My attention was caught one afternoon when my daughter complained about how difficult it is to clean her small dollhouse. After only a couple of days from previous cleaning, it was again dusty. I good-naturedly kidded her to imagine my own frustration at looking at how our own home seem to self-destruct with chaos days after a thorough general cleaning. 

To think that her dollhouse doesn't even have live people in it to make it dirty and yet it still needs regular cleaning. How much more a house that accommodates family members who will not always be willing to share in the responsibility of maintaining it? Family members should know that keeping a house in order is a shared responsibility. Not one member should solely bear it since everyone in the family gets to enjoy living in it. 

Here are some things which every family member should do to maintain an orderly home.

1. Pick Up After Yourself 

Very few people can claim to have a personal assistant who will always pick up and clean the mess they leave behind. Now, even if you do, I doubt that everything will always be smooth-sailing at the home-front if you will never learn to pick up after yourself. If every member of the family assumes that someone else will do the cleaning up after, imagine the amount of cleaning-up that needs to be done by the unlucky one.

2. A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place

Life at home is really much simpler if family members know where to look for the things they need. The secret is having a place for everything and making sure that everything is in its place.  It only takes one family member to "forget" where he or she has placed a particular item to create a need to literally turn the house inside out once it is needed again. Such a waste of precious time.

3. Clean By Sections

I know how ideal it is to be able to clean the whole house in one gigantic sweep but let's be realistic. It will not always be possible. In fact, to some, it is impossible. Thus, cleaning by sections is the next best option. The sense of accomplishment increases at every finished section. Besides, maintaining a home is a continuous process so by the time you are finished with the last section, it is probably time to start again. One way to go about this more quickly is to assign specific areas to every member, appropriate to age and capability.

4. Clean the Small Mess

The obvious reason for a big mess is accumulated small messes. Family members should avoid the temptation of postponing cleaning up small messes by reasoning out that it is not yet needed precisely because they are still "small". You may find it hard to believe how fast these small clean-up issues pile up. 

5. Declutter Now

One of the hardest part in cleaning up is having so many clutter that it becomes difficult to move around. Resist the temptation to just move clutter around the house. Face clutter one at a time and decide which items need to go. The ones that need to be kept must have a final storing destination so that the tiring selection process need not be repeated. 




My Say

Looking at the picture of our own home above, the state of disarray may not be very obvious. Believe me when I say that it is in such a state that my son who has allergy to dust has been having persistent allergy attacks lately. Believe me when I say that we cannot seem to find the things we need. Believe me when I say that the tall weeds in our garden are making it look like it has not been attended to for months. 

That said, we love our home but we know we need to exert more effort to maintain a healthy atmosphere especially since my daughter is still recuperating from her recent sickness. I do not exactly know what my husband and I can do more since we are technically maxed out from physical work. That is why we need every help we can get from our children. I'm sure they will not let us down.