We all know how busy life can get. Carving out quality time to spend with family and friends can be immensely difficult in a hectic household where responsibilities are constantly being juggled. It feels hard enough to keep up with the day to day when you’re bouncing between the kids and work and keeping the house semi-tidy, let alone setting aside a few hours to spend time with family and really relax.
We see this all the time and that’s part of why we do what we do. It’s the problem we love to solve!
We’ve pulled together some of our top tips to help you reduce the stress and the rushing around at home, and give you back time in your day for just having fun.
Your home affects how you feel
Clutter and disorder in your home can nag at you and be a constant distraction. If you do something as simple as lose your keys in the morning while you’re rushing to get out the door, your stress levels rise; you shout at the kids because you’re now running late; you snap at your partner and you stomp off to work. The whole day starts off in a negative way. Sometimes it’s impossible to pull back from this and that disorder at home that triggered this chain of events impacts everything you do that day.
Add this to the time spent maintaining a disorganised or cluttered home, and before you know it, your time and energy have just drained away.
Every object in your home takes up space and has an effect on the way you live. When your house is cluttered, those items need to be moved and moved again to clean up,you spend time looking for things you can’t find, you feel guilty for not using things you don’t want, you forget about things you have.
We expend endless amounts of time and energy on things that we don’t want or need when we live in cluttered or disorganised homes.
Organising for success
Clearing clutter (ie, anything you don’t want, need or use) and creating simple organisational structures means you can set yourself up to live the way you want to live in your home. If you have a home that’s only filled with the things you love, and is set up in such a way that it feels like it’s working with you, not against you, you’ll stop feeling like you’re always playing catch up.
You don’t need to worry about what to do with all of those things you didn’t really want anyway. You don’t need to worry about having no space for the things you do want. You can see what you have, find what you need and suddenly life gets calmer and more simple.
A home like that gives you the time to do the things you want to do, like spending time with family
4 tips for organising your home to create more time for fun
You don’t need to worry about what to do with all of those things you didn’t really want anyway. You don’t need to worry about having no space for the things you do want. You can see what you have, find what you need and suddenly life gets calmer and more simple.
- Declutter
Always, always declutter first. We hold on to stuff that we never use, don’t need, and don’t even really like. Get rid of it all!
The fastest way to regain control of your home is to reduce the amount of things in it. That doesn’t mean minimalism, that just means only keeping the things you need, use or love. The rest is just mental and visual clutter that saps you of time and energy.
- Think about your routines
If you’re always wasting time looking for your keys or the kids’ homework as you dash out the door, or spend ages in the supermarket racking your brains about what you have in the cupboards and what you need to buy, plan for that.
Put some hooks near the door for your keys so they’re there when you need them, or a basket in the kitchen for the kids to throw all school stuff into. Clear out your cupboards and decant pastas and grains into jars so you can see at a glance what you have and what you’re running low on. It’s far easier to remember that the jar looked half empty than it is to remember which of the identical plastic packets was nearly out of pasta. It frees up your time, your brainpower and your energy.
- Commit to following through
Once you have decluttered and put some simple organising systems in place, you need to commit to making some changes to the way you behave.
It doesn’t need to be big changes, but commit to always putting your key back on the hook. Commit to always putting things back in the cupboards. Take the extra 10 seconds to put things where they need to be.
When you’ve created space and everything has a home, tidying up becomes so much easier to manage and takes half the time. Time you can spend with family!
- Declutter regularly
Life changes and we buy more things. Declutter regularly to keep on top of it all with 5 minutes here and there. Look through a drawer while the supper is cooking, or scan the bookshelf after you’ve made the bed. Check the kids’ wardrobes as you’re putting the washing away, or dig through a pile of papers for junk while you’re on hold on the phone.
Reviewing and discarding little and often will mean that clutter and chaos won’t suddenly sneak up on you. By keeping your home clear of things you don’t want or need, you can spend less time worrying about your to-do list and tidying, and more time on something much more fun!
