The Key To Finally Mastering Organizing Is To Embrace Your Laziness

Let's face it: Most of us are messy because we're lazy. After a long day of work or school, the last thing you want to do is put on a pair of scrubbing gloves and begin to deep clean your house. Instead, you want to plop on the couch, put on a comfort show, and scroll on your phone. While understandable, it also leads to a pretty untidy house. If you're tired of the mess but don't foresee donating a few hours a day to scrubbing, then it's time to lean into the laziness and create systems around it. This will create easier cleaning habits that will lead to a spotless home.

What does that look like? It's going to be different for each person, but it requires you to look at your biggest messes and figure out why they happen. For example, if you always have old clothes littering the side of your bed, you might discover that the root cause is you changing into your PJs by your bed but the hamper is in the bathroom. So the solution is to put an aesthetic hamper right next to your bed. You'll still be tossing your clothes in the same vicinity, just this time they will go into a basket rather than the floor! Here is a closer look at the lazy cleaning hack. 

Professional organizers know that this cleaning hack is the key to changing how a household runs. Most people don't break their bad habits, so it's unrealistic to expect a household to become tidy overnight. Instead, you implement systems that work within those bad habits. For instance, if you use reusable cloths in the kitchen, put a bin under the sink to capture the dirty ones. This will keep you from leaving the soiled ones out on the countertop. Similarly, if your kitchen table is far from your dishwasher — which is why you leave dirty dishes on the table more times than not — then put an aesthetic bussing bin on the table. You can contain your mess in there, and move the bin to the sink once you're ready. 

What if the mess is in your living room? There are plenty of similar hacks you can employ. If you take off your socks while watching TV after work, put a decorative basket by the couch where you can throw them in rather than the floor. In fact, you can use the basket system for all sorts of other things. If you have kids who like to leave clutter wherever they go, dedicate one basket per child and toss their items into their containers. At the end of the day, have them unload those items back into their room. If you follow this cleaning hack, your home will always be tidy.