My house is not clean.  I would not encourage you to eat off my counters or my floors.  If you sit on my furniture, you will most likely be taking home a souvenir of dog hair on your clothing.  Do I wish I had a clean home?  Yes!  However, I don’t have the time to constantly clean it.  Because after all, the key to a clean home is that you must constantly be working on it.  If you’ve got pets, you need to follow behind them with a lint roller or vacuum.  If you’ve got kids, you better have a basket and a rag handy at all times.  That is not realistic for me or my household.  Thankfully, I’m okay with “dirt”.  My qualm is with CLUTTER.

When I post videos like my “How to Speed Clean Your Home” video or “Finding Motivation” video the type of comment I get 80% of the time is “I could do that too if my house were that clean to start with”.  Now, we’ve already established that my home isn’t clean.  So, what these people are seeing and communicating is that my house is tidy.  And they are absolutely correct. 

More often than not, if you enter my home unexpectedly it will look tidy to you.  The reason for that is my house stays at what I call a “maintenance level” virtually all the time.  I struggle with anxiety and depression, a tidy home has really made a lot of improvement on my mental health which is invaluable to me. 

Now, my secret to keeping my house at a maintenance level is really simple.  I follow my 6/10 List.  I created the list for myself, then decided to share it.  When I created it, I was feeling overwhelmed.  But at that time “cleaning” was such a daunting thought.  So, I asked myself, “how do I make my home tidy with the least amount of work?”  I sat down and listed everything that, I felt, made my home look messy.  That was how I created the Daily 6.  I felt by doing 1 load of laundry every day, keeping the sink clean, clutter off the countertops, etc. my house looked tidy. 

(Here’s a link to the 6/10 List: https://organizedchaos4bus.com/2022/02/10/the-6-10-list/ )

Since following the 6/10 List, I have not frantically cleaned before company comes over nor have I found myself sitting in a messy home wondering where to start.  Keeping a tidy home is much simpler than it appears to some.  Once you change your mind set on what “clean” and “tidy” mean, your home will reach and stay at the maintenance level.  No matter what your home life looks like, maybe both spouses work, you have kids, you have pets, etc., it is possible!

-Aud