Ten Minute Fix: Messy Room

I love loading the dishwasher. I’m weird, right? It’s just so satisfying. I can immediately enjoy the fruits of my labor as I gaze upon the sparkling empty sink. I used to have a problem; however. I couldn’t stand unloading the dishwasher. I’d always put it off to the point where the sink would be overflowing with dishes, not because I didn’t want to wash them, but because the dishwasher was already full of clean dishes I didn’t want to put away. The solution? I timed myself putting dishes away. It took two and a half minutes. Seriously?! The dishes piled up for so long because I wasn't willing to commit two and a half minutes of my day. 

A clean environment helps you relax and enjoy life more. If the kitchen is messy, cooking a good meal seems like an impossible task. If the living room is messy, it's harder to relax and watch Seinfeld. And if the bedroom is messy, the last image in your head before falling asleep is one of stress and disarray. Use this ten minute fix to clean up the mess.

1. Grab some index cards

2. Label each card with a room in your home.

3. Write down a 10 minute cleaning plan for one of the rooms.
This won't be a deep clean. It's just a quick list of the cleaning jobs hat can be done every day. If you want some cleaning ideas check out this list of 15 Minute Cleanups and just knock off five minutes :)







4. Next time you look at that messy room, just think "10 minutes". 
That's all it takes! Grab your card, set the timer and start cleaning. If it takes longer than ten minutes at first, don't worry. You'll get faster with time, and you can always make changes


The great thing is you can do this for every room in your house. In my family's case, we have 7 rooms to clean. That's an hour and ten minutes to clean the whole house. If you consider that not every room needs to be cleaned every day, and the work is split between my wife and myself, it's actually under 30 minutes for a typical day.