Stuggling with mess?

Don’t worry. It’s simple.

You just declutter like a demon.

And then in your beautifully minimalist home

… containing only things you use or value

… organise your children’s few possessions in simple Montessori fashion on natural open shelves so they can choose one thing to play with, enjoy it and put it back exactly where it belongs …

… zzzzzzzzzzz … what’s that? I must have dozed off.

I was having the most beautiful dream.

But seem to have woken up under a pile of dodgy laundry in the middle of the car boot sale that is the living room surrounded by mess. Everywhere!

Help?

What on earth are you meant to do? When your whole house feels like a tip and you’re exhausted and you’ve got precisely two minutes to get the kids in bed before the whole family melts down.

Well obviously the big – solve-the-real-problem – answer is to declutter huge amounts of our stuff and live a simpler less hectic life.

But you know what?

Decluttering successfully – whatever Marie Kondo says – takes time and meanwhile the living room is a complete pit and we’re about to yell at our kids and the dog and anyone who dares speak to us because the clutter and the mess makes us so thoroughly miserable.

But luckily there is a simple way to tidy up fast when our home is an unholy mess AND to get the whole family to help.

It won’t solve our real-heart-of-the-matter problem of us all owning too much stuff – we do need to declutter – but it will mean we can cross the living room without breaking a leg.

It will mean it’s clear enough to whizz the hoover round.

It will mean we feel a little less out of control.

AND it will mean the whole family feel they’ve solved a problem together.

So what’s the trick? How do you tidy up fast and blitz the mess?

Well this super simple two stage tidy up method works for us and actually clears a room of most mess in 5 minutes flat!

How To Tidy Up Fast

Tidy Up Fast Stage One

Every evening – or in that moment just before you scream blue murder – grab a pile of big bags; laundry bags, super size shopping bags and bin bags will all work, they just need to be big.

Grab one bag for each member of the family.

And grab your phone.

Then tell everyone when you say “Go”, they’ve got to run round the room and find everything that belongs to them that does not belong in the living room. Or the kitchen. Or whatever room you’re tidying.

The winner is whoever has the fullest bag, when three minutes on your phone is up. Three minutes seems like nothing, even to a small child and especially when it’s a race, but it is mind boggling how much misplaced mess you can pick up as a family in three minutes flat!!

Then after quick high fives to the winner, shove all the bags outside the room door because we’re going to come back to them shortly.

Now put your timer on for another two minutes and get everyone to run around and tidy away their remaining stuff left on the floor or furniture.

The tidying is not going to be remotely perfect but this is not the time to comment, complain or redo it ourselves. We need to feel as a family we have succeeded. Doing this together for just fives minutes every day eases the immediate chaos that causes so much family conflict and creates the space we need for stage two of tidying up.

Tidy Up Fast Stage Two

This next stage of tidying up is best done with one child at a time. Simply take their bag of tidied up belongings to their room with them and sit down on the floor with them for two or three minutes to quickly sort their belongings into piles of like with like, e.g.:

Dirty clothes for laundry
Clothes to wear again
School stuff
Books
Toys etc

Don’t move from the floor until the bag is sorted into the piles. And then give them two or three minutes tops to tidy away each pile of mess to where it belongs.

Again, it is not going to be perfect but the right things are going to be in the right places and we’ve taught our children the incredibly useful like skill of how to tidy up fast.

If we can turn tidying up fast as a family into a quick daily habit we really will can get on top of the mess together. And if we can combine our tidying up fast habit with a little gentle daily declutter we can as a family transform our homes and enjoy spending time in them again.

I really do hope this simple way to tidy up fast when your home is a mess helps you and your family. For more help getting on top of a messy home do follow me on Pinterest and check out these simple cleaning tips:

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