Keeping your home clean and free of junk sounds like it should be an easy task, but life tends to get in the way of the things we have to do. If you’re stuck looking at the mess around your house and can’t find the wherewithal to start cleaning, you’re not alone. Cleaning is a task that very few people would choose to engage in, but it’s one we must all do at one point or another. Let’s take a look at how to motivate yourself to clean and organize your house so that you can go back to not feeling guilty all the time.
Start Very Small
It doesn’t matter how small the area you clean up is; if you cleaned something, that should count as a victory. If the idea of cleaning your entire house is intimidating, try to focus on a small area of one room to tidy up. Allow yourself the satisfaction of this modest victory, and you’ll find that you want more of it. The idea is to trick yourself, over and over, into cleaning small areas at a time until you’ve eventually cleaned everything.
Set a Hard Deadline
If you really need to get yourself in gear, sometimes the best thing you can do is apply some pressure. Setting a strict deadline for completion can force you to get into the right mindset. Try to get yourself going by scheduling a pickup date for donations or trash. Organizations like the Purple Heart Pickup will let you schedule a donation pickup in advance, giving you a hard-and-fast deadline on the task of cleaning your place.
Ask for Some Assistance
If your problem has gotten really big—large enough that you don’t think you can handle it on your own—it might be time to call in a bit of help. You don’t have to ask your friends to clean your whole house for you, but even just having someone else being there to oversee your organization can give you the motivation you need. Accountability is a huge motivator, and you can easily get this by enlisting someone to keep you on track.
Remember Your Goal
While tidying up can be its own reward, we often need something a little bigger to keep us motivated. Why did you want to start organizing your home in the first place? Maybe you wanted to have a clear head because you work at home, or maybe you wanted to have a place where you could have people over. It’s easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of cleaning, but by remembering your original reason for wanting to clean up, you can keep your head in the zone.
Hopefully, these ways to motivate yourself to clean and organize your house have given you some tools to persevere through the worst of it. Remember, you don’t need to finish it all in one day—take it at your own pace.
