While I’m chasing my field of interiors dreams, I work an office job by day during the week. I wake up early, feed the cats, apply my face, get dressed, make a lunch, but one thing that will always be part of my morning routine before I go to work is that I set aside 10 minutes to tidy our apartment.
I know a large number of you are currently recoiling at the thought of it and serving up some serious stink-eye. Something along the lines of this comes to mind …
But today I’m going to convince you that yes, you do have time fo dat. And it will surprisingly make your day so much easier. And here is my one reason to convince you –
- If you spend 10 minutes tidying your home in the morning, when you get home in the evening, exhausted from work, you will be walking into an already tidy home. More time for dinner, more time shooting the breeze with your spouse, more time chillaxing. The less chaotic your surroundings are, the more calm your mind is and the better quality your home life will be.
Have I convinced you? Good. Here are my tips for the 3 main areas of your home that you should consider for your ten minute morning tidy …
BEDROOM
My first real job when I was a teenager was working as a housekeeper in a Travelodge Hotel a stones throw from home. I learned not only how to change and make a bed in under 2 minutes, but the importance of a tidy bed. Your bed is the biggest thing in your room and the first thing you see when you walk into your bedroom. If it’s chaos, your room is chaos. It doesn’t have to be made perfectly, just a couple seconds of effort to straighten your bed sheets.
LIVING ROOM
Our living room is the heart of our home and therefore the quickest to fill with junk. It’s the messiest room so I’ll spend the most time tidying it. Still, I only allow myself 5 minutes, otherwise I’d never leave the house. I start off by putting the living room items back where they should go – tablet goes on our desk, the PS3 remote goes into the PS3 / husband accessories drawer, any notebooks go back onto our shelves etc. Anything that needs to go into the kitchen gets put on the counter and anything that needs to go elsewhere in our home I put in our
chuck it bucket. Don’t waste time by running into every room of your house.
We’re at a good place now as I’ve been avidly downsizing, organizing what we have and working on giving all our stuff its own place.
A home for everything and everything has a home. If you need a bit of inspiration to get you started you can check out my
5 decluttering tips or my
less 365 mission.
KITCHEN
There’s nothing I despise more than doing the dishes. We’re not blessed with having a dishwasher in our apartment so we have to clean our dishes old school style. And because of this, there are always dishes haunting our kitchen counters. Let me get one thing straight, I do not clean dishes in the morning [that’s were I say ain’t nobody got time for dat]. I like to think of our kitchen as in a constant state of contained chaos. I stuff things in the recycling where necessary and stack all the dishes in the corner by the sink so they’re not all over the counter, where they patiently wait for my husband to come home and wash them.
But for those of you who have the luxury of owning a dishwasher? Bend over and I’ll show you where you can put your dishes. You have no excuse.
xx A
