Three Household Chores that Help You Stay Organized

Some household chores can do more than keep your home clean, they can also keep your home organized. Continue reading to learn about the tasks that do double duty.

We often treat decluttering like another household chore. It’s something we do and then do again. And again. But really, decluttering is a tool that helps us get organized.

When we work at getting organized, we ultimately want to find what we want when we need it and put things away with ease so they’re in place to be found the next time we need them. Your home will be and look neater for you … which might not look like a staged image on Instagram.

What Decluttering Does for Your Home

Decluttering is a tool that helps clear away the unnecessary excess of things we don’t, won’t, and can’t use. If it’s been years since (or you’ve never done) a deep sort and emptied out drawers, closets, and cabinet to figure out what you’ll keep and what you no longer need, then decluttering is a big commitment of your time, energy, and attention.

However, after that type of overhaul, if you do a bit of tidying to keep these areas neat and functional, you’ll need little time and effort to stay organized. And, yes, every so often you’ll find something that you no longer need, and you’ll decide to give away, donate, or sell it.

While you’ll do this type of casual decluttering forevermore, it will be a fractional part of your time as opposed to an onerous task that sucks the life out of your weekends.

What Cleaning Does for Your Home

Organizer Marie Kondo points out that cleaning is about dirt and decluttering (although she uses the word ‘tidying’ which I see as having a different use) is about confronting yourself to better understand the place the items in your home have in your life.

We often declutter and organize as we clean, which blurs the lines between the benefits we get from the different actions. Decluttering becomes another household chore.

And chances are you’ve seen the meme that says, “I dusted once. The dust came back. I’m not falling for that again.” When we equate organizing with dusting, we expect the clutter to return (like dust).

The Often-Ignored Benefits of These Three Essential Household Chores

There are three household chores that can help you make your home a more organized space. They include aspects of cleaning in that they need to be done regularly (oftentimes daily) to keep your home a hygienic space.

When done, these chores also help you to stay organized because you’ll find what you need when you go looking for them. And if you’re struggling to stay organized, it may be a sign that you need to declutter so it will be easier to put things away.

The three household chores? Doing the dishes, doing the laundry, and dealing with paper.

How Doing the Dishes Helps You Stay Organized

At its core, regularly doing the dishes (and cups, utensils, pans, and food storage containers) means that when you need a plate or skillet, it’s there and ready for use. If your dish or sink is full, it can be discouraging to dig through food-encrusted items to find the few things you need. Then you must wash and dry them only to immediately dirty them.

If you have goals like eating healthier meals or saving money by preparing more meals at home, the discouraging hassle of not keeping up with the dishes can affect these more important life goals.

Cleaning – If you find washing the dishes or emptying the dishwasher boring and tedious tasks, you may procrastinate on these tasks. To override the idea that these tasks aren’t important to do (which you may be convincing yourself of while avoiding the tasks), think about the reward of clean dishes.

Think of the pounds you could lose if you ate scrambled eggs for breakfast instead of grabbing a jumbo muffin at the coffee shop. This may be the incentive you need for washing the skillet after making those eggs.

Organizing – When all the dishes, pots, and utensils are clean, do they fit into their cabinets in a way that allows you to access them easily. Or do you need to reach around the mugs to reach a bowl? Or shift a stack of bowls off the plates you need?

If you’re wasting time with these inefficient actions, this may still discourage you. In fact, you may not feel any urgency when it comes to washing the plates and food storage containers because some of you knows there’s nowhere to store them.

Decluttering – If you’re struggling to put things away, that can be a sign that you have too much stuff. And if you’re not in the habit of keeping up with the dirty dishes, then you may have acquired additional plates and forks over time. Because if you could never find a clean fork, you must not have enough forks, right?

When you have everything washed, group all your bowls, saucepans, etc. together so you can see what you own.

Keeping up with the dishes means that you don’t need a surplus of these items, making it easier to stay organized. Also, fewer dishes can give you the incentive to do the dishes more frequently because you know you’ll need the items at your next meal.

How Doing the Laundry Helps You Stay Organized

A lot of the same concepts apply here as apply for doing the dishes, so I’ll try not to repeat myself much. Keeping up with the laundry means that you have the items you want to wear available to you.

Cleaning – If you have piles of laundry to do, you may feel overwhelmed. Who wants to spend an entire day moving clothes, towels, and sheets from the washer to the dryer to the closet? Again, think of the reward of doing the laundry more often – no piles of smelly clothes, never wondering where your favorite blouse is, and so on.

If you dread doing the laundry, consider how you can make it more fun (or tolerable) for you. While switching clothes from the washer to dryer is a matter for working memory (or loud alarms), you probably devote most of your energy to putting clothing away.

When you can, simplify. If hanging items takes less time than folding, hang them. If an item doesn’t need to be folded, drop it into the drawer or bin.

While putting laundry away, listen to a podcast or audiobook … perhaps one you only listen to while doing the laundry (for an added reward).

Organizing – If you can’t put away you clothing when it’s all clean because you don’t have the space, this can be a sign you need to declutter. You want to be able to group together similar items to make it easier to find what you’re looking for (no need to look at skirts and long-sleeved tops when you want a short-sleeved top).

Decluttering – When you group similar items together, not only is it easier to find what you want, it’s easier to see that you own 14 pairs of black pants … and you really only like five of them.

Decluttering makes it easier to organize your clothing. And owning fewer clothes means you can’t allow nine loads of laundry to pile up because you need to wear those clothes.

This adds a sense of immediacy to doing the laundry that doesn’t happen if you have an overflowing closet, and chances are that you can find something in there to wear in a pinch.

How Keeping Up with Paperwork Helps You Stay Organized

Paper can include bills, statements, greeting cards, brochures and flyers, magazines, pages we’ve printed from online (craft patterns, recipes, etc.), and so much more. You can research online what documents you need to retain and for how long … but a lot of paper comes down to how you think you’re going to use it (recipes, magazines) or even reminisce with paper keepsakes.

Cleaning – Piles of papers can make it difficult to keep your home clean. And even if you do clean around the piles, lots of piles makes a room look messy.

Organizing – The simplest way to organize papers is to keep papers with similar purposes together. This makes it easier to locate what you need, but it also helps you see when it’s time to declutter because you are running out of space.

For example, a full file drawer is rarely a sign that you need another filing cabinet. In most cases, it’s a sign that you can get rid of older papers. When the basket where you store magazines is full, it’s a prompt to eliminate the oldest issues.

Have designated spaces for papers you need to act on, papers related to current projects, product manuals, reference files, and sentimental keepsakes. The type of papers you use and refer to will indicate what you will want to organize.

Decluttering – Learn how long you must hold onto different types of documents. Avoid printing documents you can access online. Give yourself deadlines for using those recipes you print out. The less paper you hold onto, the easier it will be to keep it organized and your house clean.

The Core Four Household Chores

A fourth task that can keep you organized is making time at least once a day to go through your home and to put away things that have been used and left out. A few minutes of daily effort is much easier to do than watching the clutter pile up and then find yourself faced with a chore that will take hours to complete.

Each day, take the time to –

• Wash the dishes.

• Do a load of laundry (although, depending on the number of people in your household, you can adjust this schedule).

• Go through the day’s mail and incoming papers.

• Put things away.

If you find that you don’t have the space to put things away, that’s a sign that it’s time to declutter those spaces.