Daily Habits for an Organized Home

Creating daily habits to keep your house organized and tidy takes practice and time, but once you  begin adopting these habits, you’ll notice your house will look and feel cleaner (and better too!)

 

Creating a place for everything you have and effective organization habits for a neater home isn’t hard. These habits are easy to do and don’t take any time out of our already busy lives.

 

MORNING

• MAKE YOUR BED ONCE YOU GET OUT OF IT
  

  Making your bed first thing in the morning will lead to a productive day and more importantly, makes it nearly impossible to crawl back into bed once your up.

• KEEP THE FLOORS CLEAN
  

  Always pick up clothes, dirty clothes, shoes, towels… nothing gets thrown on the floor and stays there if it is. After you get dressed in the morning, walk through your room and toss dirties into the hamper, hang up clothes that can be rehung and towels back on the hooks in the bathroom. Leave your room nice and clean for when you’ll come back to it at the end of the night.

• DON’T ALLOW CLUTTER IN YOUR ROOM
  

  Don’t let the little items you put on the top of your nightstand and dresser accumulate until you can’t see the surface any longer. Once a day, clean off the surfaces so there aren’t books or magazines a stray, papers or jewelry or socks sitting on your dresser. Take five minutes to put everything back in its place.

• CLEAN UP THE BATHROOM
  

  Put away towels and products, hairbrushes and hairdryer, makeup and toothbrushes and wipe down the counters. Don’t leave the bathroom a mess for later. Keep cleaning products under the sink if you need to make it easier to keep the bathroom clean.

• START A WASH CYCLE FIRST THING IN THE MORNING
  

  If you have enough dirty laundry from everyone in your house, start a cycle first thing in the morning (of course this is post-starting the coffee maker pre-breakfast.) Before you head out the door in the morning, throw the washed load into the dryer and when you get home, you’ll have a clean load of laundry that you just need to fluff and fold.

• EMPTY / LOAD THE DISHWASHER
  

  Since you ran the dishwasher before you went to bed the night before (wink, wink), take a moment in the morning to quickly unload the dishwasher. You’ll have an empty dishwasher to put all your dirty dishes in all day so no buildup will pile up on the counters.

 

DAYTIME

• CONTAIN THE CLUTTER
  

  We keep a basket in each room (for us, this is our the playroom and living room) for kid’s toys and play items. As you walk through the house and see items on the floor, toss them into one of the baskets and at the end of the day or during cleanup, have your kids put the items away. This works for non-kid items as well. Shoes, bags, hats, socks…

• CREATE A HOME BASE FOR MAIL + KEYS
  

  Assigned a dedicated location for your keys, purse, bills and daily essentials that’s near the door you enter to your home the most – the front door or garage door for example. Make sure if you bring in mail, to throw out the junk and put your mail in its dedicated “home base.”

• DON’T ALLOW FOR A DROP ZONE
  

  When you come in from outside, don’t just drop things on the floor. Your gym bag, purse, kid’s backpacks, etc. should all be taken to their spot right away. Find a dedicated space to store these items and once you get in the routine of storing your items right away, the habit will become innate.

• DON’T WAIT TO CLEAN UP MESSES
  

  If you notice crumbs or a spill on the counter, clean it up. If food is dropped on the floor and the floor needs sweeping, do it. If dirty fingers left fingerprints on the walls, grab a rag and wipe them off. Don’t wait to clean up messes, get in the productive habit of cleaning as you go. Here is my one secret to keeping the kitchen clean all day long – it’s so simple!

 

EVENING

• CLEAN WHILE YOU COOK
  

  While your pot of pasta is cooking and your vegetables are steaming, rinse and put any cookware that’s done being used into the dishwasher. Wipe down counters and clean up messes as you cook so that when dinner is ready to be served, the mess you’ve made is cleaned up and you can enjoy your meal without staring down a load of pans and cookware in the sink and gunk on the counters.

• WIPE DOWN COUNTERS & SURFACES
  

  Tidy up your countertops and ditch any junk or clutter. Wipe down all the countertops and appliance fronts. Waking up to a spotless kitchen is much better than walking into the kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes.

• RUN THE DISHWASHER BEFORE BED
  

  Don’t leave your dinner mess until morning. Put all the dishes and everything that may be sitting in the sink into the dishwasher and start a cycle before you head to bed.

• FOLD + PUT AWAY FOLDED LAUNDRY
  

  The laundry that you washed and dried during the day and just folded in the evening; put it away and hang up pieces. If you have kids that go to bed before you and are already asleep, put the laundry outside their door or on their dresser in their room so you don’t wake them up, and have them put the laundry away in the morning.

• DO ONE FINAL SWEEP OF THE HOUSE BEFORE BED
  

  Walk through your house one last time before you go to bed. Fold blankets, fluff pillows, put remote controls back in place, contain any loose clutter, and put everything back into its rightful place.

 

Need a cleaning schedule so you can create a routine that takes just 15 minutes each day? Here is our sample cleaning schedule you can start right now and if you follow it, I can guarantee you won’t have any more Saturdays or Sundays mass cleaning.

 

WANT MORE? 

• How to Have a Mess-Free Home While Raising Kids
• 13 Dirty Spots In Your House You Aren’t Cleaning Regularly – But Really Should
• Little Areas You Forget to Clean That Make Your House Look Dingy
• Create a Cleaning Schedule That Doesn’t Take A lot of Time