How to Easily Start Tidying a Messy House

You’re Better Than Your Mess.

A cozy house where we feel at home is something we are grateful for. However, work, family responsibilities, health issues get in between cleaning and organizing.

And you feel helpless in front of the mess.

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“You look around your house and realize that you haven’t picked anything up in weeks,” and you have stuff left out over-crowded counter tops, or your bedroom is full of clutter, and the list goes on and on.

Help would we welcome, but it’s not possible. What can we do?

Keep reading. There are 3 tips you can try right now to
to make your home tidier, and stop feeling powerless about the messy house.

¿Busy or lazy?

“Lots of people in lots of situations find themselves not up to the task of keeping their home in order.” Rachel Hoffman summarizes several cases on her book Unf*ck Your Habitat such as:

Busy
Too broke to have a full-time maid
Mental illness or disabilities
On their own for the first time
Lazy people
Perfectionists

Whatever the reason for your messy home, whether a lack of skills or motivation, Unf*ck Your Habitat focuses on teaching actions about cleaning, organizing, and housekeeping adapted to your lifestyle and schedule, so “you can finally do the things you want to do in a home that you don’t hate spending time in.”

Gender Roles

Even though Rachel Hoffman addresses the traditional gender roles as archaic and outdated, the Working Mother Research Institute interviewed more than 1,000 working parents in dual-income families with kids at home and “79 percent of moms with kids under age 18 at home say they’re primarily responsible for laundry,… Even among moms who are the primary earners in their families, 62 percent claim laundry duty.”

The survey results show “the breakdown in household chores still looks surprisingly similar to our grandmother’s day.” However, the results don’t mean the surveyed are happy with them, as Rachel Hoffman states about gender roles and cleaning, “just offer a handy excuse for half the population to be lazy and the other half to feel guilty.” You can read here how a marriage that participated in the survey dealt with the situation.

**3 Unf*ck Your Habitat actions you can take right away**

“The first step in turning our messes into something we can happily live with is realizing that it’s time to rethink the way we approach housekeeping and organizing and how they fit into the lives we actually live.”

The 20/10s: It consists of “breaking your tasks down into manageable chunks of time” instead of a “marathon cleaning.”

The basic process is cleaning for 20 minutes and afterwards taking a 10-minute break.

You choose how many 20/10s intervals you can go for according to your lifestyle.

A home for everything: “Find a logical home for each item and put it away.” Putting everything in its designated place keeps things in order.

Make your bed: “Taking a minute to make your bed immediately snaps some order into the chaos.”

Making your bed is a small task to start creating a habit if you are so out of track with your cleaning and organizing routines.

You can check Unf*ck Your Habitat website here for cleaning lists and more information about the UfYH system.

Although “it’s not necessarily going to be the most interesting or fulfilling part of your day,” cleaning, organizing and housekeeping are worth the effort so you can spend time in a house that you love despite it not looking like a magazine perfect space.

Buy here: Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Apple Books | IndieBound

Author Rachel Hoffman
Unf*ck Your Habitat: You’re Better Than Your Mess
Published by St. Martin’s Griffin (January 3, 2017)
ISBN: 978-1250102959

ARC by NetGalley