Trying to figure out how to keep a clean house?
There’s more to being clutter-free than the requisite sweeping and mopping. A truly clean house can only be achieved when you establish easy-to-follow systems that prevent the buildup of clutter and keep your home free of both dirt and distractions.
Here’s a proven 3-step system for preventing clutter before it starts and creating the kind of peaceful, organized house you’ve been dreaming about:
Step one: Assign homes within your home
The first step to decluttering is to assign every object in your home its own home.
This means that everything – from a pair of scissors to an old stack of photos – has a home where it “lives” and where it’s meant to be.
Items without homes quickly turn into random clutter that makes your house look disorganized. Invest in organizing bins, toss what you don’t need, and feel free to make use of a good old-fashioned label gun when creating homes for everything you own.
Step two: Digitize your documents
The second answer to the question of how to keep a clean house is to digitize your paper documents.
Paper is a huge culprit in keeping homes cluttered and disorganized. Bills pile up, stacks of receipts line the kitchen table, and before you know it, your home looks more like a disorganized office than an inviting place to relax.
Use a service like Shoeboxed to quickly and easily scan your paper documents. Simply snap a photo of each document with your smartphone, or drop piles of paper into Shoeboxed’s Magic Envelope.
The company will digitize all of your paper documents into data within a secure account without you having to do any heavy lifting.
What’s more, the digital versions of your documents are legally binding, allowing you to scan and then recycle 90% of the paper in your house – even bank statements and tax records!
Step three: Create ongoing systems
Assigning homes within your home and digitizing your paper documents will clear out any remaining clutter and give you the truly clean home you’ve been looking for.
But how do you prevent clutter from coming back?
You need to create ongoing systems that make it easy for you and your family to keep the house clean.
Look at the items that most frequently clutter up your living room, dining room, office, or bedroom. Then, create specific systems that dictate where the item should be at all times, whether it’s being used or not.
For instance, you could create systems for how to handle paper receipts every time you get one. You might scan them to your Shoeboxed account, file them in a specific folder, or recycle them.
Another system that works well for keeping a clean house is to establish specific “drop zones” for items like shoes, purses, and coats.
It’s practically impossible to learn how to keep a clean house if your cleaning efforts stop with the mop and broom.
Dig deeper to create systems of organization that prevent clutter, make papers go “poof!”, and give you the kind of organized home you’ve been longing for.