Love Your Home
Client illness and frigid temperatures forced cancellations in my calendar recently, but it also opened up time to tackle some home projects. The projects were held hostage in my mind for quite a while. They included some cleaning with a repair here and there to finally bring a particular room or area back to life. One such area for me was the laundry room.
My laundry room is situated with access to the house via the garage. It has easily become the most neglected room in the house, but is also the hardest working one. It needed some love. Lots of love. Because it serves as the most frequently used access point to the house, it is highly trafficked. It is the first room that greets me upon arriving home on the best and worst days. It is the first room that welcomes me back to the sanctuary of home. It gets stomped on by work boots and snow boots. It receives the sand falling off beach towels after a perfect day at the beach. It’s the freeway from garage to house to retrieve forgotten and needed tools during repair or improvement projects. Being a laundry room, I can’t forget to mention that it houses the machines that wash and dry our clothes. The clothes that comfort us and those that make us feel good when we get dressed up for special occasions, and the clothes worn for the fun times and the sad times. That’s an important job. Full laundry baskets get dragged across its floor when they’re too heavy to lift. It gets spilled on, usually coffee, and literally gets walked all over day after day. Yet, it keeps on quietly delivering the highest level of performance it possibly can. It deserves better.
Do you remember entering your new home for the first time? With a blank canvas, the possibilities seemed endless, didn’t they? Choosing a color scheme, placing the furniture just right and memory making were all there just waiting for you. Moving into a new home is an exciting time. It’s a little like falling in love. You’re sure the feeling will last forever. As with any organizing (or cleaning) project, however, keeping up with it is key. It takes effort to maintain, lest you find yourself scrubbing the laundry room one day.
Time and again, I work with people aching to love their home again. Life gets busy, clutter begins to build, and things get shoved into places without the thought of a proper organizing system. The feeling of overwhelm takes up permanent residence. It’s time to shoot Cupid’s arrow to restore that loving feeling.
Stay in Love
A house acts as a safe harbor in many respects and is therefore worthy of our time and attention. It’s the place of memories, past, present and future. It is the place we think of when we use the word home. There are so many things that we can do on a regular basis that will keep us loving our homes. With minimal effort, organizing systems (just like laundry rooms) function at peak levels, clutter remains at bay, and we have time to enjoy lots of other things we love. Small and simple ideas can have big impacts. Here are a few examples to get you started:
Make your bed everyday. Yes, you’ve heard this one before. If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend you do.
Process your mail everyday. Piles of unmanaged paper create clutter instantly adding to the feeling of overwhelm. It takes mere minutes, seconds even, to put junk mail in the recycling bin or bills and other documents in a designated place to be addressed at a later, suitable time. A simple paper management system alleviates that quickly.
Clean dishes, glasses, utensils, cookware and anything else used during meal preparation right after use. This could be as easy as loading the dishwasher.
Put things back where they belong when you’re done using them. Such a simple idea.
Set up a cleaning schedule. Not all chores need to be done at the same time, so create a schedule that works best for you. Just don’t forget to include the laundry room.
Add touches of decor to your house that you truly love. Be very selective and include the things that make your heart sing and keep the love lights burning.
What would you do for love?