Avoid a Messy House

The easiest way to avoid the problem of a messy house is to keep it picked up.

I know that sounds too simple.

What I mean is to get it picked up and just have it picked up and uncluttered as its normal condition.

So if there are times when it gets messy, it is not that big of a problem to get it back to normal.

The hard part is getting it to be picked up and uncluttered in the first place. You need to do the throwing out, de-cluttering and expend the massive energy to get it right.

Once you no longer have a messy house, uncluttered and picked up it is a more simple matter to keep it that way.

That is the key to the system. The only time it will be messy is when you are doing any type of project or you have people over or something like that. Once your home is nice and uncluttered you will resist all things that make it cluttered. You will spring to action to pick up when it gets a little messy.

Here is a list of times when you will have a messy house:

1. Christmas. The tree, indoor decorations and outdoor decorations will be very messy. Plus all the cords and now empty boxes. You want to start your decorating when you have the time to just keep at it. Otherwise you will have a mess for weeks. Some people do all their outdoor decorating the weekend after Thanksgiving. The weather might still be fine. This seems like the best time to do it.

2. Halloween. The pumpkins and other decorations. The costumes will be out. You will have that extra candy to pass out and then your kids will have a bunch of candy lying around.

3. Easter. Coloring the Easter eggs is a mess. You may have decorations, Easter baskets with that messy fake grass stuff that is in the baskets and candy all over.

4. Whenever you have guests over. If the people have kids, especially babies, they will bring their own mess.

5. When your kid's are working on a school project. These types of things are just another way that schools torment the parents.

6. Any remodeling project. The worst messes ever are caused by remodeling.

7. Painting. Brutally hard messes. You need to move everything. Cover everything. Fix holes, spackle, prime and painting at least twice. This takes a long, long time and it very frustrating. When you are done, you can't tell the difference.

8. Spring cleaning. Don't bother with this. It's too much trouble. Just keep at the cleaning little by little all year.

9. Crafts.

10. Puzzles.

11. Starting a home based business.

12. Going back to school.

13. Hobbies.

14. Sewing.

15. After a big shopping trip. You've got to take off the tags, file the receipts and put the stuff away. You get the idea. Any time you have something out that is normally put away it will create a messy house.

What you want to do is minimize how many extra things you do at any given time. And you want to minimize the time that you do any of the extra activity.

I was just talking to my mom. Her and my niece, her granddaughter started a big crossword puzzle last weekend. They set it up on a foldable card table in the living room. The two of them worked on it all last weekend. My mom worked on it all last week. Then the two of them finished it up last night. Then they did the gluing thing to hold it together permanently. Now they can put the puzzle away in the stack of the other puzzles they have done, take down the card table and my mom can get her living room back. If she wouldn't have kept working at the puzzle, the room would have the puzzle mess for months.

You do want to enjoy your hobbies and activities but a messy house is just too irritating to have for very long.

Once you start something you need to keep at it and finish what you started. If what you started no longer interests you then just quit doing it and put whatever you were working on away. Or throw it away if there is no chance you are going to do it. Put the puzzle pieces back in the box. Put the sewing stuff away. Put away the paint can and brushes.

That is why remodeling is so hard. It takes so long and is such a mess. It will be day after day of mess. Day after day of clutter. I just hate that.

I remember the weeks and months on end of mess for all the remodeling that my wife started.

It was really no way to live.

If you are going to remodel, go big. What I mean is attack it with the idea of finishing it as soon as possible. If you pitter and patter about, it will take months. Months of a messy house.

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