How to Clean Your House

HAHAHAH! Search Engines are gonna LOVE me for this one.

So, we had all kinds of family visiting over the long weekend, which truth be told turned into almost a week. And since we were having so much fun, my house kinda got... neglected.

It was pretty bad. I did dishes thrice between Thursday and today. Yeah it was bad.

And I realized that when you ignore the little things, they pile on and upwards until you feel as though you live in  a trash pit of despair. And something HAS to be done about that.

So without further ado (I am SO ashamed!) I give you my trash pit of despair:

From The Diet Coke Diet

From The Diet Coke Diet

From The Diet Coke Diet

From The Diet Coke Diet

From The Diet Coke Diet

I know.

I know!

So, then, it was time to UNDO the weekend of fun.

(There are few websites floating around today that give GREAT advice about how to clean your house, and keep it that way. You might want to ignore me entirely and go Google those... who knows?)

 I fully admit to not being perfect. (You did see the above photographic evidence, yes?) And since I'm not perfect I have various techniques that help me get in control.

1. The "Touch it Once" principal
My dad taught me the idea of handling items the fewest times humanly possible as I clean/put things away. He taught me this because I used to unload the dishwasher onto the counter and then proceed to put all the dishes away. That was a WASTE OF TIME! Put it straight into the cupboard!

And I have applied that sound logic (thanks Dad!) to my own housekeeping.

For example: What is the point of moving a stack of papers I'm going to trash out of my way or onto the floor just to put something away underneath it? Instead, I bring an empty trash sack around as I clean, so there is no excuse for OVER-handling things. Is this making sense?? It is a time saver.

To paint it another way:
Why would make a pile of books that need to be put on the shelf right next to the shelf? Just put 'em away! Keep moving!!!

2. Throw crap away.

I won't even explain this one.

3. Dishes and Laundry
They are NEVER ending. So it makes little sense to ignore them. (Don't look in my room right now.) It's MUCH MUCH easier to run a load or two of laundry every single day than to wait until you have no clean underpants.

4. Things that are neatly piled look much nicer than things that aren't.
See my desk for example?

From The Diet Coke Diet

Much better than the before. MUCH. A messy stack of papers looks like uncleanliness. But a nicely stowed, neatly organized stack on a shelf looks like ORGANIZATION! Nice, eh?

5. Dust and vacuum frequently.
If I am being honest (which it seems I can't help but be, regardless of how bad it makes me look) I need to vacuum my living/office area daily. But I don't. I'm too lazy. I do manage to whip out the ole Dyson 3x a week. And the difference it makes is astounding! I dust probably weekly and living in the dry desert, it could be done twice a week, but I'm just not gonna do that.

But look how pretty!

From The Diet Coke Diet

AHHHH order. SO much better than disorder.

My word of advice after literally doing NOTHING to maintain my household for five days is don't be like me. Take a bit of time each day to straighten, throw away, and put away.

I didn't even touch on the kitchen because this post is too long. Or the upstairs. (Oh upstairs how you taunt me!)

Are we still friends after seeing my house look that way?