How to De-Clutter and Organize any Space

Does a messy house make you anxious and overwhelmed, but you have no idea where to even begin? Before any space can be cleaned, it needs to be tidy and free of clutter. Otherwise, the process of cleaning becomes beyond overwhelming, time-consuming and frustrating. To de-clutter your home, you will need three things: a box, a garbage bag, and a laundry hamper.

If you're currently dealing with a lot of clutter and disarray, you may want to do this process room-by-room, rather than doing the entire house all at once. Once all of the rooms in your home have been tidied, you can then implement this process as a daily cleaning routine for the entire house. The key to keeping a house tidy is to use preventative maintenance. It is much easier to keep a space tidy and organized if it is continually maintained, rather than letting things pile up and it becoming an overwhelming, arduous task. To achieve this goal, you have to remember the golden rules:

1. Only Handle It Once

2. Never Leave a Room Empty Handed

3. Set-Up for Success

4. Clean As You Go

5. Form Good Habits

Only Handle It Once

When you first come home, what is your typical routine? Do you drop your bag, coat, wallet, phone, keys, papers or whatever else you're carrying on the closest surface? This is very common for a lot of people, however, a cluttered surface can very quickly become a "deal with it later pile". Whenever, you touch or hold an object in your home, make a mental note of where it belongs within the space. If you're coming home from a long day and you're tired, maybe you just want to toss all of your belongings on the closest surface and deal with it later. Well, now it's later and the rest of your family has come home too. Now, the "deal with it later" pile has turned into a 30 minute task of putting away shoes, backpacks, bags, coats, keys, sunglasses, lanyards, mail to sort through, and who knows what else. Instead, try to rework your mindset to only handle something once, and with intention. If you come in the front door and you're holding a shopping bag, remove all of the items from the bag, put them where they belong, and put the bag away. Now, your space is clutter free and you haven't made a chore for yourself later.

Never Leave a Room Empty Handed

For any parents out there, you know how important this rule can be, especially when you have small children who like to leave legos all over the floor for you to navigate through like a minefield. If you're leaving the current room that you are in, to go to a different space, scan the current room and find any items that can be taken with you. If you're sitting in the living room and there are lunch dishes on the coffee table, take them with you the next time you go into the kitchen. For those that struggle with task initiation - this is not a "you have to do the dishes right now" golden rule. As long as objects are transferred to the space they are supposed to exist in, it is much easier to tidy and maintain.

Set-up For Success

For every home, there are tasks that seem to be never-ending: laundry, dishes, cleaning, tidying. When these tasks build-up over time, they can become very overwhelming tasks, which then causes us to procrastinate doing them, snowballing it into an even bigger, longer task to do in the future. If you wait until tomorrow afternoon to empty the dishwasher, you'll then be left with a dishwasher filled to the brim with dishes that have piled up from breakfast and lunch. Then the dishwasher is full, you don't have all of the utensils you need to cook the dinner you had planned, and you can't drain your pasta in the sink because there are still dishes in it, and now you've backlogged yourself into a mountain of dishes after dinner that you either have to do by-hand or empty the dishwasher first before doing more dishes. This has now turned the "I'll do it later" 3 minutes of dishwasher emptying into 30 minutes of washing dishes. To set ourselves up for success, we need to take the time as soon as possible to complete the task, to prevent it from snowballing into a larger task. It is much easier to prevent a back-log of dishes, if you do them immediately. This also prevents you from spending extra time scrubbing and using elbow-grease, especially if dishes are rinsed first. This can also extend to tasks like laundry. It is much easier to do one load of laundry per day, or every few days, than turning your entire day off into a laundry day.

Clean As You Go

This rule is an extension of the set yourself up for success rule. There are some tasks around the house that take time. For example, waiting for something that is cooking in the oven or microwave, waiting for a load of laundry to finish drying, waiting for toast to finish toasting, waiting for the dishwasher. to finish a cycle, etc. It is during these "waiting periods" that it becomes very easy to just sit down and flip on your favourite tv show and entirely forget about the dishwasher that needs to be emptied. If you're waiting for your coffee to brew in the morning, you could spend that 3 minutes to unload the dishwasher. This may seem like common sense for a lot of people, but there truly are so many people who were never taught proper cleaning/tidying habits, or struggle with executive dysfunction and completing these kinds of tasks. Now, when you go to cook dinner, you have an empty dishwasher at your disposal. So as you're cooking dinner, you can then load it up with any cooking utensils, pots or dirty dishes that you made, and now all that's left in terms of dishes after dinner are the utensils and plates used. It is much easier to rinse and wash a couple of forks and plates, than it is to scrub a casserole dish with baked-on gunk that has been left sitting in the sink overnight. It is also much easier to clean a mess when it happens, as opposed to later. If you make a habit of doing laundry and dishes frequently, rather than letting things pile up, it will save you more time in the long-run. This also applies to cleaning - if the spaghetti sauce spilled on the stove top while you were cooking dinner, it is easier to clean it up immediately, than trying to scrub it off "at some point".

Form Good Habits

They say it takes 21 days to break a habit, but we can also form good habits. If you adopt these golden rules and apply them to a daily cleaning routine, you will spend a few minutes per day cleaning, rather than multiple hours each week or per month. If we practice preventative maintenance to keep our spaces tidy, we then can start our cleaning immediately, and not have to include tidying into our cleaning task. Tidying being a part of cleaning becomes very overwhelming, and makes tasks take much longer than they should. If you're someone who doesn't particularly enjoy cleaning, practicing preventative maintenance will save you a lot of time and frustration.

The Doom Piles

What is a doom pile? Doom piles do not apply to all people, but many individuals tend to have them. Whether it's a giant stack of papers and mail that needs to be sorted through, but now it's too big and overwhelming that it'll take you hours, so you keep procrastinating because you "just don't have the time right now". Maybe your doom pile is a little mountain of clothing stacked on a chair in your bedroom where you put "not quite clean but not quite dirty" clothes to wear later, but now you can't remember which ones were really clean or probably needed to be washed, and the pile is getting a little bit out of control. Or maybe a relative came for a last-minute visit recently and you didn't have time to clean the whole house, so now you have a basket of random things hiding behind your couch to "deal with it later". Maybe it's the storage closet under your stairs that you shoved all of the gift wrapping supplies into to be organized later. Or the infamous doom pile, that nearly every single person has: the junk drawer. Just because other people can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist! Regardless of what your doom pile is, it can be overwhelming to tackle.

How to Conquer It

Fortunately, whatever your doom pile looks like, we're here to help you manage it. As stated previously, this will require a box, a bag, and a laundry hamper, or any other storage-type items that suit your fancy. Now, most people have a favourite space within their home. If you don't have a favourite space, think about what space causes you the most stress, anxiety and overwhelm when it becomes cluttered or dirty. For some, this may be the entryway or main living space if they have unexpected guests, for others it might be the kitchen or the bathroom. Whatever area within your space is the most important to you, start there.

Classification of 'Things'

Everyone's home is unique and each individual has unique tastes in terms of the style, décor, and items they keep within their space. Fortunately, even with the multitude of "things" that people can have, all of them can be categorized as follows:

• Laundry

• Dishes

• Garbage/Recycling

• Items That Belong

• Items That Don't Belong

• Items That Don't Have a Home

Keep in mind that the following process for de-cluttering a home can be completed step by step, or room by room. If a space is minimally cluttered, the entire process might only take 30-60 minutes. If you're dealing with a complete overhaul, it might be easier to do step one in room one on Monday. Then, step two in room one on Tuesday, etc. This process can be adjusted to fit your needs, schedule, and motivation-level to prevent overwhelm and exhaustion.

Step One

Dirty Laundry

To start the de-cluttering process, you will start in the space that you have chosen, with your bag, box, and laundry hamper in tow. Clothes can be absolutely beautiful, but once they're strewn all over the sofa or lumped into a pile on the floor in the bedroom, it can make a spotless room look cluttered. Start at the main door or entryway to the room, holding the laundry basket. Working clockwise around the room, toss any items of dirty clothing into the laundry basket. Now, continue to the next room and follow the same procedure, until all of the dirty clothes in the house have been collected. Laundry can be time consuming, since you have to wait on the machines, so start your laundry while you work on the next task.

Clean Laundry

Now that all of the dirty laundry is in the process of getting washed, repeat the same process and collect any clean laundry in the basket. Then, take the basket to your favourite folding spot (laundry room, couch, bed, whatever you prefer). Fold all of the clean laundry and put it away. For some, it is helpful to fold laundry into piles for each person in the household. Others find it easier to fold laundry into categories: shirts, pants, sweaters, etc. And some people prefer to hang all of their clothes because they hate folding. However your laundry process works, just ensure that it gets put away where it belongs. Once this step is complete, or during your folding adventure, you can switch clothes between the washing machine and the dryer to continue the rotation. Depending on the state of your space and how many household members you have, this could take one load of laundry, or twelve.

Step Two

Clean Dishes

If you have a dishwasher, start by unloading it and putting the clean dishes away. If you don't have a dishwasher, clear your sink and prepare it for washing dishes.

Dirty Dishes

Start in the room of your choosing. Starting from the main door or entryway, work clockwise around the room, collecting any dishes and take them to the kitchen. If you're completing this process for the entire house, you can continue to go room-to-room, repeating the process to collect any dirty dishes and bringing them to the kitchen. If you're still waiting on laundry to dry or be washed from the previous step, you can start on this step now. Now, all of the dishes are in the right room and can be washed. Either load your dishwasher, or wash the dishes, allowing any stubborn ones to soak for a bit to avoid scrubbing. Again, this might be one load of dishes or a few, depending on your space. Repeat washing, drying, loading or unloading as necessary, until all of the dishes are clean.

Step Three

Garbage/Recycling

If you're waiting on dishes in the dishwasher to finish, you can begin this step. Take a garbage bag and a recycling bin (or bag for recycling, whatever you prefer), and repeat the clockwise motion room-to-room, putting any garbage in the garbage bag and recycling in the recycle bin. Collect the garbage from any garbage bins while you're travelling room-to-room. Replace all garbage bags in garbage bins and remove the garbage and recycling from the house.

Tip: if you have any stinky trash cans, spray them out with soap and water using a hose, or the bathtub. Then, you can sprinkle the can and the garbage bag with some baking soda and your favourite essential oil, to keep things smelling fresh.

Step Four

Items That Don't Belong

Now that you've rid your space of laundry, dishes and trash, all you are left with are your material belongings. These can. be categorized as follows: items that don't belong in this space, items that do belong in this space, and items that do not have a home in your space. In order to declutter and prepare a space for cleaning, every item we own needs to be put away to clear as much space on surfaces as possible. Take a box, bin or basket and repeat the clockwise motion room-to-room, putting any item that does not belong in the current room inside. As you travel around the space to different rooms, you can put items in their respective rooms. At the end, you will be left only with items that do not have a space that they belong in.

Items That Do Belong

Repeating the clockwise room-to-room motion, take any items that do belong in the room, and put them where they belong. The only exception to items remaining on surfaces are items that are specifically for room décor or appliances that are used daily.

Items That Don't Belong

You can now return to your bin of items that are homeless within your space. Sit on the floor (or another favourite spot that's spacious), and sort the items in the bin into piles. Each pile should represent whether the item will be donated, thrown away, or kept. Here is an example bin of items:

Bin Contents:

- Hair elastic

- Nail clippers

- Phone charger

- Batteries

- Pens

- Miscellaneous Papers

- Mail

- Card Game

- Sunscreen

- Bungee Cord

- Picture Frame

- Fishing Rod

- Flashlight

- Loose Change

- Hat

- Bicycle Helmet

- Paperclip

- Stamps

- Soccer Uniform

- Glitter

- Beads

How to Declutter

Every individual is unique, therefore, every individual has unique items and a unique space. People are creatures of habit, and tend to have "drop zones". A drop zone is usually a high-traffic area where clutter tends to accumulate. This could be a bench by your front door, the desk in your office, the dining room table, the kitchen counter, the bathroom counter, etc. Although drop-zones are inevitable, it is possible to work them to our advantage. Firstly, there is less to clean if we have less things to clean. Removing anything from our home that does not serve a purpose in our lives, is the first step. First, sort the items into three piles:

Donate/Recycle

One person's trash is another person's treasure! When possible, it is ideal to donate items that no longer serve a purpose in our life, so that others can benefit from them. For example, the Soccer Uniform was from last year's team and no longer fits your son. This item can be donated back to the team for someone else to use. Once upon a time, you also took up a crafting hobby. Since having kids, you haven't had time to craft anymore. Therefore, the beads and the glitter can be donated to your kids' teacher. The picture frame that has been empty since you moved in because you swore three years ago that you would go to the shop to print a beautiful picture to put inside and hang up, can be donated to the local thrift shop. You have a fishing rod but you can't even remember the last time it got used and you don't even particularly enjoy fishing, so this can be donated as well. Garage sales are also excellent for removing unwanted items from our home, however, the clutter tends to just sit in a box until we have "time" to have a garage sale or make an online listing to get cash for it. So unless you are willing to schedule time to commit yourself to actually have the garage sale or make the online listings, just donate the items. If you're an individual who is notorious for having a "donation" pile that builds up over time because you'll "take it tomorrow," and tomorrow turns into next year, there are donation services that will come to pick up items from your home. There are also clothing donation bins in many places where you can drop clothes off. If you are going to take the donation items to a thrift store, schedule it into your calendar. Otherwise, the items will continue to clutter and take up valuable space in your home. Lastly, the "Bermuda Triangle" tends to work well too. If you know that you won't have time to have a garage sale, take the items to a thrift store to be donated, you'll forget to drop them off at a clothing donation bin, or you probably won't make online listings for the items? Put them on the curb in a box. As people walk or drive by, the items will slowly start to vanish and you will finally be free of the clutter. If all else fails, just throw it out. We forgive you and release you of the burden.

Trash

Unfortunately, some things just cannot be donated or recycled, or it might not make sense to make an online listing for a small, insignificant trinket that no one else would want. If you cannot find someone or some way to donate or recycle the item, throw it away.

Keep

Currently, we are left with the following items in our keep pile:

- Hair elastic

- Nail clippers

- Phone charger

- Batteries

- Pens

- Miscellaneous Papers

- Mail

- Sunscreen

- Bungee Cord

- Flashlight

- Loose Change

- Hat

- Bicycle Helmet

- Paperclip

- Stamps

Put the items that are trash in the trash, and put the items that need to be donated in your car or wherever else they need to be to remind you to remove them from your home and reach their donation location. Now, we are left with our keep pile. From here, we can sort our keep items that don't have a home in our space. We do this, by micro-sorting our keep pile into rooms or spaces within our home that we want the items to live. For example, you normally do your hair and nails in the bathroom. Therefore, the hair elastic and nail clippers belong in the bathroom, we just need to find them a home.

You typically write letters at the desk in your office, so the paper clips, pens, and stamps can have a home in there. At this point, the items do not need to be put away and you do not need to find a home for them right now. Just put them in a pile according to which room their new home will be in. Once you have sorted through all of the items, take each pile and put it in the correct room.

How to Make a Home

Given the list of items we found in our bin, the card game is one that gets used quite frequently and the kids play with it almost daily. However, all of the board games and card games that are used less-frequently, are stored inside the table it's on top of. But just because an item isn't "supposed" to be décor, doesn't mean it can't become a piece of décor. This allows for a tidy space, while remaining functional for our drop-zones. If the cards were to be put away inside the table with the other games, the other décor items would then need to be taken off of the table and replaced. Unfortunately, since the cards either get left on the table or all of the décor pieces end up left as a mess on the floor, this system is not functional or sustainable. How we can make it sustainable, by moving a small wicker basket from another area in the home, that doesn't currently serve a purpose. By putting the cards inside the basket on top of the table, the card game is now part of the décor, but it is still functional as an object, without disturbing the general tidiness of the space. This has now successfully turned a drop-zone into a pick-up zone. Whenever you clean the surface of the table, you can simply lift the basket up to clean underneath, then place it back on the table.

Depending on your space and your daily routines, where things belong in your space only needs to make sense to you and your family. It's about having functional organization systems that makes tidying quick and easy. When we spend less time tidying, it is much easier to maintain our space and clean as we go. If you find that you constantly end up with a big pile of mail or loose papers on the table by your front door, that means it is a drop zone. Again, we need to turn this drop zone into a pick-up zone. By placing a decorative letter tray on the table, it now neatly contains all of the mail and papers. It is functional in the same sense as the basket with the card game inside - it can be easily lifted off of the surface and replaced, to make cleaning more efficient.

Sometimes we have to play around with different kinds of organization systems to make them sustainable. For example, the mail and papers that tend to pile near the front door can very quickly become a monstrosity, but you don't have time to file papers every single day. In this case, we need to rework the system. Each child comes home with multiple papers from school every single day. You and your partner return home with mail, bills or other work-related papers. You can schedule a 5-minute time block on Saturdays for filing, no more and no less. You are a very busy individual, and your time is valuable. Thankfully, you already have a filing cabinet in your office. You and your partner tend to have less paper clutter and your kids tend to have art, crafts, worksheets, permission slips and homework. As a parent, it is difficult to not become sentimentally attached to items that we associate with memories. Therefore, you don't want to get rid of any of the kids' paper clutter, you just want to contain it.

A good solution is to designate a file box with a handle to each child. Inside, you can put hanging folders for each grade. This will keep the kids' paper clutter separate from your adult paper clutter. Again, this kind of system may look different depending on you and your family and how you function in your space. You might want to just buy a second filing cabinet instead. It's all about what works for you and is a sustainable organization solution.

Since the file boxes have handles, as the kids get older and have homework, they can transport their art, homework or projects to the dining table or to desks in their rooms. By far, the biggest culprit in terms of paper clutter is artwork. But with multiple kids and quite a bit of paper clutter coming in the door every day, it can get overwhelming quickly when it builds up and you don't have time to file artwork into the file boxes every single day either. Currently, your kids' craft and art supplies is in the dining room, where they draw and craft at the table. The kids tend to just shove all of their precious artwork onto the cart that holds the craft supplies, sending it all tumbling to the floor. Here, we need a functional pick-up zone for "needs to be filed" art and school work. A letter tray might be too small, so you pick a bin and place it on a shelf beneath the art supplies. You point it out to the kids, and suddenly your daily paper clutter is contained. The letter tray by the front door serves your "actionable" papers (permission slips, letters to and from school, newsletters, etc.) "Actionable" papers are papers that require a further action, before they can be filed or discarded. You've dealt with the kids' papers, now it's time to deal with you and your partner's. The idea is that we are working with limited time. You're able to schedule 5 minutes on Saturdays to go through the letter tray by the front door and sort through the actionable papers. But you can really only justify another 10 minutes once per month, to go through the filing cabinet. Here, you can use another file box with handles or a magazine holder, whatever you prefer.

Start with four files: [Your Name] To File, [Your Partner's Name] To File, [Your Name] Misc., [Your Partner's Name] Misc.

Now, you can very quickly and efficiently micro-file your paper clutter once a week in 5 minutes or less. On Saturday, you can sort through the letter tray by the front door and sort the paper into two piles: kids and adults. Any items that are still requiring further action, can be left in the letter tray for easy-access. Any actionable papers that do not require further action and do not need to be filed, can be recycled. Then, the kids' papers can be separated into their respective file box. The rest of the papers can be sorted into you and your partner's file box. Items that should be filed may include: bills, statements, records, pay stubs, etc. However, the miscellaneous file serves a purpose for random paper clutter that we have to decide whether or not we want to keep. These papers might include: business cards, greeting cards, letters, coupons, magazine clippings, recipes, grocery lists and receipts, etc. If you use this system for yourself, it is likely that the miscellaneous file for you will typically be empty. It is great for papers that you haven't made a decision on whether you'll need them or not, and for containing your partner's paper clutter, until they have time to sort through it and without accidentally throwing anything important away.

The paper clutter is now organized and contained. Now, once a month, all you have to do is spend 10 minutes putting the kids' papers in their file boxes, and taking the "to file" folder from your file box, and sorting it into the respective files within your filing cabinet. Then, sorting through the miscellaneous folder and deciding what should be kept, tossed or filed.

Rehoming Items

We have now made a home for all paper clutter and the card game. Functional organization can take time and may need to be tweaked until it works right for us, but it pays off in the long run since it saves us valuable time. Ultimately, we can spend less time cleaning and tidying, and more time enjoying our space and the loved ones in it.

Depending on your normal habits and routines, and the layout of your space, you may want to consider rehoming some items. For example, the can of coffee, sugar and tea bags tend to be left on the counter in the kitchen. What many people often fail to realize, is that their current organizational systems are not sustainable. In this case, it's great that these items are stored in a cupboard and have a designated home, but the cupboard is much too far away from the coffee maker and kettle. This results in these items travelling around the kitchen to the coffee maker, and never making their way back into the cupboard where they live. The easiest way to manage this problem is to re-home items and re-work your organization. Again, this takes time and perseverance, but it pays off in the long run.

You can move all of your coffee and tea-related items into the cupboard above the coffee maker, and get rid of all of the old spices that used to take up space in that cupboard because they're expired. Now you have an empty cupboard to store the kettle in, since you enjoy tea but you don't drink it every day. This process is probably the most time consuming of the entire de-cluttering, but once we find sustainable organizing solutions, it is much easier to recognize items that we don't need or items that need to be re-homed, once we are aware of how to create functional systems that work for us.

Clutter-Free

Once you have found homes for all of your items, it will be easier to maintain. Depending on the state and layout/functionality of your home and storage solutions, this can be a super quick and easy process, or a very time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process. If you find yourself becoming exhausted or frustrated, finish the current task at hand and pick up where you left off when you have the time.

Pro Tip: It is easiest to tackle one space in a room at a time. If you decide that you need to re-work all of your kitchen cabinets for things to be more functional, you need to be aware that this step usually results in making more of a mess, before the clutter is contained. If you take everything out of your kitchen cupboards and put it on the counter and dining table, that's a great step! Unfortunately, it will be a very time-consuming process, you'll likely end up tired and frustrated after an hour into the task, and then you'll be even more frustrated and overwhelmed if you have to work meal times around the giant mess and lack of workable space in the kitchen. Pick the rooms that are most important that they are tidy and clutter-free, and work clockwise around the space, starting from the doorway. For example, if the drawers in your bathroom are a chaotic and frustrating mess of hairbrushes, hair ties, clips, hair products and tools, and who knows what else, start with the first drawer closest to the doorway and work your way from top to bottom. Even if you do this process one drawer per day and one room per week, your space will be fully organized and functional within months.

Organization Solutions

Different people prefer different organization solutions for different types of household objects. However, many will go out on a mission to stock-up on a variety of storage solutions that are unnecessary, and often-times, quite expensive. By committing to living with less, you will find that you probably have more than enough storage solutions already in your home, if not a surplus.

Sentimental

Sentimental items can remind us of great memories that we have had with loved ones. However, we often have a sentimental attachment to objects when in fact, that memory will continue to live on without the object taking up space in our homes. If it is not something that you use and is not something that you need, consider incorporating it into your home décor or repurposing it in a functional way.

Cautionary Minimalism

Many people would love to embrace a more minimalistic life, however, there is often a fear of getting rid of an item that we might need or that could be functional in our lives in the near future. This is an understandable approach to tackling clutter, and if you find yourself having second thoughts about something, put it in a box and tuck it out of the way. Within 6-12 months, if you have returned to that box to remove the item and use it, feel free to keep it. However, after 12 months, if the item has gone untouched, it's time to let it go and donate it, since it no longer serves a purpose in your space.

Ready to Clean

Now that your space is de-cluttered, tidy, organized and functional, it is ready to be cleaned. Enjoy your new space, decorate it, take pride in what you have accomplished, but most of all, maintain it. If you live alone or with a partner, this will be a relatively quick task. If you have a larger family or kids, it may take a few more minutes. However, creating this routine for yourselves every single day will be the key to maintaining the systems you have put in place. Firstly, ensure that everyone who lives in the household gets involved. If you have a collapsible fabric storage cube, you can use this as your "bin" to do a clockwise tidy of your house, room-to-room, at least once a day. Once all of the items have been put away properly in their homes, you can fold the storage cube up and put it in its own home. If you have small children, you may want to do this micro-tidy more frequently. The first few tidies, involve everyone in the household. Ask them to help you put misplaced items in the bin, and as you travel around each room, ask them to help you put the items away where they belong. If they don't know where the item's new home is, this is your opportunity to show them. This sets a standard of tidiness and that you expect them to be respectful of their belongings and respectful of each other, by helping to keep the space tidy. Help the kids do a micro-tidy of their bedrooms or play room as part of their bedtime routine. Stress the importance of putting things in their homes so that they don't get broken and we can easily find them when we need them next. After a few micro-tidies, give them the confidence to try doing one by themselves. Once you and your household members are in the habit of keeping things tidy, it will make it much easier to clean your space, and to involve other household members in helping to clean as well. Maintaining this quick tidying routine and remembering the golden rules will allow you to keep your home tidy and clean in no more than 5-15 minutes per day, rather than an arduous and exhausting 8-hour tidying and cleaning session. And don't forget - preventative maintenance! Keeping on top of the dishes and laundry only takes a few minutes per day, as opposed to them piling up and having to spend hours to complete the tasks.