When you walk into my house, it's a split-level, so you take the stairs down to the basement (please don't! still a work in progress!) or take the stairs up to the kitchen-dining room-living room. So the first thing you see is the island and the kitchen counters. Since the island is the first surface you come to, it becomes a dumping ground for mail, random things from coat pockets, and items we want out of Abby's reach... There are also a few candles and a potted plant for when I try to make it look nice...
Then you look past that to the kitchen sink and surrounding counters. For some reason, dishes is one chore I really don't like to do. I've never figured out why. Yes we have a dishwasher, but often that will even get run and then just sit there until we need a dish or run out of spoons in the drawer.
When Rocky comes home after a long day at school, these are the first things he sees. And if nothing has changed since he left in the morning, he wonders what I've done all day... Now I've probably done a lot of other stuff around the house and spent time with Abby, but doesn't what you see when you first go somewhere set the tone for the rest of your time there? Whether it's a home, a store, a restaurant, etc.?
So my new goal is going to be to clear the island every day before Rocky gets home, and do the dishes AT LEAST every other day, if not every day... Or at least unload-reload the dishwasher and put other dirties in the sink so they're not cluttering up the counter.
I think that will set the tone for anyone coming in to my home.
One other quick thing. I read/heard somewhere that a bed will often take up 80% of your bedroom space. So when your bed is left unmade... you get the picture. It only takes 2 minutes in the morning. Just do it.
Do you have any little tips for feeling good about your house?
2 comments:
Your post reminded me that I have been meaning to write a grown up chore calendar for us. Punky is the only one who reliably does chores in our house! How sad is that?
I have no tips because I'm lousy about clutter. I'll scour the heck out of the bathroom, but there is a stack of law journals and magazines on the table that is literally 4 inches tall.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE organizing and keeping things neat, it's like therapy for me. Something I find helpful is having a junk drawer (or a basket) because as hard as I try to keep everything organized, there are always the random odds and ends that have no where else to go. And I keep a basket at the door under the coat rack to collect junk mail so it can just go right back out to the recycle bin and never clutter up the counter. I also find it helpful to run the dishwasher at night right before I go to bed, so then everything is clean, dry and ready to be put away first thing in the morning and the dishwasher is ready to just be loaded up as the dirty dishes are made throughout the day. I've been going crazy lately because it's hard to implement my own habits for organization while we live with my parents :(
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