Cleaning and straightening your house every morning can seem insurmountable. I found a handy dandy helpful hint that helps me every morning as I straighten up our house. Every morning when I get up amid the hustle and bustle of feeding animals, getting little boys hair straight, making up beds and seeing my family off I've created a philosophy that helps me get my house cleaned up easily. I call it cleaning to the middle. After I tell my babies goodbye, breath a sigh of relief, and drink my mimosa (I'm kidding! I don't sigh. Ha ha!) I start to straighten.
It's so easy to let straightening your house up each morning before work become overwhelming. What I would suggest is breaking down each task into smaller tasks so the whole job does not seem so enormous. First off if you can assign a few tasks to your children that will make your morning easier. Our boys know that they have to make up their bed and certainly because they are so young I help them, teaching them how to do it each step of the way. I must admit sometimes it would be easier to just make them up myself, but I'm not raising boys here I'm raising men. My sons also know to check the pool skimmer and fill the fountain outside and help with other smaller tasks like taking their breakfast dishes to the sink and cleaning up any toys. Yes, often I feel I've missed my calling as a drill sargent. One thing that helps your morning go smoother is also taking care of a few things the night before like laying out clothes and making lunches. My wife excels in this area.
What do I mean by cleaning to the middle? I start in the furthest corners of my house, usually the bedrooms, clean up all the bedrooms, then the bathrooms then the living areas and finally I finish in the kitchen around the kitchen sink. This helps me not be so overwhelmed. I take each round one at a time rather than scurrying about the house trying to pick up towels, blankets, pillows, toys, dirty dishes etc. One of the first things I also do after I get my morning cup of coffee is start a load of laundry. By the time I'm done straightening up it's time for another load to go in, and by the time I'm off to work it's time for the third.
My least favorite job has to be taking the dishes out of the dishwasher and loading the dishwasher so that's the job I save for last. Then when I'm done with that I know I'm done with straightening up for the morning. In all it only takes me about 45 minutes to straighten up our house each morning. On a morning when I don't do this and come back to the house I'm amazed at how stressful it is to start the evening off with the children in the house with beds not made and dishes still in the sink. So, remember when you're straightening your house in the morning make a small mental list, start at the edges of your house and clean to the center. I promise this will make straightening so much easier.
