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I love having a clean home but don�t love housework. I wish I was one of those people who clean for fun, but I�m not. And since I don�t have a housekeeper or a maid, I�m constantly dreaming up ways to motivate myself so I don�t live in a dusty pit.
One way to encourage myself is to change my way of thinking � from housework as a necessary evil to thinking of it as taking care of my home and my family. It is a very nurturing thing to do for yourself and those you love to ensure there is a clean and comfortable home to come back to at the end of the day.
Here are some of the ways I have come up with to make myself love cleaning.
I like to buy nice supplies. Baking soda and vinegar are my number one duo and I use these for loads of cleaning jobs, but I also love pretty cleaning products. Over the past year I�ve been using Mrs Meyers countertop sprays in geranium and honeysuckle, and bathroom cleaning spray in lavender. For not much cost these are a real treat and I look forward to using them.
Having a love for sparsely decorated and shiny clean hotel bathrooms makes me happy to use my Mrs Meyers sprays often (and 50/50 white vinegar/water for the mirrors) to achieve this look. And the more often you do things the less dirt builds up. For two of us I find once a week for everything is fine.
If there is something quick � a five minute job (and many are) � I do it right there and then. As quick as you can think of an excuse for leaving something undone, you could have done it. By the same token, sometimes I try to do jobs as quickly as possible, as usually I am quite slow-moving and meticulous which adds up to my cleaning jobs taking all day with no time left for fun.
Keeping cleaning supplies where I use them is very helpful too. If something is to hand I am more likely to use it which makes perfect sense when you think about it. We have two bathrooms and two toilets, so now I have duplicates so that all the products I need are in each room and I don�t have to take them back and forth. I also have paper towels and clean rags (large squares from worn out t-shirts are fantastic) in both bathrooms and keep them stocked.
Plain-scented wet wipes are kept in three different places which means there is always one available for a quick clean-up job or window-sill dust. They are also great for wiping along skirting boards.
I do my worst job first, which is vacuuming. I find it quite physically demanding and vacuuming also twists my lower back, so I do it in the morning when I feel most energized and also to get it out of the way first. Then mopping the hard floor areas, then it�s onto easier tasks.
I often think how it would be more enjoyable to clean someone else�s house than my own. Do you ever feel like that? Because of this, I can approach my housework as if it�s not my house that I�m cleaning and sometimes it even works. I think I�d make a really good housekeeper (although I would be very expensive) so imagining I am cleaning someone else�s house works well for me.
Taking pleasure in cleaning and making it fun and enjoyable is how I get through my housework. Do you have any tricks you employ to motivate yourself?