Do you feel that you just can’t keep up with your home? Perhaps even just the thought of housework stresses you out?
If so, you are in the right place, as I will be sharing tips to make your home easier to manage.
I had never been brilliant with housework, but when my daughter was born the overwhelm hit another level. Suddenly even the most basic tasks like taking a shower, preparing a meal or putting away laundry became an overwhelming challenge.
Later I had bouts of fatigue which made it hard to get off the couch, let alone do any housework.
A diagnosis of ADHD went a long way to explaining my challenges. But there are many reasons that can make maintaining a house overwhelming.
So if you are struggling with your home you are not alone.
Here I will share the systems I use to make my home easier to manage and avoid the stress and overwhelm.
A lot of problems can be avoided with a little careful planning and the right systems.
So for every household task you need to do, ask yourself the question:
“How can I make this easier?“
Once you get creative about making things easy, you’ll be amazed by how much you can reduce your workload.
Here Are a Few Ideas That have Worked For Me, And May Work For You Too:
1. Declutter
Clutter not only looks messy, it makes everything you do in the home more difficult.
- If your cupboards are full you can’t put stuff away.
- If things are mixed up it’s hard to find what you need
- When things are buried you loose time pulling them out
- Seeing clutter can distract your focus from what you should be doing
What you can declutter to make your home easier to manage:
- Check in with your values. How do you want your home to look, feel and function? Declutter whatever doesn’t support that vision.
- Declutter duplicates for the same task. Keep the best, donate the rest.
- Streamline the extras. Keeping lots of sets takes up space and effort. For example, keep just 2 sets of linen for each bed. One on, and one to wash.
- Declutter items that take a lot of effort to look after. There is more to life than dry-cleaning fancy napkins.
2. Be a Savvy Shopper
Managing your home starts with the things that you bring into it. Make sure you bring things in that will make your life easier and not add to your workload.
- Avoid single task items. If an item only does a single job, it doesn’t really save you time. Searching for that heated butter knife, animal waffle maker or cheese melt pan only adds to your workload, not reduces it.
- Avoid seasonal items that will be clutter for the other 11 months of the year. Yes, by all means keep some holiday decorations, but don’t feel obliged to go all-in for every holiday. your family can live without heart bunting for Valentines Day or an Easter Egg door wreath.
- Stick to one colour scheme for dishes, linens and towels. If they are white, even better as it will be easy to replace missing or broken ones when needed.
- Avoid age, gender or person specific items. Make it easy to mix and match.
3. Design for Ease
Where you keep things in your home will make the difference between a frantic search and a speedy exit.
- Store things near their point of use – Like dishes within reach of the dishwasher, your keys, purse and phone in a landing zone near the door, jackets and shoes by the door.
- Keep like with like. Avoid storing the same type of item in multiple locations, keep them together.
- Use labels. They remind you where things should go, and help your family get on board too.
- See more tips in Hack Your Habits for a Clutter Free Home.
4. Eliminate Unnecessary Tasks
The most impactful thing you can do to make your home easier to manage is to reduce the number of things that need to be done. Here are a few ideas:
- Don’t over-launder. If you are washing every item after wearing once then you could be making unnecessary work for yourself.
- Outsource what you don’t like to do. Cleaners, gardeners and nannies can be a great investment in your mental health.
- Declutter to reduce the amount of things you need to deal with.
- Go with systems that work for you. Don’t enjoy folding clothes? Keep them in storage bins. Don’t like ironing? Buy clothes and linens that don’t need to be ironed.
- Do grocery shopping online to save the time and effort of going to the store.
- Sign up for a meal plan delivery service.
5. Reduce the Amount That Comes Into Your House
Every item you have in your home needs your attention. You will store, clean, maintain or make decisions about these items, so reduce your workload by reducing what comes in.
- Say no to freebies
- Plan your purchases
- Shop from a list
- Ask for gift experiences rather than things
- Go paperless for all your accounts
6. Have a System For Getting Things Out of Your House
Advertising, media and even well-meaning friends and family tell us what we should bring INTO our homes. But there is very little support for getting it back out.
- Link donating to a task you already do, like dropping off donations on your way to do the weekly shop
- Set a reminder and search your home for rubbish, recycling and donations before bin day
- Join local free cycle groups and post any unwanted items on them
- Have a “one in, one out” rule, or if you still have clutter, one in, two out till your home is at a manageable level
- Set reminders to regularly go though categories in your home, particularly for things like kids clothes, toys and paperwork, which build up fast.
7. Reduce Decision Making
Every decision you make, from what to wear to what to make for dinner takes mental energy. Make your life easier by reducing decision making.
- Have a daily uniform or capsule wardrobe
- Rotate a list of dinner options and have theme days
- Save a grocery list of basics to copy and paste
8. Enlist Your Family
Everyone over the age of 2 in your household should be contributing to looking after the house. Make sure you are not carrying the burden alone.
- Even young children can be given tasks to do to help around the house. By starting young they will build good habits and can make a significant contribution to reducing your workload as they grow up.
- Give responsibility for a given task to the person that cares most about it being done.
Over To You – What Will You do to Make Your Home Easier to Manage?
This is by no means a finished list of all the ways you can make your home easier to manage. I’m sure that you can think of many more.
Some will be useful to you, others may not be. Regardless of how many of these you can implement, I encourage you to really look at the tasks you do in the home and keep asking yourself “How can I make this easier or eliminate it entirely?”.
By focussing on ease you should quickly get to having a home that is much easier to manage.
You may also enjoy 12 Ways To Start Decluttering When You Are Feeling Overwhelmed.
Make sure you sign up for my newsletter for more practical tips and a weekly declutter challenge.
Pin Me For Later
