What % of your time would you need to….

[Warmlover]

Keep your house clean and tidy? I have a small 3 bed house, one child (11) and it’s always a tip. I feel like I’d need to dedicate approx 99.6% of my waking hours to keep it nice.

I go to friends’ houses, and they’re much bigger houses, but they’re always so much more tidy. I don’t get it!

I have loads of storage that’s not an issue. There’s just always ‘stuff’ in places it shouldn’t be. And I spend so much time ‘moving things,’ I don’t do enough cleaning. So then it gets grim and I have to spend hours on it. Like today and yesterday I’ve spent a good few hours on it. And it looks much better, but there’s still so much that needs to be done. And that’s before I get to fixing the bigger things like my curtain rail that’s come down etc.

help.

I've been helping an overloaded friend with her house recently and this sounds quite a bit like her situation.

What I do at home is: everything has a home which it immediately goes back to and messes are cleaned straight away. So I don't spend any time "tidying up", or that's how it feels. And luckily it always looks good.

Whereas my friend and her family just leave things out where they are and don't clean/tidy. It's a different mindset. I think their problem is they have a cleaner! So it's not their job, as it were, which means as soon as the cleaner's left it's messy again.

I’m not some kind of hoarder either. I chuck so much away (or donate, you know what I mean!)

I recommend that you look at the housekeeping boards, especially the flylady one. There are other 'methods' too but Flylady works for me and has done for nearly 20 years. I am really not a natural!

Minimalist blogs are quite helpful too - Becoming Minimalist, the Minimalists, Zen Habits and Be More With Less.

They helped me change my mindset completely. Hope this helps 💐