Do you ever get interrupted while cleaning? What do you do when you can’t keep up with housework? How do you find the motivation to clean when overwhelmed by life’s curveballs?
Sometimes, getting your life back on track is hard, and cleaning a neglected house can be harder.
Today, we’ll show you how to catch up on cleaning when life gets in the way of tidying up your home.
Listen: Interrupted While Cleaning
Watch: Interrupted While Cleaning
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.
Have You Ever Been Interrupted While Cleaning?
Have you ever been interrupted while cleaning? Well, no, of course not. No one ever gets interrupted while cleaning, right? Well, that’s a lie. Here is a beautiful story about being interrupted while cleaning. And there’s an interesting message here because this might apply to you.
She says, “I’m still dealing with going through my mother and my mother-in-law’s things from 2007. We were too busy to do it then along with trying to sell their homes. Then my husband got sick and I was so busy taking care of him that I didn’t have time to clean. Well, my husband passed in 2017, and my daughter and I began to clean the house. She focused on her room which was overwhelming, and I worked on the filing cabinet. Between those two areas, we took 20 bags of shredded paper out of the house then her boyfriend proposed.
Well, wedding plans were mixed in with routine life and there was still more to do, but the wedding gifts go to the bride’s house. It took three carloads to deliver the gifts to their house, where they’re still stacked in a spare bedroom nearly a year later.
I managed to get boxes divided into two rooms, and I put the bed in one room with some lamps together. And one of the rooms for storage. Now, at least the living areas, my bedroom, and the kitchen were somewhat orderly. Well, I recently had surgery and after another seven weeks of recovery, I get to go home, but I’m going to block out time as you said and go through those things and decide what is trash and what is a treasure.
Over the past three years, I’ve learned one reason for a clean home. Yes, do it for yourself but also do for your loved ones who need to be able to find things when you’re no longer here. They’ll already in mourning and have to sort through your stuff to find important papers, and that adds to the stress.”
Life Will Always Get in the Way
So, this is important for a lot of reasons. One of the things I like best about it was the constant barrage of interruptions. Again, life gets in the way.
First, it was ailing parents then it was the death of parents. Then it was a sick husband then it was the death of a husband. And then a marriage proposal. Then what happens?
It didn’t say this, but there are probably grandkids on the way. There are probably hobbies, school, babysitting and other things that are about to be interrupted again. And then her own surgery and her own health and wellness.
Life’s Events Will Interrupt Your Big Projects
So, there’s a series of life events that will constantly interrupt your big projects. And one of the things that is incredible about this particular email is the awareness that we all have things we could downsize. So, stop today, and think about the house that you live in right now. Is there an area in that house that has a treasure room?
A room where you put things that are too good to throw away, but you’ll never use them again. It might be a computer that you’ve upgraded to the latest model. And so, you keep the old computer as a backup in case your new computer ever breaks. Maybe you’ll use it again, probably not, but you still have it.
Go Through Your House and Downsize
So, go through the rooms of your house first, mentally, and then physically go through and remove some of those things. Do you have a closet of clothes that you’re not wearing right now? They’re perfectly good clothing. They still fit you. And yet you haven’t worn them in six months or maybe a year, it could be time to let go of some of those things.
Do you have clothes from a time when you went to work every day and you wore a suit and a tie? However, now that the COVID era has hit and everyone is working from home, you’re wearing shorts and a tank top every day. Could you get rid of some of those suits? Could you get rid of some of that stuff if your life has changed and you’re not going back into that world? I too have clothes that I don’t wear. I wear this outfit every day. So, I too could go through my closets and get rid of more stuff.
A Lot of People Can Go Through Their Offices to Clean it Out
How about your office? I know lots of people have home offices right now that are becoming the most used room of the home. Because people have moved from the COVID era back to their homes,. Now they are working from home and there’s all this weird stuff in their office that was moved in there or stored in there.
And now they’re trying to work around it while they’re trying to actually run a business. Is there stuff in your office that you could get rid of because you don’t use it?
Go Through Your Kitchen Too
How about in your kitchen? What is inside your kitchen drawers? And I have to ask that because I’m guilty of having a lot of serving spoons. Now, there was a time in my life where I had lots of parties and had lots of people over. I have this great big, massive island in my kitchen where we put all kinds of food and every food container needed a serving spoon.
So imagine how many serving spoons that I have. It’s probably close to 200 or 300 serving spoons that I have at my house right now. Well, now we’re in a COVID era and I don’t have 300 people coming over to my house. I probably don’t need 300 serving spoons.
Either I could get rid of some of them or box them up and put them away. I don’t need them in my kitchen because 300 people with 300 plates of food are not coming right now. That’s not going to happen.
What Do You Have in Your House?
Think about it, what do you have in your house? What do you have that you no longer need, want, or use that would be challenging if someone else came in and took after you, if you were to die or if you were to go into surgery or if you were to get married and up and move away from home and leave it all behind?
What follows you and what is there that you could be responsible for and you could say, “Hey, I’m done with this in this life. Let me go ahead and pass it on or move on from it so that my family doesn’t have to deal with that as one of their responsibilities after I move on and I go somewhere else“?
You Might Get Interrupted If You Switch Businesses
Now, the nuance is this. It’s possible that you’re just switching businesses. As you get involved in this new business, your attention is going to that and not cleaning your house.
So, the special projects for this and the rest of the summer, are to go through those little areas of your house, clean everything out. If it’s weight equipment that you’re not using, maybe you have an exercise ball, or you have some of those kettle balls or whatever.
We all have stuff that we’re not using that we once bought with the best of intentions. Now is the time to clear the slate and get rid of all that stuff.
Resources
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Don’t Let Your Stuff Suffocate You! Simplify Your Life & Free Your Space – http://amzn.to/2ws0cRR
21 Letters on Life and Its Challenges – https://amzn.to/2BEDh9q
The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact – https://amzn.to/2VaZWPW
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones – https://amzn.to/2GIHDOD
Less Mess Less Stress: Minimalist Routines to Declutter Your Environment, Unload Your Mind and Optimize Your Day – http://amzn.to/2uq0KWy
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