11 Housekeeping Tips That Work

Sometimes, tidying up the house can seem like a never-ending job. As much as you clean and collect, you certainly feel that things are out of place very quickly, and your house is always disorganized.

There really is n’t a single strategy to organize the house, it all depends on each person’s personality. However, there are some essential tricks for everyone that you can apply to tidy up your home and make it more comfortable and harmonious.

Before starting to tidy up the house

The first thing you should do is identify the areas in your home that bother you the most. Analyze carefully and then think about what solution you can find. Don’t try to organize the entire house at once. Take time for each environment, solve one by one, even if it takes several days.

It’s also important that you and your family stick to your decisions so you don’t make the same mistake and mess up the house again. With these considerations in mind, you can apply the following strategies to organize your home.

1. Don’t keep things you don’t use

Certainly you have stored in a closet or in boxes countless things that you no longer use, but hope to use them again or they bring back fond memories. Books, ornaments, documents, old or unused clothes and even records that you don’t listen to anymore because now you only listen to music on your cell phone.

All the things you no longer use and store somewhere are taking up space that you can use for something else or that you can free up to give your house more air.

If something is in a box or hidden in a closet for a long time, it will certainly stay there for a lifetime. You’ll only see it every time you try to organize the house, and you’ll go back to putting it away for months or years. It’s better to discard.

If you get a gift or you buy something new, get rid of the old one immediately. Give it away, give it away, or throw it in the trash if it doesn’t work anymore, but don’t keep it “just in case the new one breaks.”

2. Put things in the same place

Every day, a large number of objects that each family member brings with them enter their home. From keys and wallet, to shopping, the mail or the job bag. Find a proper, fixed location for everything, no matter if they will use it again when they leave.

“If you have a lot of stuff without a place to be, sooner or later it builds up and it’s impossible to clean it out,” says Jennnifer Snyder, professional organizer at Neat as a Pin .

Place a hook for house keys next to the door or a shelf for mail and a magazine rack. Don’t let everything pile up on a table or chair.

3. Store things according to frequency of use

Organize your closets and drawers smartly. What you use daily should be closer to hand. What you very rarely use may be on the closet shelf, which you can only reach with a chair.

But if you put the little-used things close to the most frequently used things, you’ll likely need to constantly remove them to access the ones you use.

4. Divide your drawers and shelves

Don’t pile everything up in drawers and shelves. Use divisions to separate things. This will allow you to make better use of space and not stack some things on top of others.

“ There shouldn’t be a single drawer in your home that has no divisions, ” says Christopher Lower, author of the book Seven Steps of Organizing .

5. Do not use tables as deposits

One of the most frequent temptations at home is to put everything on a table. Although the intention is to do this provisionally, in the end the table will always be occupied. Make it a rule that it can’t happen even for a minute, and if it doesn’t work, block it somehow.

Julie Isaac, owner of Uncluttered Homes , recommends placing flowers, small decorations or even having the table always set with plates and cutlery, if it is the dining room, to send the message that this table is not a warehouse.

6. Don’t buy storage boxes until you’ve discarded everything

Before you buy a box or furniture to store things in, make sure you’ve done a thorough and thorough cleaning and disposal job.

If you have more storage space than you really need, you will certainly soon accumulate a lot of unnecessary things and, in the long run, they will create another chaos in the organization of the house.

7. Assign tasks when tidying the house

If you have a family and don’t have daily help at home, assign cleaning tasks to each family member. For example, someone has to pick up the dishes from the table, someone else wash them and put them away. One cleans the bathrooms, another the kitchen. Everyone is responsible for keeping their room organized and the beds made every day.

This rule must be strictly adhered to. If just one fails, the others will have an excuse not to do their part.

8. Collect immediately after use

A comfortable but bad habit is putting things off for later. The problem is that this “after” moment never comes. So ask your kids to collect toys when they’re done, don’t leave dishes on the table after eating, or wash kitchen utensils at the same time they’re cooking.

Thus, the tasks you assign to each one should be completed instantly, and not left until later.

9. Do not accumulate hangers

Every time you bring clothes from the laundry or buy new clothes, bring a hanger to hang them. So, without realizing it, you end up with more hangers than clothes in your closet gets tighter and tighter.

So, return the hangers to the laundry or find recycling locations to deliver them.

10. Don’t use the garage or attic as storage for everything

If you live in a house with a garage or attic, it is common to think that you always have space in these areas to store things you don’t use. But with that thought, you’ll end up congesting them and turning them into that cluttered space you don’t want.

So just remove old stuff as we recommend above. The garage and attic are also part of the house, don’t make them a cumbersome warehouse.

11. Take one day a year to clean the house

Even if you apply the best strategies to organize the house, it is inevitable that some things will go out of place. So it doesn’t matter if you feel that your house is finally as organized as you dreamed.

Finally, now is the time to start organizing the house. Take a critical look at your home and decide where you want to start. Get to work!