{via The inspired room}

Sometimes the house is a mess. It’s a common phenomenon. I happens to everyone at one time or another probably every day or every week or every month. Our homes get messy.

Sometimes they get messy because you have too much stuff and you don’t know where to put it. Sometimes a house gets messy because you just don’t feel like putting things away. Sometimes rooms get messy because someone wanted to eat again (seriously, why does it seem like people want to eat EVERY DAY? Sigh). Or things are a little unruly in every corner because you have kids or dogs or a family. But I think we can all agree that for whatever reason, messes happen.

I don’t make housekeeping more complicated because I don’t want to spend all day cleaning or preparing to clean or trying to keep up with my expectations. We just know what the necessary daily routines are and do our best to stick with them. Those daily habits mean our house stays “clean enough.” Not perfect, mind you. But good enough.

One of my favorite routines of all time is what we call a cleaning frenzy! I come home from work and clean like a madwoman.

Whenever our house starts to get a little crazy (and let’s just be honest it might be that way at some point every day) we stop what we are doing, pump up the tunes and start putting things away. It’s quite simple to get started, but it can be very contagious. You see one person around the house in a cleaning frenzy and you just can’t help yourself.

Pretty soon you too are washing dishes, grabbing stuff off the counter or coffee table and putting it away. And before you know it, the house is cleaner than it was 15 minutes earlier. You can step back and smile at how much tidier the room looks. You are amazed that it really wasn’t that difficult at all to clean it up and make it “better than it was!” You just had to get started!

So if you are sitting there right now looking at a mess (eh hem) maybe you should try a cleaning frenzy. In fact, let’s try a group project, shall we? I bet we all have a mess somewhere in our house. I know I do.

xo

M