Finding the motivation to clean and organize your home isn’t always easy. If you’re like most people, you live a hectic life and would rather use your free time to relax or pursue hobbies than mop the floor. Not only can it be hard to fit cleaning into your schedule, but it can be even more difficult to find motivation for cleaning.
In this article, we’ll teach you how to motivate yourself to clean, offering helpful tips and tricks to make the process more purposeful and enjoyable.
How To Get Motivation to Clean
The most important thing you can do is learn how to get motivated to clean. Once you get started, the rest usually falls into place. You’ll find your rhythm, and your momentum will carry you through to the completion of the chore.
You can use many good mind hacks on yourself that will help you start and stick to cleaning. Here are our top recommendations that will boost your motivation for cleaning.
Put It on the Schedule
In your busy life, you’ll almost always have an alternative project that you can do instead of cleaning and organizing. Instead of waiting for free time to clean, prioritize it by putting it on your schedule. Block out an hour or more of dedicated time to tackle cleaning and organization. Keep that time sacred, and don’t let anything short of an emergency bump it off the calendar. When the appointed time comes, you won’t have any excuse to put it off.
Gather Your Cleaning Supplies
When it’s time to clean, begin by gathering all your cleaning supplies and putting them in a visible, easy-to-access place. Bring in all your surface cleaners, your broom, mop, vacuum cleaner, rags, paper towels, and more. If you plan to organize your home while you clean, bring in some bins where you can sort items as you go. By having all your supplies together, you’ll save time and effort.
Create Actionable Lists
Make a list of the areas in your home that need to be cleaned and organized. Be specific about the things that you want to accomplish. Just having a list can be motivating. Each time you cross an item off your list, you will feel good about what you’ve accomplished and more motivated to cross other items off.
Break It Down Into Manageable Chunks
The idea of cleaning an entire house can feel overwhelming, but you don’t run a marathon all at once. You run a mile at a time until you cross the finish. Likewise, break your cleaning and organizing effort into manageable chunks.
An easy way to do this is to clean one room at a time. Take a break between rooms or simply stop after each room and come back the next day or next week to work on the next room. An alternative option is to set a timer. Give yourself one hour to clean. Too long? Try a half hour or even 15 minutes.
If you’re really struggling with cleaning motivation, try doing just one thing. Maybe put away the dishes, sweep the floor, or vacuum the carpet. Even finishing one chore can feel like a big win.
Make Cleaning More Enjoyable
Who says cleaning and organizing have to be a chore? There are so many ways you can increase your motivation to clean and organize by infusing more fun into the process. Put on your favorite television show while you clean the living room and bedroom. Listen to a podcast or audiobook. Call your best friend or a sibling and catch up on family gossip while you work. Keeping your mind busy will help cleaning go by much more quickly.
Reward Your Efforts
It’s a lot easier to get working when you know there’s a reward waiting for you at the end. Probably the simplest reward you can offer yourself at the end of your hard work is a clean and organized home. If that isn’t enough to get you moving, try rewarding yourself with something more exciting: a little relaxation, a favorite dessert, an episode of your favorite TV show. Take yourself to your favorite restaurant, get a massage, or give yourself permission to read that book that’s been sitting on your nightstand forever. You’ve earned it.
Create an Occasion for Cleaning
There’s nothing that can rev up your motivation for cleaning like inviting guests over to your house. If no other motivation strategies work, plan a dinner party, a book club meeting, or simply a hangout with friends or family members. Once the invitations are out, you are guaranteed to find greater powers of motivation to get things cleaned and organized.
Enlist Professional Help (If Possible)
Are you completely out of motivation to clean and organize your house? Maybe your life is simply too hectic; that’s understandable. If you have the funds, you can always hand off the chore to a cleaning person or a professional cleaning service. According to Thumbtack, the national average cost for house cleaning services is $45 to $50 per hour, or $175 to $219 for an average-sized house. If that seems like a good deal, consider searching for a reputable cleaning service in your area or ask friends or family for personal recommendations.
Declutter As You Go
While you clean and organize your home, consider decluttering as you go. Set up baskets or designated areas and label them like this:
- Sell
- Give Away
- Trash
- Store (Optional)
For every item, ask yourself: “Does this serve me?” If the answer is no, decide whether you want to sell it or give it to charity. If the item is damaged or doesn’t work well, toss it. What if you have things that take up space but still possess value for you? That’s where the final category comes in. If you have an extra storage area in your house, like a garage or attic, put the items there. If you don’t have closet space to spare, consider renting a storage unit.
Decluttering as you clean will make future cleaning efforts faster and easier and will also give you an even better result when you finish.
We hope this article has shown you how to motivate yourself to clean. After you’re done, don’t lose the momentum. Turn cleaning into an ongoing habit. Put it on the calendar every week or every month and stick to it. The more often you clean, the less time it will take in each instance, and the more it will become part of your life routine.
Good luck! And if you are looking for a reliable, competitively priced, and secure place to store all your extra things, choose Price Self Storage.
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