Life Style

Home Maintenance - How to Avoid the Overwhelm

My tips for manageable home maintenance routines.

6 min

Today I felt like I just couldn’t. The house was a mess, my cleaning help isn’t coming this week, and I was so tired.

But I also don’t like a messy house.

As I forced myself to start, I was thinking - what can I do to make this easier? Here are some things I thought of and hopefully they can help you too.

  1. Start small: Pick one area of the house to start with. Choose the dishes, or one wash of laundry and focus entirely on that instead of all the million things you have to do

  2. Create a schedule: If you create daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly cleaning tasks, your home will stay in order and your daily chores will seem more manageable. My Ultimate Jewish Planner has a section dedicated just to this!

  3. Grab a Bag: I walk around my house with a bag and a hamper and collect garbage in one and the stray socks in the other. Once that is all picked up, I can focus on straightening up all the other things out of place.

  4. Plan a Treat: Have in mind what you’re going to reward yourself with when you’re done - a yummy coffee, cookie or piece of chocolate goes a long way!

  5. Train in Some Helpers: Make cleaning fun! My kids hate cleaning up, but sometimes I can get them in the mood with races or letting them hold the garbage bag. Anything that you don’t have to pick up yourself makes this a real win!

  6. Sweep it Under the Rug: This sounds weird, but when I have a lot of little toys littering my house I sweep them all into one big pile, line up all their containers and then plop down and sort. It takes a lot less energy than running around the house and bending 100 times to pick up each little thing,

  7. Admit Defeat: Kidding. Don’t do that. But be honest with yourself - if you really can’t manage handling a certain chore, then skip it! Embracing the imperfections will do you a load of good. My favorite move is shoving all my unfolded laundry in my office before shabbos so I don’t have to see it sitting there mocking me the entire time. My better for my menuchas shabbos!

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