One of the key things that I learned from this amazing website, which I will write about in more detail next week, is that keeping the house clean can be done in quick, short bursts. All of us would love to have the time to clean a room or the whole house from top to bottom in one fell swoop but with little people all up in my grill all day, in the words of Georgia Boy, that ain't happenin' Cap'n. I usually react to this dilemma one of two ways; either I feel so completely paralyzed at the overwhelming task before me that I shut down and want to take a nap or I gripe and complain while trying to force my family to join me in the cleaning fun.
If you're looking for how to clean a bedroom, how to clean the house or how to de-clutter the house quickly and easily allow me to introduce you to the power of the timer.
The timer tells me that I have 5 or 10 minutes to do as much as I can and then I'm done. I put in my 5-10 minutes of cleaning and then I can go read my book or whatever else I want to be doing instead of cleaning. Which is pretty much anything.
My timer that I bought on my trip to HomeGoods.
In fact, prior to writing this post my downstairs was a complete and utter mess. As I looked around I was wondering how in the world I could clean it up. I got out the timer and set it for 5 minutes while I picked up the toys. I set it for another 5 minutes and de-cluttered the kitchen countertops and island. I even had time to wipe down the countertops with a counter cleaner. It only took 10 minutes to make a huge difference instead of the 30 plus minutes I would have probably spent trying to clean it all.
I use this method all of the time for picking up the kids' rooms, cleaning the playroom, de-cluttering my mommy desk, dusting my bedroom nightstands and dresser, etc.
The house is cleaned a little bit at a time preventing an area from getting completely out of control and is done in a manageable amount of time.
Now, the reason I use an actual timer and not my smart phone is that on my smart phone are my apps. And no matter how many times I tell myself I am only going to use the timer on my phone I eventually end up checking Facebook, Twitter, email, etc and then I've lost 30 minutes in the blink of an eye, the kitchen island is still a mess and now I'm mad at myself for getting side-tracked.
That doesn't happen with my little timer. I set it for 5 minutes and it rings to tell me I'm free. Not unlike the school bell that signaled our work for the day was done. Of course, back then I got to run out of the school with nothing on my mind but playing with my friends or watching the Flintstones. Now the timer just means I need to go check and see if the baby is trying on my makeup again and to find out why the 5 year old has been so quiet for so long.
Happy Cleaning, Cheap Mamas.