This New Year cleaning resolution tips post is brought to you by as part of a Type-A Parent Community Sponsored Post.
Well, maybe these aren’t so much resolutions as they are a (somewhat) well-formulated plan of attack (PoA). A New Year’s resolution just seems like something you except to break. Everyone makes them. No one follows through on them. Having said that, I couldn’t come up with a better title so we have what we have.
Anyone who has been in my house (Sorry, house beinginners!) knows I struggled with keeping our house clean. It’s not even so much that I struggle. It actually feels more like a giant pink and green dotted elephant is sitting on my chest. Or something. I KNOW I need to pick up and clean and do the housework thing, but it all gets so overwhelming.
I have good intentions and then get distracted and before I know it, the clutter and mess has had litters of their own and basically it’s a vicious cycle I haven’t been able to get out of.
Then a couple of days ago, while I was warming up my coffee, I looked over at the open dishwasher full of clean dishes. I had a little less than two minutes before the nuclear machine was done heating up my tasty beverage and something just…clicked.
PoA 1: While I’m Waiting On My Coffee To Heat, Put Up As Many Dishes As I Can
I can hear you laughing right now. That’ s not very nice.
But here’s the beauty of this part of the PoA: I drink coffee constantly throughout the day while I’m doing my writing schtuff. That’s numerous trips into the kitchen where I stand around for two minutes doing absolutely nothing other than waiting for my coffee to get hot. Since I’m in there anyway and two minutes isn’t long enough for me to get overwhelmed, I work like a demon for those two minutes and then am rewarded with a nice, hot cup of coffee and a tiny sense of accomplishment.
Think of me as one of those rats in a Skinner box.
PoA 2: Bribe My Kids
This is actually awesome on a number of levels but let’s just focus on the cleaning level. We’ve been working on coming up with an incentive program to get the kids to do their fair share around the house. Since we’ve shied away from the allowance incentive, we’ve picked internet “free time.” Basically, kids do X for Y amount of time and earn Z number of seconds/minutes of free time.
We’re still in the process of coming up with the exact numbers and tasks but it’ll look something like this:
Put all of your dirty clothes in the laundry room during the week – x minutes/week
Take your dishes to the sink after a meal – x minutes/week
Make your bed – x minutes/week
PoA 3: Pick the Smallest Room and Clean All the Things!
I’m not even going to lie here. PoA 3 is the one I’m going to have the most trouble executing. However, the smallest “room” in our house is our pantry. It has three walls and a door so it’s a room. I don’t care what you say. I’m starting small here (literally) and going for one complete room a week.
The “experts” always say to give yourself small goals you can achieve, right? I can stick to these three.
If you have tips for me, I’d love to read them down in the comments section!
This is a compensated post brought to you by . Mr. Clean is kicking off the New Year with the launch of a new product called Mr. Clean Liquid Muscle, a new multi-purpose, multi-surface concentrated cleaning gel that delivers superior cleaning performance on and off the floor. Be sure to like Mr. Clean on Facebook and follow @RealMrClean on Twitter.
