Get It Together!

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. Colossians 3:23-24

Most of us feel like there are areas of homemaking where we just need to “get it together.” Sometimes life feels chaotic, and we need routines and habits to keep those times to a minimum as far as it depends on us. Maybe you’ve tried methods that just haven’t worked for you. Maybe you’ve tried things that might have worked if you’d started doing them regularly, but you didn’t do them long enough to make them habits. Whatever the case may be, here are a few practical tips. These are things we don’t always think about, but they make an immense impact on how our homes function. 

1. Do your dishes every day! This is the most important thing you can do to keep your house under control. If you habitually let the dishes pile up, end that habit now. Get all the dishes done today, and then do it again tomorrow. You’ll notice that tomorrow’s dishes take significantly less time than today’s did. Do you want it to be like that every day? Then do the dishes every day. If you don’t have a dishwasher and/or you have a lot of people in your house, you need to do the dishes more than once a day. 

2. Beat the Clock- Set the timer for 10 minutes and quickly clean one room as fast as you can. To make it more efficient, have all the supplies ready to go, crank up some music (if it doesn’t completely stress you out… because… it does that to some of us), and grab your kids to help out. Dust, clean the windows, and quickly sweep the floor. You’ll be surprised how much cleaning you will get done in just 10 minutes. It’s a nice cardio boost too!

• A great alternative to this is to set a timer for five minutes and put away everything you can in that time. Don’t knock it till you try it! It’s surprising how much you can get done in a short amount of time. But only put things where they belong and not in a random or catch-all spot. Don’t just move the mess. Remove it.

3. Touch It Once- As soon as mail, school papers, work files, church flyers, or any piece of paper comes into your home, deal with it then. File keepsakes, hang artwork or snap a photo for your digital collection, write down important dates on the calendar, pay or schedule bill payments, file important documents, place magazines to read in their proper place, and then recycle or shred the rest.

•  A couple tips for making this work: Designate places for all these things to go so you know what to do with them when they come in the house! And if they’re things that are your husband’s responsibility, take them straight to wherever his place is. 

4. Each week, Dump your purse, diaper bag, gym bag, backpacks, coat pockets, or anything you use to transport your stuff. Remove all the trash, clean out the compartments, wipe it out and only put back in the necessities. Friday or Saturday is a great time to do this so at the same time you can make sure your bag is stocked for whatever you’re doing over the weekend.

5. When you realize it’s time to clean the car, if it’s especially dirty, start with just the center console and declutter and wipe out that area. If you have more time, move on to the glove box and front seats. Make sure to get the kids to clean out their own junk too. They can work on the back while you work on the front.

6. Clean out your wallet. Count your change, consolidate bills, and get rid of old receipts. Wipe off the outside of your wallet. Gather all loose change in a jar, and take it to the bank when the jar is full. Most have machines that will quickly sort, count, and deposit it straight into your accounts for free or for a very minimal fee. As a courtesy to your bank, make sure your change container has a large opening and that no one is putting anything in it that isn’t change. 
7. We recently wrote a whole post of laundry tips, but here’s a general laundry tip for you--Keep up with it! Do laundry every day if you need to (especially if you have more than two kids). And this previous tip bears repeating: If you wash and dry a load, go ahead and fold it and put it away. Get your kids helping. The laundry is never going to be done, but just having it under control gets you at least halfway to “getting it together.”

Some of these tips come directly from a blog/podcast called A Slob Comes Clean. Follow those for continual motivation to get and keep it together. More importantly than that, though, be in continual prayer for your stewardship of your home, and get help from your immediate and church family to stay on track and to get back on the wagon when you fall off. If you sufficiently try at one method and it fails, try another method. If one method “stopped working” because you stopped using it, try using it more frequently and see if it works better. Whatever you do, don’t give up. 

We will never have it all together, but God is pleased with our work if it’s done unto Him, and He’s displeased with our lack of effort. “He also who is slack in his work is brother to him who destroys” ‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭18‬:‭9‬. ‭So don’t grow weary. Keep working hard every day.

And don’t be deceived by what you see on the internet. Remember that in blog or Instagram pictures you’re only seeing one angle of one small part of some blogger’s house, and you don’t know that home’s spiritual or even physical state. There was a video going around Instagram recently that was captioned “Why bloggers’ homes look so clean” in which the camera panned from a perfectly clean and decorated kitchen sink and surrounding counters to the other end of the kitchen, which was piled with clutter, including dirty dishes! This blogger was admitting to deceiving her audience. This isn’t out of the ordinary for blogs. Go into real homes and get advice and ideas from the women in your church before and more often than you look on the internet for the same.