You probably keep a perfectly clean house. You probably never get behind in your cleaning or overwhelmed or find yourself too tired to do all the stuff that needs to be done. If that's the case, please go away. We don't want your kind around here.
For the rest of us mere mortals, please gather 'round and hear my wisdom. I will tell you my fakey shortcut for making your house look clean enough when you don't have enough time or energy or motivation to manage more than the essentials.
Here it is:
Dishes
Trash
Laundry
Beds
That's it. Tell your friends.
You want more details? I will give them now acuz I love you so much.
DISHES
Start with your dishes. I know you don't want to. I know you want to wait until last on this. Don't. You gotta do dishes first. If you get tired or run out of time or get distracted then you need to have your dishes done before any of that happens. I promise it will not take as long as you think it will take.
If you fill up your dishwasher and there are still more dishes, hand wash the rest and lay them to dry on a big towel on your counter.
A messy house with a clean kitchen looks like you are in the middle of a project. Maybe you're redecorating or re-arranging bedrooms or taking on some huge charity task.
A messy house with dirty dishes in the sink just looks like a messy house where nobody ever does any scrubbing. Gross.
TRASH
If you still have time and energy after the dishes, get rid of all the trash in the house. Pick up the trash on surfaces and throw it out. Take out your garbages and put in new bags. Trash around is cluttery and it's super fast to take it out of the house. This is an easy fix with big impact. It reduces visual clutter to the eye and makes the house look cleaner.
A stack of paperwork on your desk could be you getting an early start on your taxes. A stack of paperwork and soda cans, crumpled kleenexes, 12 weeks of old newspapers and a diaper tells your guests that you're turning into a hoarder and might need an intervention.
LAUNDRY
You're so excited. Your dishes are done. Your trash is all out of the way. Now if you're still up to more housework, we're gonna get those floors and couches and beds and hallways in your house cleared of laundry. You gotta get laundry out of the way.
Ideally, you could wash laundry while you're doing all the other work and then just fold and fold and fold at this point. But, maybe you have more laundry than that or maybe you didn't think of it before now. That's okay. We're working on Containment, not Completion.
Gather all the dirty laundry and get it into containers somewhere. You can sort it into cardboard boxes and then line those up. You can put it into laundry baskets. I want it in a container of some kind and I don't want the container to be overflowing up to the ceiling. Use as many containers as you need to so you can accomplish this.
Now, consider your time and energy. If you have time and energy, put away all the clean laundry. If you don't, then just fold it into squares and put it into containers so that it LOOKS like it's all ready to be put away. If you don't even have time and energy for that, then put it into containers (different ones from the dirty laundry containers, we don't need to create more housework for the future) and move it to the side of the room or, preferably, into a closet or laundry room.
With your dishes cleaned, your trash gone, and your clean and dirty laundry contained, you can now enjoy many, many more clean surfaces in your home.
Now you look like a person who regularly, without fail, does your dishes, cleans up your trash after yourself and tends to your laundry. Wow. Impressive.
BEDS
THIS is where the magic is. This is the thing that makes you look like you got it all together. You're gonna make all the beds in the house.
You don't have to put on new sheets. But, do make it look as nice as you have the time and energy to do. If you can only straighten the covers and pillows, do that. If you can get the comforter folded so lovely around all your mismatched pillowcases, even better. The bed is the star of any bedroom and a made bed draws the eye. So does an unmade bed. Which one do you want people to see?
Once these projects are done, I promise you will feel so much better about your house. There are no dirty dishes. There is no trash. There aren't clothes strewn everywhere. Your bedclothes are not flung around for all to see. So, what's left? Maybe some toys? Oh, you're a good parent who lets their kid play. Maybe some paperwork or mail? Oh, you must be right in the middle of sorting that. A hodge podge of stuff on your shelves and dresser? Oh, you must be re-arranging all those drawers or collecting items for the Salvation Army. See? There's a perfectly respectable explanation for all the picking up housework that's left.
If you're not able to do your regular housework for some time (maybe you have an illness, chronic pain, a new baby or you're working overtime for a few months) just getting these tasks done will prepare your house for drop in guests. In order to maintain your sanity for your own family, you would also want to do a bit of quick cleaning in your bathrooms a few times a week (I suggest more often than once a week so that it's not a gross task, it's just maintenance which is more pleasing to the mind and less likely to be postponed), but I wouldn't ask more of you than that during a difficult time.
Also, you've removed a lot of the visual clutter from your house and it's okay to have people in. Any *stuff* you have around looks like projects and it's acceptable to be a busy person and still receive guests. If you have stuff around because you are unmotivated and not because you are busy, you don't have to disclose that to your guests. But, doing these 4 tasks will greatly help your motivation when you feel overwhelmed.
These, incidentally, are also the 4 tasks I see to in someone else's home if I go to visit someone who is sick or to help out in some way. They can be done by an outsider because we all know how to wash dishes and take old soda cans to the trash and put laundry in a basket and make beds. Good stuff.
Okay, you perfect housekeepers can come back now. We're ready for you. *wink*
That is fabulous. So much more reasonable than FlyLady. :)
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