If you’re a freelancer who works from home, you know how easy it is to create messes throughout the day.
Maybe you don’t have time to tidy the kitchen after you make lunch, or you have stacks of paperwork constantly piling up.
When you have a busy work schedule, it can be hard to maintain a clean home.
However, a neat environment is critical to productivity. Read on to learn how you can keep your home clean as a busy freelancer.
Clutter Saps Your Creativity
It’s a bold statement, but it’s true.
Excess clutter creates visual distractions and bombards your brain with unnecessary stimuli that bug you all day.
The feeling is similar to having a boss breathing down your neck, causing unnecessary anxiety, stress and frustration. Such a situation can sap your creativity and make it harder to work.
Some may find a messy environment less visually and cognitively distressing.
However, there are amazing benefits to keeping your house clean and turning it into a sanctuary that supports your creative processes.
Here are some tips for easy home maintenance.
1. Create a Schedule
Doing chores can become a low priority if you work from the comfort of your home, especially when you live alone. Who cares about the junk on the floor?
No one else can see it anyway.
However, this mindset promotes procrastination, with effects that can ripple to your professional life. You can approach housework in these ways.
Block Time for Chores
Allocate after-meal time slots within your daily schedule to tackle minor tasks, such as throwing garbage out, putting toys away or vacuuming the floor.
These chores require little effort and time.
Tackling them for a few minutes three times daily — in the morning, afternoon and evening — minimizes clutter and prevents mess from accumulating.
Adopt a Productivity Technique
Embracing productivity will maximize the meager time you have for home upkeep.
One hack is to create a checklist. It makes cleaning more efficient since you have a blueprint of your to-dos.
Another one is using Pomodoro, in which you tackle chores for 25 minutes and take a five-minute break afterward. Many writers use this technique to increase productivity and prevent burnout.
Finally, you can batch tasks.
For example, you can dust the entire home before vacuuming the floor. This strategy streamlines the cleaning process, so you won’t waste time switching between tasks.
Incorporate Cleaning Breaks
Breaks aren’t only important when doing freelance work — they’re also a necessity when confronting a weekly or monthly cleaning session. Stop for a snack or a refreshing drink while tidying.
Household work can sometimes feel overwhelming, so take brief resets between chores to avoid burnout.
2. Designate a Workspace
Having a dedicated workspace is vital.
It sets a physical and psychological boundary between your professional and personal life.
This separation will benefit your brain and productivity in more ways than one in your home office.
It minimizes your tendency to work in inappropriate areas like the kitchen or living room.
Consequently, it confines work-related mess to your office area and prevents papers, books or pens from spreading to other areas of the house, making cleaning easier and more efficient.
3. Ritualize Tiny Decluttering Sessions
The urge to delay day-to-day chores rarely goes away when you’re working from home.
The pull to procrastinate is strong when no one holds you accountable. For example, you might decide to wash the dishes later because you want to watch a movie.
Counter the temptation to slack by listing the chores you must do daily and charge your action muscles with willpower to resist procrastination.
For instance, make your bed right after waking up or wipe kitchen surfaces after cooking. It doesn’t take an hour to accomplish these tasks, so there’s no reason to postpone them.
The idea is to do small chores every day to prevent the mess from snowballing into a major decluttering task by the end of the week or month.
It’s like how you tackle deadlines by doing one thing at a time.
4. Teach Kids to Clean
Kids create all sorts of messes. By the end of the day, it’s not surprising if your home resembles an amusement park that’s been run through by a monstrous storm.
While it’s good for them to be energetic, make time to educate them about cleaning up after themselves.
Young ones are a sponge for new habits and skills.
Teach them the principles of CLAYGO, or clean as you go. Ask them to return their toys to the toybox after use, or clean the floor immediately if they spill their drink.
Kids spill all kinds of liquids on the floor, including inks, which can be difficult to remove.
If you have expensive wood flooring, lay down runners and rugs to preserve their life spans and make cleaning manageable. You can find water-resistant options online.
These coverings will protect the surfaces and reduce the time you spend on cleaning.
5. Change Your Mindset About Cleaning
Cleanliness is also a mindset to develop.
Regardless of how swamped you are, finding time to squeeze in daily chores and keep your environment neat is often a matter of decision.
Some people find joy in a tidy room as it relaxes their minds and energizes their productivity. Developing a positive frame of mind around cleaning has cascading benefits in your life and health.
One trick to keep on top of housekeeping is to think that someone is coming over every day.
People don’t want to be perceived as disorganized or messy, so they make sure to flaunt a tidy living space when someone arrives at the door.
If you think the same way — that a friend will spontaneously stop by — would you be proud of the current state of your home or embarrassed by it?
This trick might help you change your daily mindset about keeping a clean, private space.
Strategize Home Cleaning
Home maintenance doesn’t have to be complicated.
Create a routine for tiny chores and schedule the major cleaning tasks, like decluttering the wardrobe, weekly or monthly.
This way, you can juggle multiple responsibilities more manageably and be able to work in a relaxing yet energizing space.
Leave a Reply