If your house is a total wreck with stuff left out everywhere, this household routine will save your sanity as a busy mom. Instead of spending hours every night and weekend cleaning and picking up the messes, a daily reset will make your life a heck of a lot easier so you can have more time for experiences and memories with your kids.
Whether that's going to the pumpkin patch in the fall or playing in the park in the spring. We only have a couple of years before our kids start to grow up and it's time that we make the best of it. So let's take charge of your home so you can have more time to enjoy these precious years.
Hey, welcome back. We're jumping right in today with a visualization.
I want you to visualize with me for a moment. You walk into your living room and you feel defeated because your house is a wreck. Toys are covering the floor, the coffee table is piled with cups and dishes, trash, random drawings from your kids and ketchup covered plates. And the couch has some kind of Fort happening with piles of pillows and blankets.
As you glance over to the dining room, you see that it's just as bad. You can feel your irritation rising as you start to think about how you don't have time to deal with this mess because you have to get dinner ready and give your kids their baths. This is a common occurrence, one that happens every day across the world. And I'll bet that it happens in your house on a consistent basis.
In the last episode, episode two, we talked about three types of messes, the three types of stuff that you could be struggling with in your home. Everyday messes, homeless clutter, and accumulated clutter, and what you need to do to tackle each one specifically. If you missed that show, go check it out. Because identifying what types of messes you have in your home is the first step to taking charge of it. Because today, we're going to talk about how to manage the everyday messes. This is one of the most important routines that you can have in your household. And it's definitely my all time favorite routine that makes my life easier. It's truly how I'm able to stay on top of the everyday messes from one day to the next and keep my home more neat and tidy.
If I did not follow this routine, my house would be trashed. It's called a daily reset. And it's really pretty simple. All you need As simply reset your house at least once a day. Now, this is not about decluttering, but more specifically tiding and picking things up. So before we dive in, I want to quickly explain the difference because I know that Marie Kondo calls decluttering tidying up. But in most Western cultures, tidying up means putting things back where they belong. And decluttering means letting go of the excess stuff. So when it comes to the everyday messes in your home, the toys on the floor, the stuff left out on the tables, the papers and mail piled on the counters, backpacks by the door and all that random stuff all over your house. You don't want to get rid of any of that, it just needs to be put back where it belongs. Now in a future episode, we're going to dive into why these items are being left out and what you can do about it.
But for now, the first step is to develop a routine to help you stay on top of these messes so you can always put them back where they belong. Because these items are not clutter. These everyday messes are a normal part of life, especially when you have kids. And when you're first getting started with taking charge of your home, these messes can take over your house with a quickness.
But the problem comes in when you have all three types of stuff. Everyday messes Taking over your house. Homeless clutter that's getting left out because it doesn't have a permanent dedicated home. As well as accumulated clutter piling up in your closets and your cabinets. And the everyday messes look so much worse because your home is also cluttered, because you have more stuff than can reasonably fit inside of your house.
When this happens, the only real solution is to declutter and to let go of the excess stuff. And we're definitely going to get to that. But for now a daily reset will help you stay on top of the everyday messes so you can keep your home more under control and more neat and tidy while you began to overhaul the mess and ditch your clutter.
So what's likely been happening before now is that your house ends up completely trashed. So you may try to tackle the entire mess and clean up everything. But then within a week or two, it's a mess again.
Some people struggle with this more than others. And it's really based on your capacity for the mess in general, like your breaking point, the point at which your house is messy enough that you need to do something about it. You may feel the need to tidy it all up a few times a week, or you may do it every other week.
But regardless of your habits or your capacity for the mess, the truth is that the clutter and the mess in our homes are literally stressing us out, even if we don't realize it. There have been studies showing the link between clutter and women homeowner's cortisol levels, which means that when your home is more cluttered and messy, your cortisol levels will rise and you will feel more stressed.
It's funny that it had no effect on men's cortisol levels, but that's a topic for another episode.
So the reason I'm saying all of this is to draw attention to the importance of decluttering and taking charge of our homes. When our homes are messy and cluttered, it's negatively impacting us. And depending for the mess, as well as your capacity for stress in general, you may have tried to clean up your house once a week or a few times a month.
But it's getting messy again within another week because you have too much clutter. So instead of trying to clean it all up every now and then, a daily reset will help you stay on top of it from one day to the next. And then you'll have a more manageable home as you began to clear your clutter.
So let's go over how a daily reset works. As I said, it's really very simple. All you're doing is resetting your house at least once a day. You're picking everything up and putting it back where it belongs. Throwing away any trash, placing dirty dishes in the sink, finding lost, dirty socks, and putting them in the hamper, showing your kids how to hang up their backpacks and put their shoes where they go.
Tidying the bedrooms and bathrooms, et cetera. If you need to, you can also use this time to wipe off the counters, start the dishwasher, and sweep or vacuum the floors or any combination. The best thing about a daily reset is that it's tailored to you based on what your household needs that specific day.
When my kids were very young before I had ever started decluttering. I was extremely stressed out by my home and the stuff everywhere. And my hair was falling out in. And clumps. If you've listened to the very first episode, episode, zero, where I shared my story, this will make a bit more sense because I had a newborn, I had just lost my mom, and I was diagnosed with a chronic illness. But when I say clumps, it was, it was like a lot of hair. And any way. I was terrified that it would get wrapped around my baby's fingers. So I went out and I bought a brand new vacuum and I started vacuuming every single day during my daily reset. And then as my baby got older, I didn't need to vacuum every day anymore. So I stopped.
So basically your daily reset could include a handful of different tasks and only you will know what those tasks should be. Just know that it comes down to resetting your house and tidying things up.
And it only takes a few minutes about 10 to maybe 30 max. And 30 minutes would be on a rare occasion. Most of the time, you will only need to spend 10 or 20 minutes tidying things up. But the beautiful thing about this is that it will save you from hours of cleaning on the weekends. If you could spend a couple of minutes tidying things up and putting things away during the week, you'll have nights and weekends free to make memories with your kids. And that's what we all want. Isn't it more time for the things that are important to us.
So let's talk about how often you should do this. I mentioned a minute ago that it should be at least once a day. But depending on how many kids you have, as well as your personal habits, you may need to reset your house two or maybe even three times a day. There's really not a set rule. Like I said, it's just dependent on what you need.
But don't be scared off thinking about how you're going to be cleaning and picking everything up three times a day. Because if you are resetting your house two to three times a day, It really only takes five or 10 minutes for each reset.
So if your kids are very young, like babies or toddlers, Three a day is usually pretty good. When I had three kids under five, I was resetting my house three times a day, morning, afternoon, and evening. And then as they got older, when half of them were in school, I moved to twice a day, morning and evening.
And now we usually only need to do it once a day, sometimes twice on the weekends. For context, my kids are almost six. Almost eight, 10 and 14. So if you have more than two kids who are maybe preschool age to about eight or nine, Twice a day is usually good. But you may only need to do it once a day.
There are a lot of contributing factors. Like how many kids you have, how old they are and whether or not your kids are pretty good about picking up after themselves. And it's really all nuanced. So just reset your home as often as you need, depending on how often your house gets out of control. But the reason why this is my favorite routine is because my house would be a wreck without it.
So if you have ever wondered why your house is always trashed, or why it keeps getting messy again and again, after you have cleaned it all up. This is why. Because of your and your family's personal habits, like leaving dirty Dishes on the table, mail on the counters and toys on the floor. And again, they're a normal part of life. You can expect them to happen.
But we need to be able to stay on top of them from one day to the next, to keep our homes neat and tidy. Otherwise our homes end up out of control all over again. Now, thankfully you can absolutely work on your and your family's habits to stop these messes in their tracks. So you can stop your kids from ever leaving their shoes strewn out across the floor.
But we're going to be taking charge of your entire home one step at a time. So we'll get into more of this in a future episode, because it comes in the maintenance stage of taking charge of your home. And a daily reset will serve you for the rest of your life anyway. Because even when your kids are grown and out of the house, even if you learn to put everything back where it belongs when you're done using it, you'll still want to tidy up throughout the day. Because having a neat and tidy home is peaceful and calming. And once you experience. it you'll never want to go back.
So take some time to implement a daily reset routine into your day. And within one to two days, you'll notice how big of a difference It makes in your home. This is truly something You can't go wrong with. There's no organizing or decluttering, just plain and simple tidying and picking things up.
If you reset your house this afternoon, and then you notice that it's looking a little messy again after dinner, spend 10 minutes, resetting it again before you go to bed. Or let's say that you need to implement three resets a day. Your first one could be maybe 10 minutes in the late morning because you're just picking everything up.
And then your second one could maybe be 25 or 30 minutes because you're also vacuuming and wiping the counters after lunch. And then your third one could maybe be another 10 minutes as you reset everything for the next day.
Again, it's up to you and what your household needs. I've done my best to give you a couple of different examples so you can have a better understanding of how this could work in your household. so I hope that you try this out and I'd love to know how it goes for you. Because trust me when I say it is a total game changer.
And plus it will be so helpful now that the holidays are coming. If you're anything like me, you love this time of year, the decorations, the gifts, the sweets, all of it. The decorations can definitely make your home look even more visually cluttered. And you may also be a little stressed out thinking about how the most wonderful time of the year is approaching fast and there's a lot to do and so little time to do it.
I don't want your house to be a source of stress for you when you'd rather be enjoying time with your kids, which is why I'm offering a special Black Friday bundle. It's a simple framework for winning over your clutter and overhauling the mess in less than 30 minutes a day. And I can't wait. Wait for you to get your hands on it, because I know that it's going to change the game for you when it comes to managing your household. I'll be sharing all the details the week of Thanksgiving. But you can also sign up for the waitlist to be the first to know when it goes on sale at themaximizingmomma.com forward slash D L A B.
In the next episode, we're talking about where to start when your house is a mess. In the meantime, a daily reset will help you manage the messes and stay on top of them from one day to the next. But as I've been saying, The reason why your home looks so messy is because you need to start clearing the clutter.
However, when your house is a disaster, I know that it can seem pretty impossible to get started at all. So that's what the next episode is all about, where and how to start. Thanks for tuning in today. I'll chat with you soon.
Thanks for listening to another episode of The Take Charge of Your Home Show. Don't forget to check out all the links and the resources in the show notes. And if you have found any value from this podcast, Feel free to leave a rating So i can learn what you want to hear more about because the purpose of this show is to help you make a change in your home for good
