A place for Everything

"A place for everything and everything in its place" is what a good friend use to say to remind herself that everything in the house needed a "home" and she was right. Her home was alway immaculate. One day I called her to let her know I was finished writing my paper and would be returning her typewriter. She said: "Stop, don't bring it yet. I have already use the space where I had it with something else, I will call you back when I find a new place for it. " Wow, I thought, she does have a place for everything. Another thing she had going for her is that when the children came home from school they became her troop doing chores around the house before they could start with other activities. She taught her children to work hard. They had to "pay to play" and if they went to school without making their bed or left a room or bathroom messy she would pick them up at the school to get them home to clean and take them back. It almost never happened! 

From another family I learned to have a set time to read the scriptures or it never happens. Their time was 8:30 p.m. Every night, except for Fridays and Saturdays, everything stopped at 8:30 p.m. to read the scriptures. They said a family prayer and went to bed. I don't know why I didn't pick up on those habits myself. 

I am one of those people who can’t focus on doing just one thing at a time and that is why my house was always messy. Always! And when I think of my genetic make-up I know ADD runs in my family for sure so since I seem to have been born with a strong gene for messiness, reading any book or articles on keeping your home clean and organize is very inspiring to me. 

Today I woke up with the urge to clean and that is rare in me but when I do get in the mood to clean and organize, there is nothing that can stop me. This sort of phenomenon only happens occasionally. Yep, I'm one of those folks who cleans big at various times during the year rather than simply keeping things tidy at all times and in all places. Today I feel thankful for patient people who love me anyway!

I can think of friends who had their homes immaculate all the time no matter what time of day or night and as I remember them, they follow certain rules spoken in an article I am sharing. This is in summery what it said: 

1.    Tidy People don’t act like a slob all day, and then get their house tidy one fell swoop. Tidy people are smart and know that cleaning up all at once is hard and not fun. The number one thing I’ve learned from Tidy people is how valuable it is to develop some simple, non-drastic, tidy habits that when added together will change the level of tidiness in your home. Tidy People are in a constant state of low-grade tidying, I don’t even think they realize it.  

2.    Tidy People don’t run out of cleaning supplies. They find cleaning products they love and they stock up. 

3.    Tidy People never let the sun go down on their filth. They know they have to do it anyway, better now than later. That means no watching TV or any recreation activity until the kitchen is clean. 

4.    Tidy People don’t store things on the floor. From the big decorative baskets filled with throws to the backpacks that never seemed to make it to their place. Do let anything stay on the floor for too long. 

5.    Tidy People don’t over decorate. They value a cleared off surface more than a highly -decorated surface. Over the years, I have learned that having a bunch of pretty small things all over every surface of the house was only making my life more stressful.  I am not tidy by nature but reminding of things tidy people don’t do somehow motivates me to pay a little attention to making life a little easier for me and my husband who is known to have OCD tendencies because he hates disorder. 

Con amor,

Vero

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