• Are you ready to give your home a makeover? First, some general principles:
Tackle clutter first. Do one room, or even just one part of a room, at a time. You can’t see the dirt if piles of junk are in the way. Do this in levels. Start by going through all the piles and putting things where they belong or throwing them away. That’s the first step. Then always be editing. I’m constantly editing in my home, the same way I edit my wardrobe. If I notice something I don’t use, I get rid of it immediately, whether it’s a chair or a vase or a spatula or a necklace. If I buy anything new, the rule is that I then have to try to get rid of something old. This goes for furniture, makeup, cooking tools, toys, clothing—everything. If you can’t bear to throw away something even though you know you will never use it, consider giving it to someone you know. It makes it easier to part with something if you know where it went. I do this a lot, and I love seeing the girls in my office come in looking cute in something I gave them. Declutter as you go. Some people think it’s easier to just let an area get messy and then clean it all up at once. For example, when you have a baby, it’s hard to constantly be putting every single toy away. Find your own balance, but think about how much easier decluttering will be if everything gets put away as you go, especially kid clutter.
• Organize your cleaning supplies. Once you can see the floor, your desk, your bed, it’s time to start cleaning. Organize your cleaning supplies under your kitchen sink or in your bathroom or wherever you keep them. Scale them down. You don’t need five products that do the same thing. Put the things you use the most, like all-purpose cleaner and glass cleaner, in the front where you can easily grab them. Put the things you use less often, like silver polish and grout cleaner, in the back. Make this area nice. The under-the-sink area is usually gross, so clean it out. Get a plastic mat and some bins and keep everything neat. Yes, even your cleaning supplies should be clean!
Organize your cleaning tools. Your broom, handheld duster, and/or vacuum should also be easy to reach, so you can clean up a mess or a cobweb or pet hair at a moment’s notice. If your vacuum cleaner is dusty, that’s a bad sign! You aren’t using it enough.
Clean as you go. Don’t just clean once a week. Clean as you go, clean as you notice dust, clean when you see a stain, clean immediately after a spill. Cleaning should be something you do all the time, just a little here, a little there, so it never gets out of control.
• Create projects. Every weekend, find a short cleaning project, like cleaning the sliding glass door of dog nose prints and toddler fingerprints, sweeping your porch or deck, scouring the bathtub, or vacu-uming under the furniture. Once you get in the habit, it’s fun trying to think of new things to clean. Even now, with a housekeeper, I’m always cleaning up something.
• Everyone should help. If somebody lives in your house—family mem-bers, roommates—that person has to be responsible for his or her own messes. Nobody gets to make a mess and walk away from it. Be-ing a mom means you could clean 24/7, but if you give everyone in the house jobs and put yourself in charge of enforcement, they will eventually follow your lead. Don’t wait for everyone else to magically start cleaning up after themselves. This is learned behavior. Don’t tol-erate filth and mess. Set a good example.
Make sense. Everything in your home should mean something to you and make sense to you. You should love every room and your whole house should reflect your personality, taste, and preferences. If something doesn’t make sense to you, whether it’s a piece of furniture or a decorative item or the way things are arranged, get rid of it, move it, change it.
• Don’t forget curb appeal. The outside of your home is a reflection of you that’s shown to the world, and it is also the first thing you see when you get home. Is the lawn mowed? Are the gardens neat, or are the weeds taking over? Are the windows clean? Is the roof covered in debris? Are there dead plants on the porch in last year’s mildewed flowerpots? Sometimes even the wealthiest people have neglected home exteriors, and that makes a bad impression. They don’t have pride of ownership and it shows. Your home is your haven and your castle, no matter how big or small. It should be clean, neat, and kempt, inside and out.
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Excerpt From: "Skinnygirl Solutions: Your Straight-Up Guide to Home, Health, Family, Career, Style, and Sex" by Bethenny Frankel. Scribd.
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7 years ago
