9 Practices for a Tidier Home

It’s proven that there are many benefits to maintaining a tidy home — less stress, more mental clarity, better air quality, healthier habits, and so on. We all want a tidy home, but we have too much stuff and not enough time, and it will just get messy again anyway. So what’s the point, right? I used to accept this mentality, but approaching life with a “what’s the point” outlook was not serving me or making me better. Nothing truly great can transpire when we cannot see the value in small, intentional actions in our day-to-day lives. The little things do matter. They matter not only in the outward action and satisfaction of doing the thing, but also in what the thing can give us in return — we are selfish beings, after all! 

So what does this mean for our homes? It’s taken me years of experience to confidently say that adopting a few simple practices significantly improved the state of my home and overall well being. In order to get different results in your home (or in life!), you need to take different forms of action — so that’s what I did.

Start by trying 1 or 2 of these for a week or even a month. Build up the consistency. Once it becomes a habit, stack on another one. Then another. It’s a slow process to retrain your brain and adopt new practices, but before long, keeping your home tidy (or tidier) will be automatic. Not only that, but you’ll be met with less resistance when faced with the everyday maintenance of your home. 

Everything has a home.

This is the cardinal rule of a tidy home. It’s what gives a tidy home its meaning — every item in its place. If we don’t establish this most important guiding principle, we won’t get very far with the others on this list. 

Take time to find an intentional place for each item in your home. If you’re living with others, it’s important to be sure everyone in the household is on board as well. Mail no longer floats between the kitchen table to the side table to the desk; it lives in the tray on the kitchen counter then immediately gets thrown away or filed once addressed. Shoes no longer come off wherever you happen to be standing when you take them off; they belong in the bin by the front door or in the shoe rack in your closet. Keys go in the wooden bowl by the front door (bonus: you’ll never lose your keys again!). Extra chargers go in the kitchen junk drawer when not in use. Toys go in the basket in the living room. Hair tools go in the bin under the bathroom sink and not left out on the counter. Each section of your dresser and closet is identified for each prospective item. You get the idea! Everything has a home. Please note, this process may take weeks to establish but ~best believe~ it is worth all the time and energy.

If you’re finding this to be a near impossible task, you may have too much inventory. In that case, you will likely need to spend some time decluttering, which is next on the list! 

Declutter.

Ah, decluttering. So much easier said than done. The act of decluttering quite literally means to rid your home of clutter and unnecessary items. It’s a simple concept at face value, but I believe the hardest part is defining what actually is clutter and deemed as unnecessary. From here, you need to physically remove the items from your home and change habits to limit items coming back in. This is a very grueling and personal process that I stress you approach with patience and grace. 

There are many methods of decluttering. The most common for beginners is the four box method: keep, sell, donate, trash. Slowly work through your items and put them into these categories until your space feels manageable again. Other methods include the ski-slope method (little areas of a room at a time vs. everything in one go), KonMari (addressing every item you own in a particular order (clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous items and sentimental items) then only keeping items that “spark joy”), the Minimalist Game (a 30-day challenge in which the first day to declutter one item, second day you declutter two items and so on until the end of the 30 days are up) and many more. Fortunately, there is a lot of information online that go into more detail about the decluttering process to lean on for guidance and inspiration. 

It’s important to note that there is no finish line with decluttering — it is an on-going process. Even as your home becomes more manageable, you still need to address clutter (items that are broken, outgrown, etc.) in the moment so future you doesn’t have to deal with it in the coming weeks, months or years. 

"If your stuff isn't serving you, it won't be serving you any better packed away in a box somewhere". -Melissa Camara Wilkins

Don’t put it down, put it away. 

It’s inevitable that our stuff gets shuffled around our home — we do ~live~ here, after all. The don’t-put-it-down-put-it-away mindset challenges you to take a few extra seconds or steps to return things to their homes before we reach the overwhelming OMG mY hOme iS a coMpLete diSasTeR state. 

Some opportunities in our home look like putting the lighter back in the drawer after lighting the candle in our living room instead of leaving it on the coffee table, throwing cans in the recycling after finishing a drink, putting the toothpaste and toothbrush back in the drawer instead of leaving it on the counter, hanging the shirt we wore for 3 hours back in the closet instead of setting it on the chair… the list goes on! 

If we take care of these items and address them as they happen, this will make a significant difference in the tidiness of our home and train our brains to make habits out of these intentional actions. Remember, the little things add up!

If it takes less than a minute, do it right away. 

This one is self-explanatory — stop putting off the quick and simple maintenance tasks (that take a minute or less) and do it right away. It’s very easy for these little things to slip through the cracks and be put off, but if we do that with every simple task we’re approached with all day long, we’re left with a feeling of overwhelm in our home at the end of the day. This has a lot of overlap with the previous rule, but this is more task related vs. item related. 

So what does this look like? Some of the more obvious examples are rinsing and putting your dish in the dishwasher when you’re done with it. Very easy to do in a minute or less. It is also very easy to leave in the sink. But if we do this all day long, we’re left with a full sink of dishes. Instead of dumping our stuff at the door when we come home, instead, try to completely clear the entryway with a few simple tasks that I guarantee take less than a minute combined: hanging your coat in the closet, putting shoes in the designated bin, dropping keys in the bowl, etc. Waking up from a nap on the couch to head out to a meet up with friends? Fluff the pillow and put the blanket away before you step out of the living room. What about wiping up the spilled coffee or rinsing the toothpaste spit down the sink as it happens? Picking up those 3 pieces of hard spaghetti noodles that didn’t make it into the pot that have found themselves tucked nicely against the cabinets (OK but how many times do I look at these before I actually pick them up LOL). If these sound like things that have been overlooked in your home and left until the dreaded end of the day, weekend or monthly house reset, this may be a good one for you to try out.

Clean as you go. 

There is some overlap here with the last one, but the idea is to address the messes and spills as they happen, and not to wait and come back to them at a later time. This is most typically applied in the kitchen when cooking a meal. As your casserole is in the oven, clean the knife and cutting board as it cooks. While you’re waiting for the water to boil, load the dishwasher. Wipe down the bathroom counter and sink after you wash your face and brush your teeth.

A bonus hack for this one is a little something called “lazy cleaning.” Don’t want to get the whole kit and kaboodle out to wipe down the counters? Grab a kitchen towel and use the excess soapy water from washing your hands to wipe down the counters. Use a few pieces of toilet paper to wipe the ledge of the toilet bowl. Use self-cleaning toilet bowl tabs. Keep a dishwand in your shower and do a little wipe down once a week while you’re already in there. The idea here is that quick, minimal effort is better than avoiding the task altogether.

Back-to-your-home bin. 

There is a saying that goes something like, “It’s better to show up imperfectly than to not show up at all.” We don’t always have time or energy to put everything back in its designated home the second we come into contact with it. A good compromise is to have a back-to-your-home bin. I’ve seen people have these in multiple rooms, one of each level of their home, or just one for the whole house. Essentially, if you can’t put everything back but you want a quick tidy, you can put everything that doesn’t belong in that given room in this bin to deal with it in the very near future. This can be something you empty out the next time you go upstairs or when you’re putting your house to sleep for the night (you’ll read about that one soon!). But as long as you take forward progress to identify and contain the items that don’t belong in a given room or area, the better off you will be at the end of the day — or honestly, whenever you get to it! 

Set a 15-minute timer. 

Have you ever put off a daunting task for days or even weeks, only to realize that it took a fraction of the time you anticipated? This one kind of feels like that. Whenever you feel overwhelmed with your space and feel like you need days to dig out of the mess you’re in, start by setting a 15 minute timer. There’s something about having a clear stopping point that makes it feel easier — like we can see the light at the end of the tunnel before we even start. Plus, starting can sometimes be the hardest part. 

Take this time to put things back where they belong, tidy one small space, declutter a drawer or cabinet in your home, or just clear and wipe down a flat surface or two. I think you will be amazed at all that can be accomplished in 15 minutes of intentional, dedicated time and what it can do for your mental well being and space. Oftentimes, once the timer is up, we have the momentum to keep going. 

This is an easy one on this list to start with. What can 15 minutes do for your mental clarity and your home today?

Do something today that your future self will thank you for.

We all have those days... Ah, I’ll do it tomorrow. That’s tomorrow’s problem. And some days, we need that. But what if that wasn’t the default mentality? 

We know how good it feels when others send acts of kindness our way or do something because they were just thinking of us. What if we extended this kindness to future selves? This can apply to way more than how we maintain our home too.

Steaming your shirt the night before you have that early morning meeting. Setting the auto-brew timer on your coffee machine. Cleaning out the sink before bed so you can walk into a clean kitchen the next day. Popping in a podcast while you cut veggies and meal prep for the week. While these examples are all physical actions in the home, they can correlate back to our mental well being. Nice crisp shirt waiting for you to put on in the morning? Coffee waiting for you when you get up? Walking into a new day with a clean space? Healthy snacks in the fridge and dinner ready to be warmed up? What a treat!

Disclaimer: I understand that this one may take some time to get to as there are definitely seasons of life where we are in survival mode and do not have the luxury to think about the next moment. Whether you’re working through school while working full time, acting as a caregiver or navigating a tough adjustment, it is hard to even think about the future when the present feels so demanding. This is being said, there is something so lovely about extending an act of kindness to your future self. Let this one be something to strive for if it doesn’t feel attainable today. You will get there!

Put the house to sleep. 

This is one of my personal favorite rituals. As cheesy as it sounds, it has been a form of self care for me at the end of each day. 

In essence, I like to take the time to get things back to baseline in our home before putting my head on the pillow for the night. What this looks like for me is folding blankets and draping them on the couch, putting the pillows back in the corners of the couches, wiping down the coffee table, assuring I have an empty, clean kitchen sink and shutting off all the lamps. Some days require more effort than others, but it all comes back to the simple, intentional tasks. Taking the time to do these things at the end of each day not only fills me with satisfaction, but I find myself sleeping better at night. Plus, it is glorious waking up each morning to a fresh start.