Brought to you by Airwick.
Remember when I shared how my house looks sometimes?
It’s how my house looks a lot. It’s mortifying, because when it looks like this is the time that people decide to drop in for a visit.
Never when it looks like this. Why is that?
How to create a whole lotta calm in your home
Earlier this year Airwick released a range of fancy-pants candles, Rare Scents, because they asked the people and the people said they like discovering new and exciting scents/smells/fragrances {I’m assuming anything other than stinky shoes is a win for most households}. They didn’t ask me, but I am one of those people. I like nice smells. I’m guessing you might too. I love the feeling when I walk into a room at home and it just smells good. It’s is a fun way to express yourself in your home and create a sense of calm. The fragrant experts at Air Wick have created two indulgent fragrances, Ebony and Madagascan Vanilla and have introduced a new summer fragrance White Amazon Lily. The Rare Scent fragrances are available in Freshmatic refills, Scented Oil plug-ins, Reed diffusers {perfect for the loo} and also in their new decorative jar candle. You can check out the ranges at your local Woolworths or Coles, and other independent grocers.
The scents help make your house a home, a sanctuary of calm and as a self-confessed candle addict {I go through at least one a fortnight} I have to say that I totally agree with the notion. It works for me. Here’s how I create a little bit of calm at home, which is important for me because I’m here a lot. I work here. I live here. I play here. I feel like I never leave {I do, but sheesh!}.
1. Master the speed clean
I have mine down to thirty minutes. At times when it gets chaotic and crazy, like in the first picture I know it actually doesn’t take that long to return to normal. Everything has a place and if not, there’s always the laundry basket trick.
2. Scent it up
So, you now know I love candles, but Hubby loves smelly things even more than I do. Metro man, or something. He’s forever lingering in the smelly section of the supermarket. So we’ve got smelly reed things in the bathroom, and plug in thing in our wardrobe. Even if the washing piles are threatening us from the laundry, at least the house smells good!
3. Tomorrow starts today
Each night I spend 15 minutes getting things ready for the next day. That means doing a blitz once the little people have passed out and preparing for the next day. It means a little less crazy in the mornings, which is good for everyone {cos ain’t nobody got time for stressful mornings}.
I try to clean for about 15 minutes a day (you know, apart from the dishes, washing etc). I focus on a living area each day. Our house is small so any clutter looks so messy. With two kids in the house I feel like Im always relocating books, toys, pencils and such back to their rooms. It seems to overflow! We have stripped the kids rooms of any old toys, or stuff they didn’t use, and that’s made a big difference.
Im constantly throwing stuff out too. If we don’t use it, or don’t love it, its out!!
But still, no matter what my efforts, the majority of days I get home, and it still looks like the house threw up on itself…..
Oh I am so relieved your house looks like mine a lot of the time! Nice to know I’m not alone – with visual evidence! 😉
I have a bit of a 30 minute cleaning strategy too. There’s sneaky ways to neaten up the mess without necessarily doing everything! It makes me feel better instantly and often spurs me on to feel motivated to do more. A bit of a kickstart, where even if I don’t do more than that 30 minutes, I still feel good.
I do everything in the morning(bake, workout, clean) when I’m energised(and wearing sweaty stuff)so I break up house work over a couple of mornings and do a quick tidy after night time showers. Otherwise its horrible to wake to, to come home from work to and I cant relax with a good book surrounded by mess!
It was harder when the kids were smaller though. Now a days they leave less of a trail of destruction and more a trail of personality!
I like your house!
Kamille
Our house almost always looks like that even with full time help. It sorts of validates having full time help 🙂 or it is because we have full time help. During the week there is a semblance of order, but come weekends and Monday mornings it is a real train wreck. We also have loads of nice “smellies” in the house. I love the Airwick Freshmatics
I’m like you I never leave home, well I do, but I also see it EVERY DAY! My hubby is against smellies in our house so I have to hide them – he always seems to hunt them down! xx
I always make sure the living area (open plan lounge/kitchen/dining is tidy before I go to bed. The key here is waiting to start this task AFTER the little ones are asleep. No point trying to tidy when they’re still playing and creating. It would be like raking leaves on a windy Autumn day!
The other thing that helps me is to fold clothes into individual piles straight from the line or dryer – no double handling.
My house looks like your before photo most evenings until 7:31pm 😉
I try to pack the week on Sunday. Ie as I am folding the washing I pack the swimming bags for tuesday, the basketball kit for Monday and Thursday, the tap kit for Wednesday a daily gym bag for hubby. I have about 15 of the cheap lingerie bags, white for child 1, red for child 2, black for hubby and pink for me. That way I never have to hunt for stuff on the morning.
I also have 5 tubs in the kitchen for lunches m,T,W,Th & Fri and after the weekly shopping I divvy up all the fruit and snacks needed to fill lunch boxes each day. This way all i need to do on the morning is make a sandwich and add the contents to each lunch bag.
This helps to keep the calm in the morning in our house.
I’ve always been a night before organizing kind of gal 🙂 School clothes & lunches ready, work clothes ready and as we own a cleaning business (thats a 7 day a week job !!!) I always make sure all the cleaning gear is ready to go as well. I tidy the living areas and NEVER ever leave dishes in the sink, I have to wash them that night, couldn’t bare getting up to dishes !! I fold washing as I get it off the line& put it into piles and put it away in everyones drawers as I go. If I haven’t got time to fold washing as I take it off, it stays out till the next day 😉 Its such a lovely feeling to get up every morning to a clean house. Oh and my hubs is against the smellies too, give him hay fever !!!
I have a basket for each person in the household (which I store in a cube bookcase that serves as a console table). At the end of the day we do a 15 minute tidy up and place all ‘found’ items in the baskets. Everyone takes their basket with them on the way to bed and puts their belongings in the correct spot. Baskets then go in the hallway for me to collect and return. This system really saves my sanity and has reduced the ‘nag’ factor considerably.
Looks exactly like our house pretty much always 😀 I am constantly trying to reduce the amount of stuff, which I hope leads to a cleaner house. Everything doesn’t have a place at the moment and I’m thinking that maybe I don’t even need those things. This is an ongoing process and even though I love our home, I’m secretly waiting to move (at some point we have to eventually) so that I could get rid of everything I really don’t need at once.
The most annoying thing are the baby toys and stuff in the closet. We haven’t had The Talk about baby number three yet, so I don’t want to get rid of them just yet. But they take so much space!
Its really great reading all the nerdy little tricks other mums do to keep their house operating smoothly and keep their sanity. I have some too but I think I am the only one of my friends and they make fun of me! (I know its borne of jealousy!) I use a weekly planner for the family, fill it out every Sunday night with activities and meals etc. I took one of those sheets and wrote up a list of jobs for each day (eg. Tuesday pack kids’ s bags for childcare, Saturday change towels) plus a list of daily jobs (eg. washing on overnight) and a time frame (eg. dinner at 5.30, kids into bath 6.30 etc). 4pm is the time the TV goes on and we start working our way to bedtime. I find my weekly planner a life saver and helps keep hubby on track (he’s great, but operates best under guidance). I note though that the system didn’t work very well today – he’s home with the kids on Tuesday and I came home from work to a bomb site, pjs still on the couch, dishes still draining from the morning. But we’re a world more organised than we were 6 months ago!!
My motto is “at least the house SMELLS good” because that’s #1 in my book. Who wants to walk into a stinky house? Not me. Bath & Body Works is my go-to store, so much so that I should own at least 1/2 of that place, it’s in my house, after all. But to make the mornings easier {I’m a bear in the a.m., so is my son. My lovely fiancee leaves for work before we awaken and grumble around} I make sure everything my son needs signed for school is signed, I make my fiance and son’s lunches for the next day, I iron my fiance’s clothes, make sure my son has picked out his clothes for the next day & sometime’s i’ll go as far as putting a coffee mug under the Keurig for me for the morning. I do all that the night before. If not it’s not a pretty morning & ain’t nobody got time for that.
I’ve been doing 15 minute speed cleanups! It works somewhat as everytime I try to do more than last time. Like a little game. Maybe I should try the 30 minute so I don’t die from exhaustion..
Ooh yes, putting a reed diffuser in our “powder room” (AKA toilet) has made a world of difference! We’ll never be without one now. I’ve also mastered the art of the speed clean when we know someone is coming over. Having said that, I spent 45 minutes last night cleaning up our bedroom because I couldn’t stand the sight of it any longer. Making the bed at 9pm wasn’t my brightest idea considering I was sliding into it less than an hour later, but I sure did sleep well!