Happiness Or Housework – Get Organized For Both!
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If you are like most women with a family, you are still at work on your "free" time. Time off is not for rest or play, but for trudging up that steep hill of never-ending chores. Housing organization is necessary, but remember as Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project says, "The days are long but the years are short!"
How do we master the tricky balance of keeping our sanity while having a reasonably clean and organized home?
Delegate
Many working women, including "stay at home" Moms, still do more than their fair share of work. Think about this: if someone had to pay for that family maintenance work, the average runs upwards towards $ 100,000 yearly!
Want to see your time? Get some paper and divide the page into three columns. In the first column, list all of the weekly household tasks. In the next column, the approximate time it takes per week. In the third column, who's doing it. Now add up everyone's time, and get delegating!
Even young children can put clothes away, pick up after themselves and help with simple chores. My six year old granddaughter can run the vacuum through the high traffic areas. Encouraging kids in positive ways from a young age saves countless hours spent arguing later on! My Mother was always stressed over doing housework on her day off. I do not blame her, but it did not help motivate me much!
Get Organized With The 4 B's
Life Coach and author Martha Beck created a prioritizing tool called The 4 B's: Bag It, Barter It, Better It and Batch It.
Bag It means ditching it !. If you're dusting once a week, can you Bag It and do it twice monthly? Let go of what you can. People that truly love you do not care about a little dust on your end-table.
Barter It means trading, including with money, to have someone else do it. Women often say they can not afford a cleaning person, but regularly spend it on a casual dinner out. Feel guilty paying someone to do "your" work? Think of it as a priceless investment, giving precious time back to you and your family!
Better It means adding something pleasurable to something dreadful. Hate doing dishes? Better It by making a playlist that rocks your energy! Make it a game and count the songs it takes to empty the sink. "Better it" for your kids and Google "games to get your kids to do chores!"
Batch It means doing similar tasks all at once. Pick one hour for family "just do it" time. Shut down the electronics and do not do anything else during that time . Make it fun, and set up rewards for everyone, including yourself. Rewards are powerful motivators and do not have to be complex or expensive.
Organize In Baby Steps
Break big jobs into small steps and start with the smallest one. Give yourself permission to stop after completing the first step . Telling ourselves we only have to take one baby step relieves motivation-sapping mental stress, and we may end up inspired to keep going!
Little things add up. Stash natural cleaning wipes in the bathroom and wipe surfaces a few times a week after your bathroom routine. You're already in there and it takes 60 seconds to wipe out a sink. When you walk through a room, pick up a few things. (See next.)
Get in the habit of putting things in one place, even if it's just in piles. Assign specific areas for papers, mail, dirty clothes, coats and shoes. Even a little bit of organization saves huge amounts of time looking for lost items, reduces clutter, and makes cleaning more efficient; sorting one pile is easier than finding it all over the place on cleaning day.
Well begun is half done. (Mary Poppins had it right!) Pick one thing, and just get started! It's never as painful a task as we think and it's usually done before we know it. Find a balance, make it fun, get it done and go on to live your life!
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