OK. 10:55pm, 3 days delayed, other Task complete, now this. To clean a bedroom with clothes on the floor, unmade bed, flower vase that needs water, paint brushes everywhere, laundry not put away and hijabs unfolded.
Step one is START.
Jumping off the bed ready to get productive I want to tackle this room. But instantly my mind is a bit razzeled… Where to start??? When in doubt: take Mommys rule of thumb. MAKE YOUR BED.
Making The Bed will give you an instant relief visually and actually because you’ve already accomplished a step to a tidier room. You could take this opportunity to change your sheets BUT that could lead to getting distracted along the way or get you too exhausted for the rest of the room. Your choice. For now I’ll extra tuck my fitted, dust the Jinn off and fluff my pillows. Side note: I spent about 7 mins readjusting my blanket- dont do this. Perfectionism can stunt this process.
LIGHTS and Candles. Now that the bed is made were ready to clean this room! I guess it’s somewhat a habit to correlate getting something done to turning ON the lights. In my room I keep a dim lamp as my primary room tone. I have a bright top light that I don’t use very much at all. I turned my top light on to SEE my mess and again it razzeled me up. So, Im deciding to turn that light OFF and keep my enviornment relaxed so that this task feels more choice, less “hardcore chore!”. You can make this decision for yourself based on your personality type or mood. If you are or are in a Bold, Get it done, Tackle it, Boom type – you may want your brightest light ON. If you’re a or in a ‘deep breathe, easy, breezy, cleaning is relaxing’ type you may want a dimmer lamp on. CANDLES? I’m fond of candles. I believe candles and incense create a positive energy for getting anything started. So light ’em! WARNING: If you have a mess of papers where your candle or incense or hot/fire item may go, clear that area quickly. Just move the papers. You don’t have to put them away or organize them just yet. Unless you want to.
Step…? Lost count already but we’re getting somewhere no matter what step it is. If you have curtains in your room, adjust them if they’re messy.
Step 6: Mental Check in. Maybe its just me having a short attention span but I want to remind us to stay focused. Reaching step 6, my room is starting to looked picked up and my mind is wondering off to the task that’s in the Kitchen. DONT DO IT! Stay here. Stay focused.
PICK A SPOT The trick to getting a room clean is picking one spot at a time. Wondering around the room picking up as you go doesn’t work for everyone. Pick the clothes on the floor, pick the desk, pick the dresser top. Pick it & Stick to it. Ill see you at the next step, gotta fold all these clothes on the floor.
CLOTHES & Whatever you Do, DON’T DO. Ok. My clothes are no longer on the floor, they’re on my bed. Which leads me right into to the DONT do. My clothes are on my bed but they are folded and ready for being out away. What you DONT want to do when cleaning your room is throw everything that’s undone on the bed creating a pile of “To Do”. This may seem like it works when you think “If I want to sleep I have to clean my bed first” but I’ve slept on a pile of clothes quite comfortably many nights. You may not steep that low but still I say a pile of the undone on the bed is a no! We don’t want to ruin our 1st step of VISUALLY seeing completion. When we pile our bed with junk we no longer SEE our progress.
Now, the clothes that I have on my bed are folded and are in plan to be off my perfect accomplishment ASAP. My Step 7 is- Put the clothes away. You can move onto Step 8 if you’re ready.
Step 8: PICK ANOTHER SPOT.
STEP 9: Keep picking spots until your room is SPOTLESS. See you at Step 10
Step 10: By now you may have finished with your room clean up or may want to just finish tomorrow. Either way Step 10 consist of REST. You did the work. You tidied up your space and that was the goal.
For now, blow your candle out, grab your book, sip some tea and read until your lids get heavy. You’re going to feel great waking up to a clean room. When youre ready to clean up some more you can follow through with these very same steps. Maybe we’ll get into detail cleaning in another blog.
Addtwocents 