How to Become More Efficient at Keeping a Large Household in Order
Trying to keep a large household in order can seem overwhelming at times. Too much stuff to keep in order and too many distractions for everybody to allow for any kind of organization. Well, that’s bunk! The truth is that keeping a house in order whether you are talking about a family with kids or a group of roommate living together is not beyond the capability of even the busiest people. You may not solve all your problems by putting these strategies to work, but over time you will certainly notice a big difference.
One Specific Chore A Day For Every Member
Start off by assigning a specific chore for every day to every single member of the household. The chores don’t have to be huge like doing the laundry or filling the dishwasher. A daily chore can be as simple as checking rolls of toilet paper to see if they are about to need changing or that new rolls need to be bought. All those little mundane tasks that get overlooked for too long and start to snowball can be put in the hands of one person who only needs to do that one thing on that particular day of the week.
Clean Dishes After Every Meal
The real chore of keeping the kitchen in order isn’t about the work of cleaning plates and dishes, it’s about the extra work you create for yourself by letting it go. It will forever be easier and quicker to clean a fresh mess from a plate than it will be to clean a mess than has been allowed to harden for just one day. Add a few days more days of hardening and a job that would have taken five minutes is now capable of taking fifteen minutes or more. Get into the habit of cleaning dishes after every single meal and you will find you are actually spending much less time cleaning up than you do when you let things slide.
Wastebaskets Galore
Put a wastebasket in every single room in your house. More than that, put a wastebasket in every single gathering place in every room. Keeping a house in order often translates into picking up trash left behind on the back of sofas, on the arms of chair, on top of desks and all the other myriad places in the typical house where laziness resides. Your teenagers may be too lazy to get up and toss an empty soda can into the garbage can in the kitchen, but maybe–just maybe–they aren’t too lazy to toss the can into a wastebasket on the side of the couch. Cleaning up wastebaskets is much more efficient than picking up trash left behind all over the house.
Outdoor Junk Mail Depository
Place your outdoor garbage can somewhere between the mailbox and the door to the house. If that isn’t possible, install another wastebasket outside into which junk mail can be disposed before entering the home. We were supposed to be at least halfway to a paperless society by now, but clearly that is not the case. Keeping a house in order still must be done in spite of the accumulation of unnecessary paper so do what it takes to keep as much paper outside the home as possible.
Plan Ahead
When you set to the task of cleaning a specific area, take the time to determine what you will need and take it with you. Anything you can do to cut down on wasted time will be enjoyed as a time dividend. The labor you save by keeping your house in order by going about it in an orderly fashion can be put to use either in the form of using it to get something else done that needs to be done or by self-indulgent enjoyment.
