How to force yourself to be neat, or motivation to clean your apartment

If before each cleaning you “rise from the dead” with a drawn-out: “Get up, the country is huge, get up for the sake of death,” then you are simply motivating yourself incorrectly!

You may not like cleaning for many reasons: as a child, you were forced to do general work under pressure with tedious lectures; the activity seems like a waste of time to you; you work a lot and get so tired that you can only reach the pillow; you feel comfortable in your glove compartment, but you don’t know why; banal laziness and much, much more. Let's put aside the search for reasons and try to find a way to motivate ourselves to clean. But remember - the success of the enterprise will depend on you, your desire to at least try to change something, and your imagination (some methods will have to be properly imagined and visualized).

Get out when no one is home

Most people find it easier to put things in order when they are alone at home. Even if this makes it impossible to involve household members in a useful activity.

Don't try to start cleaning when you might be interrupted. Apart from unpleasant emotions like irritation, this will bring little.

It’s terribly infuriating when someone immediately makes a mess of everything that you just recently neatly tidied up. Or it interferes with wiping the floors, running from one room to another.

Where to begin?

So, you have already figured out how to force yourself to clean your room, you are charged with a positive attitude and are ready to get to work. What should you do first? We propose a procedure that, as practice shows, is the most effective.

• Write a list of the rooms you are going to clean. Let the first one on the list be the easiest, for example a bedroom or a bathroom.
• Close your eyes and imagine what the rooms in your apartment will look like after cleaning.
• Next, prepare the equipment you will use - a vacuum cleaner, mop, detergents, cleaning products, rags and sponges.
• Play fun, upbeat music in the background (but not a TV series!).
• At once collect all the trash, papers, and things lying around in a large basket.
• Vacuum, wipe off dust, wash the floor clean. Behind the sofa and under the bed too.
• Go through all the trash in the basket. Organize the things you need and put the rest in the trash.
• Allow yourself a little rest, drink a cup of tea or coffee.
• Now clean up the rest of the rooms.

Advice

While cleaning, try to maintain a positive attitude. Remember that only a home that is cleaned regularly is comfortable.

Make a schedule

Think about how it’s easier for you to clean: once or twice a week for a couple of hours or every day for 20–30 minutes. If you're not sure, at least try the second method. This way, the work front will stop scaring you, and putting things in order will become something commonplace.

For example:

• Monday: sort out clothes in the closet.
• Tuesday: wipe off the dust, put things on the shelves.
• Wednesday: wash the floor throughout the apartment.
• Thursday: Clean the bathroom.
• Friday: Clean the stove.
• Saturday: sort out old things on the balcony.
• Sunday: change bed linen, send things to the wash.

As a result, there are not many things to do around the house every day. And it will take no more than half an hour to complete them.

The main thing is motivation

Even the simplest activity seems overwhelming if you don’t want to do it. There will always be a lot of excuses and reasons. This is why proper motivation for cleaning is important, especially if you have to “generalize” the entire apartment.

Simple psychological techniques help change a negative attitude.

• If you have children in your family, think about the impact your attitude to order and cleanliness will have on them. Parental example is very important. It is useless to explain to your child the importance of regular cleaning if you yourself often shirk your daily responsibilities.
• A house is a reflection of the people who live in it. Think about whether the things around you create a special mood, comfort? Are they in the right place? Or do you want to leave your home quickly so as not to see all this horror?
• You will be surprised, but problems at work, in your personal life and even excess weight are interconnected with cleanliness in the house. It is impossible to lead a healthy lifestyle and think positively if there is chaos and dirt around. Agree, in a clean house your thoughts become cleaner and clearer, and your soul and body find peace.

Unusual techniques

If you are still not in the mood to clean and are wondering how to force yourself to do the cleaning, then you should try other techniques. You can use any option you like or even several at once.

• Invite your guests. You don’t have to throw a grand party; it can be a regular tea party with friends or work colleagues. Here, willy-nilly, in order not to fall on your face, you will have to clean the apartment.
• Rearrange the furniture. Psychologists say that you need to change the environment around you at least once a year. This has a beneficial effect on your mood and makes you look at your home in a new way. And, of course, during the rearrangement you cannot do without cleaning. This way you will do two useful things at once.
• Sports training. We put on a tracksuit, sneakers and start exercising. Stand on your tiptoes and dust off the top shelves. Now we train our arm muscles - we clean the sink, the stove, and wipe the table. Abdominal exercises: starting position – kneeling, wiping the floor with a rag (towards you, away from you, to the sides). We finish the training only when the house is sparkling clean.
• A method for the lazy. If you are completely discouraged, try to persuade yourself to work for just 10 minutes. Agree, not so much. To avoid accidentally overworking, set an alarm clock or timer. You will be surprised, but even in such a short time you can get a lot done. Liked? Try spending another 10 minutes cleaning your apartment.
• Extreme measures. If a lot of trash and dirt has accumulated, then the best solution is to use the help of cleaning service specialists. They will put things in order in your apartment, and you will only need to maintain it in the future. Another advantage of this method is that you can discover the secrets of quick, effective cleaning.

Advice

Instead of forcing yourself to clean every time, involve all household members in household work, including children. Responsibilities shared by at least three people will not seem so overwhelming and difficult.

Folk recommendations on how to force yourself to clean your apartment

If you don’t have the strength to clean the house, you can use popular recommendations:

• use a mixture of essential oils and soda instead of floor detergents;
• You can quickly and safely remove the smell from the refrigerator using pieces of black bread;
• Before you start cleaning, you need to clear the room of unnecessary trash - put dirty textiles in the wash, put things from open surfaces in organizers;
• to quickly and safely clean metal utensils, you need to boil the containers in water with the addition of 2-3 drops of soap;
• To quickly and easily get rid of stains on glass surfaces, use old newspapers or sheets of paper.

“Grandma’s” methods are quite effective; they help get rid of varying degrees of dirt without the use of detergents.

The use of simple and affordable equipment, as well as a good mood and focus on results are important components in cleaning a room. Before carrying out the procedure, you can draw up a plan, define goals and objectives that will correspond to the desired result. If you don’t want to tidy up, but you need to, it’s important to create motivation.

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Come up with an incentive

If you can’t just force yourself to put things in order, you can try to find motivation. Ask yourself: why do you need cleanliness in your apartment? For some, the answer will be the realization that it is easier to breathe in a clean apartment, and dirt and dust are harmful to children. Others see cleaning as an opportunity to give the body exercise. It is also believed that clean housing attracts good luck, happiness and prosperity into the lives of its inhabitants.

Waiting for guests can be a great incentive. Invite your friends over for dinner, and then, willy-nilly, you will have to clean up.

In addition, you can come up with some kind of reward upon completion of cleaning. Let's say, promise yourself to lie in the bath with an interesting book or eat your favorite dessert.

Possible reasons for laziness

Quite often we encounter a situation like “I don’t want to clean my apartment: what should I do?” Before looking for solutions and motivation, it is necessary to determine the reasons for laziness.

One of the main problems is lack of mood. You can create the right atmosphere with pleasant music, the smell of “cleanliness” and freshness, as well as a beautiful appearance.

Another reason can be considered overwork. Physical fatigue leads to reluctance to do anything. In this case, you need to have a good rest and create a plan for distributing responsibilities.

Floating state

Many people have probably noticed that once you start working, after a while you get involved in the process, and then the work is in full swing. It's like you're caught in a stream of inspiration. This state is also called “floating ”. Try to work for a while, making an effort, and then you may get into the flow and inspiration will come on its own. But if this does not happen, then you should try the following methods.

Getting rid of clutter is important

If you carefully examine your apartment, you will notice special places where trash multiplies at an alarming rate. Before you have time to look back, instead of one piece of paper, a pile of papers has already accumulated. Or where one thing was neatly lying, a whole mountain of “rags” has already formed.

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To end this once and for all, you need to get rid of unnecessary things. Usually this:

• old newspapers, catalogues, magazines, advertising leaflets;
• expired or unused creams, shampoos, balms;
• worn out, out of fashion shoes;
• socks without a pair, stretched underwear;
• empty boxes, bags, plastic cups and buckets;
• plastic bottles, empty jars, tubes of cosmetics;
• dried plants, flowers;
• outdated kitchen utensils (pans, pots);
• expired foods, cereals, as well as meat that has been in the freezer for a long time;
• old batteries;
• candle stubs;
• everything that is broken.

Useful tips

Be that as it may, establishing order and cleanliness is far from easy work. To make cleaning your apartment easier, use the following tips.

• Don't let dirt accumulate, clean every day. Many women put off cleaning until later in order to clean everything in one fell swoop. But the more garbage accumulates, the less you want to “shovel” it.
• Make a list of responsibilities for the week. If possible, distribute them among all family members. For example, on Monday and Thursday you clean the bathroom and toilet, on Saturday you sort out the cabinets, on Sunday you clean the carpets, etc. You can entrust your children or husband with watering the flowers, wiping the dust, and washing the dishes.
• Choose special clothes for cleaning. It should be comfortable and easy to wash.
• Make it a rule to turn off your phone, TV and Internet while cleaning. It's better to turn on fun music. This way you will finish your work faster and there will be less temptation to get distracted.
• Don't try to do many things at once. Objectively assess the amount of work and your capabilities.
• Always learn new, effective ways to clean different things. This will save your energy and time.

Remember that a woman is the keeper of the home. Who, if not her, can create an atmosphere of comfort in the apartment? Perhaps this is the most correct answer to the question “how can you force yourself to clean the house.” You just need to realize your feminine essence and role in home improvement.

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Combination

By the way, a good way to distract yourself from negative thoughts about the cleaning itself is to combine work with something more pleasant. You can listen to audiobooks (I prefer this method), turn on music, chat on the phone with a friend (if you have a headset, so that your hands are free and the work you are doing does not require close attention). And if you want to lose a couple of extra pounds, then clean your apartment at an intensive pace and supplement it with physical exercise.

The reason why you don't want to clean up

Before you start cleaning, you need to understand the reasons why you don’t want to do it. Each specific case requires a special approach in order to begin everyday affairs.

Attention! You should not force yourself and start cleaning by force - this can provoke depression.

Common reasons why cleaning isn't fun:

• overwork - often women reach that peak of fatigue when they don’t want anything, and, in their opinion, there is no point in doing household chores. In this case, you need to rest for a few days and cleaning will no longer seem like a chore;
• protest - this reason is one of the most common, since family members do not always help with homework. There is a way out - to involve all of them in cleaning, distributing responsibilities between them;
• Lack of free time - this is the sin of working women. Often they do not have time to take care of everyday life, so they need to use the “fly lady” system. Its essence is to spend no more than 15 minutes on cleaning every day;
• Laziness is the most unpleasant and common reason. To cope with yourself you just need to start, and then things will go as they should.

If you recognize yourself and the root cause of your reluctance to put things in order, then you also know how to solve the problem.

Make cleaning easier

It will be much easier to clean up if you don’t accumulate mountains of garbage, but do some small household chores systematically. For example, wash the dishes after eating, put dirty laundry in the basket, and immediately throw out unnecessary garbage. Teach yourself not to hoard junk: tights with holes or stretched socks are unlikely to ever be useful to you. Division of labor will also help here.

Another rule for easy cleaning: once you start, don’t get distracted. It is better to devote 15 minutes to cleanliness without switching to other activities than to run from the bathroom to the TV or computer for half an hour.

The main thing is not to turn this process into punishment. Try to tune in to a positive wave - in the end, you will still have to do the cleaning. If you are very tired or not feeling well, postpone it until the next day if possible. If you need to clean today, limit yourself to washing the floor and visible surfaces.

Even more household lifehacks:

Go paperless

Paper is an outdated format for obtaining information. Modern people are accustomed to reading the latest news in electronic format and even purchasing books from special services.

Firstly, paper editions of newspapers or literature will clutter up your space, and secondly, giving up paper makes you one step more environmentally conscious.

Buy a humidifier

Nowadays, many people are purchasing air humidifiers that minimize the accumulation of dust on various surfaces - from sofas to wall shelves. However, it is important to remember that the optimal humidity in the room should be somewhere around 50%. It is not advisable to significantly exceed this number.

Take a closer look at cabinets with glass doors

If you are used to storing dishes, books, decorative items and other things in cabinets, it is better if they are closed with glass doors. This will prevent dust from settling on all your things and help avoid unnecessary cleaning.

Try to change your bed linen more often

In fact, bedding should be changed every ten days, especially for those who sweat profusely during sleep. We must understand that a humid environment promotes the growth of bacteria, which we have absolutely no use in bed. Plus, bedding that hasn’t been washed for a long time collects a lot of dust, which scatters throughout the room when you shake it.

In addition, going to bed in a fresh and pleasantly smelling bed is a special pleasure.

Don't forget to ventilate the room

This not only helps refresh the space, but also directly affects our thought processes and healthy sleep. The thing is that when people breathe, they actively emit carbon dioxide, the concentration of which increases where there is no access to fresh air.

The increased content of carbon dioxide and lack of oxygen interferes with the normal functioning of the brain, so it is useful to ventilate the apartment.

• Author: Dmitry Petrosyants

Sources of inspiration and basic cleaning steps, planning

How to motivate yourself to clean? Prepare for the process, make a plan and determine the main points.

How to motivate yourself to clean your apartment:

• move forward in small steps;
• study motivational literature;
• have a positive attitude towards your own home;
• introduce an incentive system.

You can increase interest in cleaning through planning. Determining the main stages and keeping a diary allows you to relax.

Preparatory stage

Preparation allows you to get ready for cleaning and leisurely prepare all the necessary equipment and household chemicals. It is also important to collect large and small debris and wash textiles during the process. By the time cleaning begins, the apartment should be fully prepared so that there are no distractions.

Direct cleaning

The procedure can be performed partially or once. Long cleaning allows you to think about a lot of things and listen to music. A little cleaning saves time and prevents fatigue, while maintaining a clean feeling.

The final stage

A mandatory stage, which consists of ventilating and preparing the room for further occupancy. At this stage, it is necessary to arrange decorative items and create a pleasant aroma.

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