Cooling stress tips: Use 30 seconds to tidy up your home
HTribune News Serice
ave you been working too much overtime? Or have you been caring for aging parents? Dealing with a family illness?
To add to your pain, you might have kids struggling with schoolwork or budget problems that are driving you mad. Before you climb out of bed in the morning, your mind is racing with all the troubles you have to deal with.
If you’re living with such stress, it’s likely your house will reflect it. We’ve all been there. Everywhere you look, there is clutter. On top of this, you can’t remember the last time you cleaned thoroughly.
Having too much to do guarantees we’ll all be stretched for time to keep our homes clean and neat. Housework is one of those obligations we can let slide. So what is the answer? This approach can help: Realize the power of using just 30 seconds. Implemented often throughout the day, this tiny time investment will add up.
“It’s amazing what you can accomplish in random 30-second time frames,” says a nurse who has two children and two elderly relatives living with her. We’ll call her Diane.
“I have no spare hours,” she says, “So I’ve recently tried kicking in 30 seconds to get my house looking a little better.”
Diane says in less than a minute, you can do these kinds of chores: throw in a load of clothes, clean the clutter around a bathroom sink, hang up a few clothes, tie up the kitchen garbage bag, or neaten a pile of reading materials on your nightstand.
A cleaning service owner we’ll call Tracey says her own house was a mess. While she did a professional job with her crew for clients around town, Tracey says her house was looking like a dump.
“When I decided I’d face any mess in front of me, clean it up, and pat myself on the back, things started to change,” she laughs.
“Now, this 30-secondsto-a-minute plan isn’t perfect, but you’ll be amazed at how much neater your house will be.”
Tracey says cleaning is easy. But cleaning around clutter is almost impossible. So she advises us to get those shoes out from under the bed, unload the dishwasher without taking 10 minutes and haul those newspapers off the coffee table to the car trunk for recycling.
“I swear, this becomes a fun game after about three days of this,” laughs Tracey. “When you see your piled-up rooms looking neater, you’ll start to hunt for spaces to tidy up. Don’t expect a miracle at first, but after a week, you’ll see that letting things slide got you buried under clutter in the first place.” Working on your home clutter means sticking with it. Don’t use this approach for other things, such as calling friends or finding websites to read. If you do, you’ll still be in a housekeeping mess.
“Once you feel you’re on top of your house mess, you’ll know the real truth,” says a home cleaning service owner we’ll call Rachel. “You buried yourself with clutter by putting off making decisions. You chose not to hang your sweater. You chose not to put away your golf clubs. Clutter represents decisions you’ve put off making.”
Rachel insists that any family’s mental health will improve in a neat environment.
“A clean and neat home makes you feel in control,” she says. “You’ll also realize how valuable a tiny bit of time is. Most of us waste a lot of time every single day.”