One way to get into the habit of cleaning up throughout the day is to set a timer. It usually happens during different tidy up sessions throughout the day. I don’t do all of these things in one single tidy up.

(It feels like a team effort this way.) I’ll do dishes, vacuum crumbs off the floor, wipe counters, throw in a load of laundry, and pick up and put away stray items I see around the house. My tidy ups usually go like this: I’ll announce to my daughter that she needs to pick up the toys she’s not playing with while I clean up the rest of the house. For me, these two things go hand-in-hand. I declutter my house, I declutter my brain. Secondly, a 10-Minute Tidy Up prevents stress throughout the day. A 10-Minute Tidy is good for your health. I traveled to the home office last year and it was brutal to have to sit in meetings for hours without getting up and moving. The Benefits of a 10-Minute Tidy.įor one, after sitting there for hours, running around the house to do things gets me moving. I do this repeatedly every couple of hours –in the morning after breakfast, mid-morning after doing some work, after lunch, and again in the afternoon before quiet time. Once I finished, I’d come out and tidy up the house for 10 minutes or so. I’d focus on what needed to get done until it got done. I started doing this without realizing it when I would sit in my office putting together reports while my daughter went wild in her playroom. You can make your house tidier in under an hour a day by using the 10-Minute Tidy. But that doesn’t mean it always has to be an overwhelming, hot mess either. The house is never going to be completely clean when everybody’s at home. Distractions, not just by my kid, but all the housework are one of my biggest challenges. Despite the benefits of working from home, the constant urge to clean up is not one of them. It’s incredibly hard for me to concentrate when there’s a mess around me or when I know there’s something to clean up.Ī cluttered space causes a cluttered mind.Īs a work from home mom, I struggle with this. I’ve never been able to handle being surrounded by clutter. What if instead of leaving all the tasks for “later,” you started doing them sooner? As in, before things start to get chaotic? Taking care of a house is a full-time job (right, Captain Obvious.) But how do you go from always cleaning up to more time to do what’s important? The secret is in what I like to call the 10-Minute Tidy.

To tidy up