Tackling the Formidable

Those formidable areas in your home can be tamed. By breaking the jobs into small, manageable tasks, you can get ahold of these monstrous messes and keep them orderly for a long time. Very few people can just barge headlong into hard work, so I would suggest that you start with something easy and small.

If you have "one of those rooms" full of things you never seem to get around to doing, I would suggest you find small messes in other rooms, that are easy to clean up, first. Go around and do the small jobs, and you will work up the mental stamina to tackle the larger one. When you get to the larger one, clean out spaces, bit by bit, and don't be discouraged.

One of the greatest helps to home living and home keeping is the elimination of things. The less you have to pick up and put away, the easier your life will be. I have to shake my head in wonderment at the memory of my first years of homemaking. I had so very little--no bed to put a mattress on, no pictures, no decorations, no furniture, no dressers, but the housekeeping was so simple. Now I look back and wonder why I was so concerned about getting things. They certainly do accumulate, eventually, and if you aren't careful, they can clutter your house horribly.

Bedrooms in particular, can be a place where family members store more stuff, until there is barely room to sleep. After going around the house methodically, cleaning and straightening, and adding to that the summer responsibilities of watering plants outside, the bedrooms sometimes get only the left over time. These rooms can be dealt with in the method that is taught by many cleaning experts: just take parts of the room at a time and deal with them, until it is all done. Make the bed first, then sort things into piles of these "subjects" - paper, books, clothing, objects, other things. Put away each section, then vacuum.

I would suggest keeping only things that are being used, things that are of value sentimentally (your Grandmother's teapot, etc) and things that have meaning to you. Taking pictures of areas of your home is an effective way to analyze what needs to be kept and what needs to be taken out.

Today, you can go around and put your home in general order, and then if there is time left and you are not tired, begin on a larger problem area of the house, that is bothering you. Don't forget not to get too anxious, but stop now and then for a wee spot of tea and remember to be thankful that you have been enabled to do this job.

In a workplace, such as an office, there will be someone dictating your tea-breaks and your hours, and even the amount of work you accomplish. I've seen many hours wasted in the workplace, because of regulation, which de-motivates employees. Self-regulated people seem to accomplish a great deal.