utensils urgently need to be degreased, so you continue there… And your little project already escalates into an evening-filling mountain that you didn’t plan. So the trick is to stop time! Scheduling 10 minutes every evening to clean up is no big deal, and when the clock is ticking you better manage to focus on what you’ve set out to do.
Get it done right away
Get in the habit of not allowing items to be “cached.” That is, once you’ve used something, it gets put away immediately. Likewise, leave a rag next to the sink and quickly wipe everything dry after washing your hands. Making the bed immediately after getting up is easily done, while it will take you more effort to get back to it after you have already left the room and focused your thoughts on other things. You’ll see that these little touches, almost done on the side, make quite a difference!
How does organizing home with kids work?
Play and fun
Even young children manage home tasks very well. You’ll see that they often even enjoy doing them on their own. The important thing is that you involve a toddler in the tasks, so you clean up the toys together or set the table. Creative tasks such as cooking or baking are particularly exciting for children because they can grasp new impressions with all their senses. Give them space to experiment.
Rewards are always attractive
By this we don’t mean that children should be showered with gifts. Often it is worth much more to praise your children for the tasks they have completed, even if they were only small things. Children need recognition and will happily do home chores without coercion if they are praised for them.
Divide your chores
Make sure that everyone in the house has a set task, preferably one that will be done at a set time. If you’re the person in your family who has to keep track of everything that comes up and delegate tasks to your partner and kids every time, it can get exhausting. If your kids are a bit older, you can also hand off responsibility for certain tasks to them. If one of them knows that it’s always their responsibility to take out the trash or clean the bathroom, it doesn’t have to be negotiated every time.
How does a home organizing app work?
Of course, you can get help with organizing your home from electronic helpers. From a general to-do app to special home plans that allow you to schedule tasks regularly, write shopping lists, or coordinate with your roommates, there’s a huge range of options. The important thing is to look carefully at what features you need and choose the right app based on that.
