Organization: The Missing Piece in your Spring Cleaning Puzzle
It's undeniable that Spring brings with it the desire to throw open the windows and enjoy some fresh air and sparkling clean spaces. But... if your home doesn't have good organizational systems in place, chances are you find spring cleaning to be overwhelming if not downright impossible. This month we'll help you maximize efficiency by highlighting the differences between organizing, tidying, and cleaning. When done in the right order, home maintenance will be so much easier!
Organizing
Organizing is the process of giving the items in your home a designated place to live that makes sense. To choose a home that makes sense for your items:
Chose a home in close proximity to where you use the item.
Base ease of access decisions on how frequently the item is used.
Take into account your families' habits and routines and be realistic about their (and your) willingness to maintain systems. If your family isn't fussy, your systems shouldn't be fussy. Work with your existing rhythms and maintenance will be more successful.
Minimize barriers to maintenance by considering open storage for family members who have "out of sight out of mind" tendencies. Reducing the number of steps needed to re-home items can help as well. E.g. kids are less likely to put sneakers away if there is a lid or door between them and their destination. Using an open bin or shelving makes it a one step process that is more likely to actually happen!
Label the home! In our opinion, labels are non-negotiable for system maintenance. Labels provide accountability and reduce the decisions associated with tidying and cleaning (our next steps!).
Tidying
Tidying is the day-to-day resetting of our homes. It is returning items to their designated homes that have been thoughtfully chosen and labeled during the organization process. Organization is an upfront time investment that is often done by one family member or a professional (us!), while tidying is the daily grind and should be a family effort. Here are our favorite tidying tips to get the family involved!
Create a 15 minute playlist of family favorites, turn the volume up, and tidy until it's over. Dance breaks encouraged!
Have each of your children put away the number of items that corresponds to their current age. This may be the one perk of having teenagers!
Challenge the kids to a race- adults tidying one room and kids another. Popsicles on the porch afterward and victors get first choice!
Tidying without a good organizational foundation is exhausting. So organize first... or give us a call and we'll get you started!
Cleaning
Pretty self-explanatory, right? There are countless resources to guide you on your Spring Cleaning journey. Checklists, cleaning schedules, monthly, quarterly, and seasonal lists of home maintenance tasks abound. But it's not your cleaning schedule that is keeping you from achieving the clean home you desire.
If you find yourself getting frustrated while attempting to "clean", consider that you may be trying to do all 3 steps at once, or that you're doing the steps out of order. Imagine the ease of quickly wiping the counters, running the vacuum, and dusting without having to work around piles of clutter! This is what investing in organization can do for your home. Rather than spending hours and hours doing all three at once on the weekend, you can slot your cleaning tasks easily into 15-20 minutes intervals. You can get right to the cleaning instead of spinning your wheels dealing shuffling piles around.
One last note- if you hire out the cleaning of your home, having good organization in place will definitely get you more bang for your buck. You can't clean what you can't get to!
We hope this framework helps you on your quest for a cleaner home this Spring. We love this time of year- the energy is real and we are here for it! If you have a project that you'd like to get done this season, we'd love to hear about it!
