-TOP 10 RULES for a Cleaner Home!

We didn't want to start the year off with a new year, new you cleaning video, but I know a lot of you have probably resolved to live a cleaner life this year and in the future. So it is my job to help you get there. And over the years, we have shared so many different cleaning tips and rules and ideas, ways for you to keep your space cleaner. But what I figured we would do in this video is give you 10 concrete, but very simple rules to keep your space clean this year. We've talked about many of these before, but this is just a way that we can take the best of the best and encourage you to keep your space clean this year. And just a quick reminder, if you haven't done so already, to subscribe to the Clean My Space channel and give this video a thumbs up if you made at least one new year's resolution. The simple 90 second act of making your bed each and every day has a huge impact on the way you feel about your room, about your space, and about going to sleep each night. It is often said that not only making your bed is a great way for you to become more motivated throughout the day because you get one little task done and it looks really good, it takes a short amount of time right at the beginning of your day, so you feel like you can seize the rest of your day with ease, but it also allows you to come home and feel relaxed. And when you get into your bedroom, you don't feel a sense of disarray or you don't feel that it's scattered. It looks beautiful and that's a really great way to go to bed each night. If I were to write a bible, my first line in the bible would be, mess begets mess. And it's something to keep in mind when you're at home. If you make a big mess, whether it's clothing on your floor or you just came in and you have a storm full of bags and all kinds of stuff, leaving it out only attracts more of a mess. So the idea here is whenever you make a mess, you want to clean it up as quickly as possible, right away is ideal. That way you never have a messy space and if your space is clean, you're more encouraged to keep it clean. But if you see a mess, a little bit more here or there doesn't make such a difference and then before you know it, you have a giant pile of a mess that you have to deal with. Now, if you take that down a notch and you're in a small space like your bathroom and you get a little toothpaste in your sink, yes, you could leave it, but toothpaste also dries, it becomes crusty, it attracts hair, it looks gross. So the other thing you can do even when you see a small mess like something on the floor or you've spilled some juice or toothpaste in the sink, you can just wipe it up quickly and move on. And that will help keep your space cleaner for longer. Especially with a new member of our family coming very soon, keeping our house as clutter-free as possible has been an increasingly important priority around here. Chad and I have had a weigh station in our home where we take anything that we don't really need anymore and we put that item in the weigh station in the bin and we just leave it there. If we need it, we'll go back, we'll get it, but pretty much every time we don't need that item, so it just stays in the weigh station and then when it fills up, we take that bin and we donate it. That has been such a good and freeing practice and I will say on the flip side of that, it makes us really consider anything that we decide to purchase and bring into our home. We say, is it worth the money? Is it going to end up in that weigh station? Are we basically just going to buy this thing to donate it in a year? So that's also been really helpful in terms of reducing the amount of stuff that we bring into the house. I consider the kitchen to be one of my MIAs or most important areas, which is why keeping it clean is a priority in this house. If the kitchen looks gross, I don't want to cook in it and I don't really want to eat anything out of the kitchen. So the idea here is to keep the kitchen as clean as possible and that means wiping up after each use. So whether it's just a few crumbs on a counter and giving it a quick wipe with a microfiber cloth or if it means a full-on scrub down, dishes, pots, pans, splatters on the backsplash, whatever it takes, making sure that the kitchen looks good after I use it is really important and I've found that when my kitchen looks clean, my house feels so much better. So if a messy kitchen has been a thing for you, whether it's a big meal or a small thing, make sure that you clean it after each use. Everything has a place and if it doesn't have a place, it means that you probably don't need it. So decluttering is a really important thing to do at home. We talk about this quite a bit. If you notice that there's something that's homeless in your house, perhaps it means you don't need it anymore. So find those homeless items, really consider whether you need it or not. If you do, find a home for it, make sure it stays there and if you don't, stick it in the donation bin. Clearly, you're not going to ask your three-year-old to load and unload the dishwasher but each family member should be participating in taking care of the home to the best of their abilities. Now, if you haven't had this conversation with everyone in your house yet or you're struggling to try and figure out a way to get everyone involved, people are busy, these ones are too small or whatever the issue is, we have videos on this and I also do talk about it in my book. I'll link the videos for you down below. This is a really important conversation to have not only in terms of figuring out scheduling and timelines and age-appropriate tasks but also it has to do with everyone living in the home, everyone feeling better about their space and setting common goals. So make sure that everybody in the family is participating in keeping the space clean. The responsibility does not fall on one person's shoulders. If you live in the house, it's your responsibility to take good care of it too. We're in the throes of a crazy winter storm right now. It is so cold and so snowy and our house is being hit significantly by that mess. Case in point, when you come into our front hall, there's salt, there's dirt and as best as we try to contain it, it does start to get everywhere. So I have been spending my time cleaning the floors for about 10 minutes each day on the main floor of the house. That has been making a big difference here and while there are other things that need to be done around the house, I'm just focusing on what's most important. The idea here is to spend 10 minutes a day cleaning, decluttering or organizing anything that really needs attention because if you can give even that small amount of time to something that really needs that attention, it will keep your space looking cleaner and more beautiful. I've already mentioned how important it is to make your bed each day, but let's take it a step further and make sure that the bedroom is being cleaned each and every day. This doesn't mean a 20 minute thing, but even if you can spend, I promise you three minutes, play one song, a short song, give yourself three minutes, just pick things up off the floor, quickly straighten things up. Three minutes will make such a big difference in your bedroom. That way when you go to bed, you don't feel stressed and when you wake up in the morning, you feel rejuvenated. Hopefully you've had a great night's sleep, but even if you haven't, at least you don't feel stressed out about the stuff on the floor and on the tabletops. The whole minimalist living thing has definitely been a trend over the past couple of years and while Chad and I aren't on the end of the scale where we have four things in each room, we have definitely managed to pair things down in our house and I can tell you it does feel a lot better to live this way. Now we do have videos on this topic. I will link those for you down below as well. In these videos, we teach you how to figure out living with less without going to that extreme. I think that could be a really great way to ease yourself into this mentality, but either way, if you have less at home, it means less clutter, less things to clean and you can really enjoy the items that you have and use them and that's what's most important because if you buy something and you only use it once or twice and then it sits there, there's really no point of it taking up valuable real estate in your home. 365 days is a long span of time. We're having a kid this year. You better believe our cleaning routine is going to change. Seasons also change. So what makes sense to clean in the winter like our front entryway does not make sense to clean in the summer like our backyard entrance. That gets a lot messier. So we're always looking for ways to sort of change things up as it makes sense for our family and our needs given the situation and you should do the same thing. So really consider who's coming in and out of my house, what season is it and what other needs do I have in this space that have to be considered and then you can change up your cleaning routine accordingly and it will make sense. Really spinning your wheels cleaning is like the biggest waste of time. So if you're going to clean, condense your time and make sure it counts. And that brings me to this week's comment question, which is what is your number one cleaning commandment or cleaning rule? Let me know in the comments down below. I'm really curious to see what you prioritize in your space. Even though 2018 is well underway, we all wanted to wish you a happy and healthy year and we all hope that you achieve your goals whether they are cleaning related or not. Here are a couple of other videos I think you're going to love and if you want to learn about our MAKERS microfiber cleaning cloths, you can click this button right here. There's a button down there that lets me know you care. So click it if you liked this video and click this button right here to subscribe and begin your journey to a cleaner life. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time.