Have you noticed that when you have guests coming over, you clean and de-clutter like crazy before their arrival.
You may even start tidying up visible areas in your home a day or two in advance.
You look around your home just before your guests arrive, proud of the cleaning and organizing you’ve done, and wish your home always looked this good.
And if you entertain on two separate occasions within a few days of each other, your organizing time was shorter.
You may also have made progress on another mess that you ignored previously because you just ran out of time.
I know this pattern well. My friends and I joked often about how our homes get so cluttered day-to-day that it takes an ‘event’ to clean them up.
When I really saw the upside of this pattern of behavior in my home, I made a decision.
I will purposefully invite my friends over to my home regularly.
We will meet at my place for coffee rather than the local coffee shop, or I will invite that family over that we haven’t seen for over a year (hey, the house was always too messy to extend the invite).
AND each time I had guests coming to my home, at least one mess in the house will be better under control than before. Not perfect, just better.
I felt less pressure than de-cluttering before a party or a family holiday event.
My friends — my real friends that is — didn’t really care how cluttered my house was. They were happy to get together.
Yet, I still wanted my home to look and smell nice before they arrived.
The amazing thing is, it takes much less time to declutter a messy area when your guests will be showing up in less than an hour, than if you assign yourself a leisurely Saturday for the task.
As a result of this planned entertaining, the main floor of my home got consistently neater and more organized. Cleaning and organizing the house before larger events became quicker and easier too. And, I solved our piles-of-shoes-at-the-front-door issue along the way!
This ‘Invite People Over’ method of decluttering works because when you invite friends over, you are setting yourself a deadline.
And it’s human nature is to be more focused on the task at hand – decluttering and organizing your home — as the deadline draws near.
After all, you’re not going to un-invite your friends last minute because you haven’t finished cleaning — you’re going to finish the cleaning.
By regularly going through this process of inviting friends over and decluttering your home before their arrival, your home will be neater and more organized on a day-to-basis.
You will feel good about your home, and less hesitant to invite people over.
You will likely notice spaces in your home that are persistent areas of clutter accumulation. Once you have identified these clutter problem areas, you can address them with a more permanent solution.
So, if your dining room has gotten messy and you want to clean it up, invite friends over for dinner. With our busy lives, there are always friends we haven’t seen for a while who would be more than thrilled to get together.
Kitchen counter needs tidying up? Invite a friend or neighbor over for coffee. Tidy up the kitchen counter before your guest arrives.
Then, relax and enjoy the time with your friends.
Yours in friendship,
Barb
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