If there’s one thing I’ve learned about keeping a house organized when life gets busy, it’s that staying on top of cleaning, laundry, and other household chores throughout the week is key. I’ve always liked things to be neat and organized (I was a bit of a neat freak in college), but cleaning the house isn’t exactly how I want to spend my free time these days. I’m all about making chores as simple as possible so that Dario and I can easily stay on top of things little by little and avoid having to devote our weekends to housework.
Here are my tips for managing housework throughout the week:
1. Pre-Sort Your Laundry
Throwing a single load of laundry into the washing machine during the week is a relatively quick and easy task, and a great way to prevent multiple loads from piling up. What’s not always quick or easy is the sorting that comes before it. And the longer I avoid sorting, the quicker the clothes seem to pile up. Trying to motivate myself to do even just one load of laundry can seem like a daunting task when I have a heap of colors, whites, and delicates mixed into one giant mound. So to avoid having to sort through a mountain of clothes every time I want to throw in a quick load, I replaced our old hamper with four wicker laundry baskets (I chose four because we typically wash our laundry in four separate loads – colors, whites, delicate colors, and delicate whites). Rather than mixing all our dirty clothes together in a big hamper, Dario and I put them directly into the corresponding laundry basket – and voilà – the laundry is sorted with virtually no effort. Each basket is the perfect size for a single load of laundry, so as soon as a basket’s full, I’ll throw it right into the washing machine. This process has made staying on top of laundry significantly easier and helps prevent multiple loads from piling up throughout the week.
I linked a few of my favorite baskets that are both functional and pretty enough to display:
2. Give Everything A Home
Making sure everything has its own place – and putting it there! – sounds like a no-brainer, but sometimes it’s easier said than done. Doing things like sorting through the day’s mail, putting your shoes and purse away when you get home, and getting your makeup and styling tools off the bathroom counter can feel like overwhelming tasks if you don’t have anywhere to put them. Too many times, I’ve found myself moving clutter from one messy surface to another, or just avoiding moving it altogether to avoid the hassle of figuring out where to put it. My solution: stocking up on storage bins and organization tools! This helps me identify a specific place for everything, which makes picking up after myself infinitely easier and helps me avoid having to tackle multiple messes later.
These organization tools will make it easier to find a place for everything at home:
3. Make Your Bed
I’m sure you’ve heard this before – making your bed first thing in the morning can help you feel like you’ve accomplished something right off the bat and make you more productive throughout the day. More than that, though, I like to make our bed because if it’s neatly made and looks nice, I’m more likely to want to keep the rest of the room clean and looking nice as well. Messes, at least in our house, are a slippery slope. Once one room gets dirty, it’s only a matter of time before other rooms start to follow suit. And once the messes are too far gone, I have zero motivation to continue trying to keep things tidy. By that same token, if one room is in really good shape, it gives me an incentive to stay on top of the other rooms. Making the bed is such a simple task, but it makes a big difference in setting the tone for keeping the rest of the house neat.
Here are some cozy throw blankets and pillows to dress up your bed and make the bed-making process a little more fun:
4. Let Technology Do Some Of The Work For You
With a Golden Retriever and a German Shepherd, you can imagine all the dog hair that winds up all over our floors – not to mention all the other debris they track in from outside. So, last year before we got our second dog, Dario and I made the decision to invest in a robotic vacuum to help keep up with the floors. We went with an iRobot by Roomba, and it was hands-down one of the best purchases we’ve made. It works on both carpeting and flooring, which is perfect for anyone like us who has multiple types of flooring throughout their house. It also has Bluetooth capability, so we can control it remotely from our phones and schedule it to run at certain times each day. I still use my upright vacuum cleaner when I want an extra good clean, but the Roomba keeps our floors manageable on a daily basis with virtually no effort on our end. It doesn’t get any better than that!
Below are a few different robotic vacuum options, including ours: