8 Guides And Easy Tips For Maintaining Your Home

If anything is time consuming and energy draining, it is maintaining a healthy and organized environment for yourself and your family to live in. Whether you live alone, live with your partner, or have three cute babies running around the house, maintaining your home can be very stressful.

Maintaining your home doesn’t need to be stressful. When you apply certain easy tips, you can experience stress-free ways to keep your home functioning optimally.

Keep reading to find out eight easy tips for maintaining a healthy and organized home for yourself and your loved ones.

1. Create A To-Do List

To-do lists are your knights in shiny armour when it comes to organizing and taking care of chores.

If you want to carry out tasks in your home without feeling overwhelmed, create a to-do list of everything you need to do. Doing so will reduce the clutter in your brain and help you carry out your chores faster.

So, next time you slouch on the chair lamenting about the full day you have ahead of you, get a notepad and make plain everything you need to do on a paper (electronic or print).

Creating a to-do list and checking them out after each completion not only gives you a sense of organization but self appraisal. Knowing and seeing all that you have been able to achieve gives you a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. It will help you feel better about yourself.

On the other hand, seeing all the things you are yet to do can motivate you to actually get up and do them instead of stressing your pretty head with worry and frustration.

2. Plan Meals Ahead of Time

Nothing as embarrassing as having your man or kids ask you what’s up for dinner and you’re scrunching your face in confusion. Not to mention the mental and physical stress that you experience from last minute dinner preparations and errands.

Planning meals ahead of time is a must for smooth running of your household.

Meal planning also gives you the opportunity to be creative with what you feed yourself and the people you care about the most.

Some of the benefits of meal planning include:

• You get to save more. This is because you already know what to buy, so you aren’t going to buy unnecessary things. Also, buying stuff from the market is a lot cheaper than buying them in your neighbourhood.

• It is time saving. It reduces the number of shopping trips you need to make in a day/week/month. This is because you don’t need to go back to the market to buy the curry and thyme spices that you forgot to buy, but suddenly need to prepare the fried rice you decided to cook at the last minute.
• Healthy diets for you and the family. Planning meals helps you to create a healthier and more cost-effective meal roster.

3. Calendars Make Everything Easier

You need to go to the market, meet up with the gynecologist, then pediatrician. Not to mention that you also need to rush down to the church to share flyers for an upcoming programme. Breathe. Get a calendar. Create events, and set reminders for them. Simple.

Calendars make everything easier. Instead of mentally scribbling down all the tasks and places you need to get to, create an event on your calendar and watch technology lift a heavy burden off your mind.

You can even go further by using a Google calendar so your phone will not only remind you about the dates, but also send alerts when it is time for each event.

Having a calendar helps you stay on top of everything you need to get around to. Its power and influence in accomplishing your tasks cannot be understated.

4. Have A Cleaning Schedule

Not everything needs to be cleaned daily. Some cleaning can be done weekly, some monthly. Organizing your cleaning on a daily, weekly and monthly schedule will help you break down the entire house cleaning into smaller, easier chunks.

Creating a cleaning checklist and categorizing the chores will help you to list out everything that needs to be cleaned in the house so you can enjoy a healthier and safer environment.

For example, you can create a cleaning schedule that looks like this:

Daily	Weekly	Monthly
Sweeping and dusting	Vacuuming and mopping	Dusting the fan and window blinds
Washing the dishes	Washing down the entire kitchen	Running a dishwasher cleaning cycle
Dressing the bed	Changing into new bedsheets	Rearranging your wardrobes
Cleaning inside the toilet	Washing the entire bathroom	Running a cleaning cycle for your washing machine

You can also link your cleaning schedule with your calendar. This way your phone can alert you when it’s time to do whatever cleaning you have in mind to carry out. Whether it is at the daily, weekly or monthly level.

5. Have A Budget

Getting your finances in order is a very important aspect of managing your home. Whether you’re living alone or not, financial planning is key when it comes to home management.

A lot of people receive salaries at the end of the month and finish it in the first week of the new month. Since they have to find a way to survive through the new month, they end up borrowing money and piling up debts for the next month.

Creating a budget will help you manage your finances, so you can move from piling up debts to having investments. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

Creating a budget isn’t so difficult and I have two helpful tips to help you manage your finances so you don’t have to start disturbing the people around you to help you with money. Life isn’t so easy for them too you know?

6. Apply a Scale of Preference

The oldest trick in the book. Applying a scale of preference is the number one rule towards financial management when it comes to money spending.

Women are considered assets when they can manage finances well.

Therefore, in order to become an asset to yourself and your partner, you need to become a skilled financial manager.

Create a list of everything you will need for a month then select the ones that are compulsory out of all those necessities. Doing so will help you to spend objectively.

When you create a list of your ‘needs’, you will realize that certain ‘needs’ are simply wants you can do without with regards to the budget you have to work with. It will help to reduce unnecessary spending and you can finally start your journey into financial stability.

7. Divide And Conquer

Divide your total income in half and lock it up in a seperate account for the first two weeks of the month.

You can lock money in an account for a set duration of time and no matter what, you won’t be able to get access into the account until the set time is up.

This way, you will have money to last you for the first two weeks and second two weeks of the month.

You’ll also know better than to spend without planning when you apply this method. When you combine this with your scale of preference, you are sure to stay on top of your financial matters at home.

I like to call it the ‘Divide and Conquer’ method. I hope it works for you too!

8. Create Personal Routines and A Pattern For Organization

Image Source: istockphoto

When you observe your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks, it becomes easier to create a pattern for personal routines.

Combine them with your other commitments like church activities or a book club you regularly visit, and other appointments like the doctor’s appointments, you’ll be able to create a personal routine for yourself.

Instead of mentally reminding yourself that you need to work out, go to the market, prepare lunch, wash the dishes etc, you’ll be able to easily move from one task to another without feeling overwhelmed.

Not to mention the fulfillment you get from ticking a task off the box.

Also, when it comes to arranging, having a place for everything will keep everything in its place.

As long as there is a shelf for books and a basket for dirty laundry, putting everything in their rightful places will prevent clutter and give off an organized atmosphere. Invest in boxes and baskets, then label them so everything can be stored away neatly.

You can also check online for professional home organizers that you can pattern after so you don’t stress yourself too much trying to create one for your home.

As a home manager, YouTube is your best friend.

When you find it difficult to accomplish anything, you can simply browse out how to go about it on YouTube and watch videos on how to do them. Easy, isn’t it?

Conclusion

Managing a home should be considered a full time job because it honestly isn’t easy. However, women have the super ability to do many things at the same time.

With the above listed tips and the blessed aid called the internet, I hope you’re able to manage your home with ease and still have time to pursue your career as a woman.

Goodluck!

All images are sourced from unsplash and istockphoto