*This is a Guest Post brought to you by Music Magpie.
Nobody likes to clean house, but it’s a task that you probably find yourself doing often. It can be a challenge to keep your house neat, especially if you’re sharing a household with a growing family. Nevertheless, there are some easy solutions to a cluttered and messy house. Here are five easy steps to organizing your home and keeping it that way.
Get the family involved. The first step to getting your house in order is to recruit all the other inhabitants, whether they are tiny tikes or adult family members. Everyone can share in the task of cleaning and de-cluttering, especially when it comes to their respective bedrooms, so assemble your cleanup crew before you do anything else.
Sell what you don’t need. Then, turn your eye to all the money just sitting around the house. No, it’s not actual cash–just yet–but you could be padding your bank account with the money you make from selling things that you don’t use anymore. Start with the easy stuff; you can sell CDs and DVDs online, which frees up your common areas to decorate instead of store tons of disc cases. Then, head to your closets to sift through old clothing. You can take outdated fashion to a second-hand or thrift store to make some extra cash. Click here for more ideas on how to make money from your clutter.
Eliminate waste. Now that you’ve cleared out some clutter, it’s important to remember not to bring in any more. Take small steps, like signing up for paperless banking and billing so that you have less paper mailings to organize. You can also consider investing in a water filter for your tap to eliminate plastic bottles, as well as buying groceries in bulk so that you don’t have to contend with hundreds of empty product packages at the end of each week. These small changes can add up to a very big one–namely, not having to clean and re-organize as often as you probably do now.
Create a space for everything. Here’s the golden rule of keeping a house in order: everything should go in its place. But first, you have to assign a place for all the important items that your household can’t run without. For example, getting a coat rack to place near the entrance to your home will ensure that jackets, umbrellas and backpacks aren’t just placed anywhere when the family comes home. And installing an electrical strip will provide everyone with a “charging station” for their mobile phones, eliminating pesky wires. Do the same with mail, groceries and even trash so that you don’t trip over random items every day.
Organize as you go. Wouldn’t you love to never have to clean again? If you use these tips to organize and de-clutter your home as you go, you won’t have to. Make sure that you end each day with a five-minute “mini-clean” (and this is for everyone, not just the mom of the house) so that you can wake up refreshed and comfortable in a tidy house.