Do you ever ask yourself how some people always have a clean house? It’s not because they spend all day every day on their hands and knees scrubbing floors and counters.
Maintaining a clean home goes beyond Clorox spray and a sponge. The secret to having an organized and tidy home is to incorporate small habits into your daily actions. These acts can make a significant difference in transforming your home into a well-organized, always-ready-for-guests haven.
Here are 20 easy habits you can adopt to keep your home organized, clean, and tidy.
20 House Organization Ideas for a Tidy, Clean Home
Having a clean, tidy home obviously has aesthetic benefits, but it also provides psychological benefits.
According to research, a tidy home can help lower stress while also improving your ability to focus. In short, a clean home is a happy home, in literally more ways than one.
Make your bed every morning
Making your bed is not just about maintaining a tidy home; it’s a fundamental element in cultivating a productive day.
This simple habit not only contributes to the overall cleanliness of your living space but also sets a positive tone for the day ahead, creating a foundation for increased productivity and success.
It only takes a few minutes and it’s the one thing you can control each morning in your home, regardless of what the day brings you.
Give everything a dedicated space
If there’s one fundamental rule for maintaining a consistently organized space, it’s to assign a dedicated place for everything in your home.
If you have a dedicated space for your items, they’ll be easy to find but also easy and quick to put away when you’re done using them.
Items without a home or not in their proper storage space become piles of clutter. If you always have a place for your items and you put them away, you won’t have clutter.
The principle is simple, but the practice of putting everything where it belongs after use is what can be tricky to make into a habit.
Clean out your fridge weekly
Without realizing it, your fridge can accumulate food particles, dirt, and dust.
Keep your fridge neat and tidy by cleaning it weekly.
The easiest way to do this is to make a habit of cleaning it when you do your weekly grocery shopping. Before restocking any new items, discard expired or rotted foods, and give any shelves or food storage containers a quick wipe with a damp towel.
Tidy up before bed
Before winding down each night, invest a few minutes in tidying up your frequently used rooms in your home.
Engage in small, impactful actions such as stowing away toys, neatly hanging coats, or straightening up your home office.
When you wake up the next day and things are already in their place, you’ll appreciate this small effort.
Tidying up every night also help prevent clutter from accumulating during the week, minimizing your weekend cleaning workload.
Wipe Your Surfaces
Regularly wipe the surfaces in your home. This means mirrors, kitchen counters, and shower doors.
After every shower, I take an extra 60 seconds to clean our shower door with this squeegee to prevent those pesky water stains and hours of scrubbing down the road.
A quick spray on kitchen counters adds a little sparkle, but it disinfects them, too.
Purge your closet regularly
Don’t wait until spring to clean out your closet. The secret to having an organized closet with easily accessible clothing that you love is to clean it out and donate items regularly.
If you haven’t done this in a while and you’re due for a big closet cleanout, you’ll likely need to dedicate a few days to this organization project. After that, get into the habit of smaller cleanouts each month, quarter, or season.
Avoid Clothing Piles
Most of us have that chair, dresser, or floor area that serves as a dumping ground for that that shirt you decided not to wear or those jeans you changed out of before putting on pajamas.
Try to avoid creating these, or at least return your items where they belong at the end of every day before you go to bed.
Apply the One in One Out Rule
To prevent overcrowding in your home, apply the one in one out rule.
When you buy a new item, immediately toss, recycle, sell, or donate the older version to prevent accumulation of multiples and junk.
Put Away Your Shoes
Your entry is the first thing all guests see, and when there are piles of shoes at the door, it immediately feels like chaos.
If there are shoes that you’re not immediately wearing, put them in your closet where they belong.
If you’re a no shoes house, line shoes up in an orderly fashion near your front door if you don’t have a front closet or mudroom.
Tidy up your Couch
Your living room can get an instant glow-up by tidying up pillows and blankets on your couch and armchairs.
Keep counters clear
Keep large surfaces in your home like kitchen counters, dining tables, and entry tables clear of clutter.
They’re easier to clean this way, and provide a more visually pleasing, “always tidy” appearance.
Toss junk mail immediately
I don’t know about you, but no matter how many unsubscribe lists I’m on, junk mail still finds its way into our mailbox and ultimately into our home.
Toss all junk mail and brochures immediately to avoid paper pile up on counters or in drawers.
Don’t accumulate dirty dishes
As hard as it may be, try to clean your kitchen and wash the dishes after you’re done cooking.
Dirty dishes always look like a disheveled mess, and the longer they sit dirty, the harder they are to clean.
Take the extra 5-10 minutes (while you’re already up!) to load the dishwasher or wash your pots and pans.
Have a dedicated entry dumping space
It’s easy to plop your handbag or keys on a table after a long day.
Invest in a dedicated dumping area for these items that can otherwise quickly look like clutter.
An entry table with drawers is my personal favorite to conceal mail, keys, dog leashes, and purses. We also have a key holder like this in both our LA and NYC homes.
Organize your kitchen
The kitchen is easily one of the heavily used rooms in the home, so it’s important that it’s functional and organized.
I’m a firm believer that when your kitchen is organized, you’re more inspired to cook in it and enjoy the process.
Declutter your kitchen cabinets, organize your spice jars, and label bins for snacks and dry goods by category in your kitchen pantry.
Invest in storage pieces and use labels
Regardless of which room in your home you’re looking to organize, you can always benefit from investing in storage solutions and using labels.
Prior to organizing your room, make sure to discard whatever you don’t want first. This way, you’re only organizing the stuff you actually use.
Here’s a short list of some of my favorite organization and storage pieces:
- Clear Plastic Storage Bins.These storage bins are super versatile. I use these in our kitchen, but you use them anywhere
- Woven Bins with Liners. These aesthetically pleasing bins work great for closets, play rooms, and living rooms where they may get high visibility.
- Spring-Loaded Bamboo Dividers. These are perfect for separating larger sections in kitchen drawers, and once they’re in, they’re sturdy and don’t wiggle.
- Spice Labels. There’s something so soothing and gratifying openings a cabinet or drawer full of coordinating spices.
- Shelf Dividers. Use these to section clothes on closet shelves, separate purses, or to store lids for pots and pans and trays vertically.
Eliminate junk drawers
The junk drawer means well. Although its meant to hide miscellaneous items that you want to quickly get off the counter, we all know it turns into a black hole.
Eliminate the junk drawer. You’ll be surprised to find when you don’t have one, you won’t have junk to put in it.
Get a vacuum you love
Look, for the most part, I don’t think anyone has vacuuming on their list of favorite things to do. Although I admit, sometimes it can be therapeutic.
But purchasing a vacuum that you love that truly be a game changer when you need to clean up a mess or do a quick sweep through the house.
My recommendation is the Dyson Cordless vacuum. Although an investment, there are a variety of models and different price points, the most affordable being the Dyson V8 Cordless Vacuum.
This vacuum is lightweight, has a small footprint for small space storage, and since its cordless it feels a lot less like a chore taking it out to use.
Establish a cleaning cadence
The key to having a home that always looks organized and tidy is to practice tiny habits each day. But it’s also important to create a cleaning system for larger rooms and deeper cleaning sessions.
Whether your set aside time each week to tackle this or hire help, find a cleaning cadence you can stick with.
Implement The One Minute Rule
I recently learned about The One Minute Rule. It’s the idea that if a task takes 60 seconds to complete, it should be done immediately.
You’ll notice that a lot of these habits for a tidy home can be done in 60 seconds, like spraying down counters, making your bed, and returning items to their proper spots after use.
As you go through your day, if an organization task takes under a minute – do it immediately!
