How to Manage a Household
“A place for everything, and everything in its place” is the mantra to follow when one decides to take the reins and set up order in their house. It’s fortunate to have so much that clutter evolves from the abundance of items; however, the ensuing disorganization can make the mind feel trapped and frustrated. This can be solved easily when proper techniques are applied. Reading books such as Marie Kondo’s The Magical Art of Tidying Up and Martha Stewart’s Organizing: The Manual for Bringing Order to Your Life, Home & Routine are great places to start with the planning and daydreaming of a well-managed house. The benefits of having a well tuned house are numerous: the mental effort expended on making predetermined, tried and true choices will make a house have such a warm, inviting energy without having to even try.
A favorite way to begin is by tossing everything that either doesn’t spark joy (per Marie Kondo’s method) or has not been used in ages. The amount of time to keep an item that is rarely used is up for the manager to decide. Clothing, toys, pens, papers, frames, utensils … out it goes if it doesn’t serve a purpose. Consider donating gently used items to shelters or other charities in your area. Decluttering has a positive, healthy effect on the environment, and this step helps with raising the morale for organization.
Developing an easy to follow routine for household tasks is essential in managing a household. Children should be given enough chores to help grow their responsibility muscle, but nothing too arduous they can’t handle. Age appropriate chores are important to devy out to them. A simple twenty minutes of cleaning everyday (bonus if it’s done by everyone in the house) goes such a long way in the overall tidiness of the house; this will be even easier to do when the decluttering is finished. A sample list of things to do is swiffering floors, organizing laundry, and putting away clean/used dishes is one way to start. Cleaning windows, window seals, and vacuuming or mopping can be done at least twice per month. Some household tasks will definitely require more time and energy than others; it’s perfectly fine to leave these to weekends and forgo the twenty minute routine on those days.
(© Stephanie Harvey / Upsplash)
Keeping tidy drawers, cabinets, pantries, and closets are vital in the maintenance of a smooth running household, even though these are usually out of sight and therefore out of mind. Devoting a part of the daily cleaning routine to the proper folding of clothing, storing of endless items, or labelling of pantry products is another way to help your environment thrive. It’s convenient and less energy consuming to already know where items are when they’re needed, as opposed to scrounging around the house for a pair of scissors or tweezers.
Lastly, expecting and embracing that a disarrayed habitat will require TLC to become the dream household is vital. The journey of being able to organize routines and learn what helps and hinders the dream from coming true is going to be rife with setbacks, but, from those setbacks, learning and wisdom arise. Implementing the wisdom will contribute to a steady, manageable environment, resulting in a clearer mind, improved well-being, and happier family life. Going for the lived-in look is surprisingly more enviable and easier to maintain than the prim, contrived model house look.
