Achieve a Tidy Space with Micro Habits

Welcome back to another episode of Stacked Intent! In today's episode, I'll be discussing habits that can assist you in maintaining a tidy home. While this topic aligns with our other podcast, it is crucial for your overall well-being and authenticity to have a clean-living space. A tidy environment contributes to your mental wellness, which is vital for embracing your true self. This practice is not only beneficial for personal growth but also essential when sharing a household with others. Tune in to this podcast as we delve into the importance of cleanliness, micro habits, and finding support. Embrace these habits and witness how they aid you in uncovering or rediscovering your authentic self.

Brief Summary of objectives:

Objective 1: To highlight the benefits of a clean home, including physical and mental well-being, stress reduction, and improved sleep quality.

Objective 2:  To provide practical micro habits for maintaining tidiness, emphasizing efficiency in chores, quick resets, and family involvement.

Objective 3: To discuss age-appropriate responsibilities for household tasks, stressing early habit formation and parental modeling.


 Call to action: Pick two micro habits that you are going to implement this week and tag us on Instagram @stacked_intent or send us an email to share how they are helping your daily declutter. 

Thank you for tuning into Stacked Intent to be authentically YOU! Be sure to leave a review and follow us on instagram.

Transcript

Introduction: 

Welcome back to another episode of Stacked Intent! In today's episode, I'll be discussing habits that can assist you in maintaining a tidy home. While this topic aligns with our other podcast, it is crucial for your overall well-being and authenticity to have a clean-living space. A tidy environment contributes to your mental wellness, which is vital for embracing your true self. This practice is not only beneficial for personal growth but also essential when sharing a household with others. Tune in to this podcast as we delve into the importance of cleanliness, micro habits, and finding support. Embrace these habits and witness how they aid you in uncovering or rediscovering your authentic self.

 Brief Summary of objectives:

·      Objective 1: To highlight the benefits of a clean home, including physical and mental well-being, stress reduction, and improved sleep quality.

·      Objective 2:  To provide practical micro habits for maintaining tidiness, emphasizing efficiency in chores, quick resets, and family involvement.

·      Objective 3: To discuss age-appropriate responsibilities for household tasks, stressing early habit formation and parental modeling.

Topic 1: Why should you keep a clean home?

• Just like a lot of life it is okay to live in the 80/20 rule of being happy when your house is in the 80% of being clean and catching the last 20% in a deep clean. 
• A clean and organized home has great benefits to improve your daily life!
  •   It promotes physical health by having your entire house clean, this is because a dirty house can be prone to problems. Like you might have unwanted bugs and mold. This means you really want all the way from your kitchen counters to your doorknobs cleaned. This helps your spaces both to look better and to avoid germs. 
  • A clean house can help lower your stress levels. There are plenty of studies that show that this is one of the benefits! Why? This is because you can create a relaxing escape within your home instead of cluttered chaos. 
  • Having a decluttered physical space can enhance productivity by clearing our mental spaces.
  • If you are going to have company over, it just creates a welcoming environment for the spaces to be clean and organized. 
• Did you know that your sleep can be affected by the cleanliness of your bedroom? Research shows that 45% of Americans experience poor sleep quality. Maintaining a clean and tidy bedroom environment is important for both physical and mental well-being, promoting consistent and restful nights of sleep. On the other hand, a messy bedroom can lead to decreased sleep quantity and quality. If you're struggling with sleep, consider starting with a bedroom tidy-up, ensuring clean sheets and an orderly room.
• Did you know that your cluttered spaces can contribute to your poor food choices? When your spaces are cluttered, dirty or have an off-putting smell then you are more likely to be overwhelmed and anxious which will lead to poor food choices. Versus someone who has a clean environment and decluttered spaces who is more likely to make healthier choices. When your kitchen is nasty and messy, it's hardly inviting for cooking.
• A clean house can help ease seasonal allergies by reducing indoor allergens such as dust, dust mites, pet dander, hair, and dirt. Since we spend more time indoors than outdoors, maintaining a clean environment can keep allergen levels low and alleviate allergy symptoms
  • A clean house helps to harbor less bacteria and allergens. Such as a cluttered kitchen might be harboring a dangerous food borne illness. The damp bathroom is the perfect ideal place for mold to grow. A clean house can help with your families’ allergies and other respiratory problems. Additionally, it can help with the spread of bacteria and viruses by regularly cleaning and disinfecting. 
• A clean and decluttered household helps you function. 
  • Decluttering might take a little time and happen over a longer period, but once you achieve the organization then you are able to tidy up quickly and easily. 
  •  The cluttered spaces can be overwhelming and lead to stress, anxiety, and depression. Research has shown that your visual cortex can actually start to see so much and be so overwhelmed that it cannot even process the task you have at hand. 

  Topic 2: Micro Habits of a Tidy Home

• When you arrive home?
  • Put the groceries away.
  • Put your shoes away. 
  • Go ahead and empty your lunchbox and get it ready to load for the next morning. 
  • Place your keys in their designated spot! This saves you time as you are running out the door later. 
• Immediately sort through your mail
  • Junk Mail?  Then trash it
  • Do not need, but has sensitive information? Shred it.
  • Need to file? Immediately put it in the file.
• Develop a routine to regularly empty your household trashcans. 
• Before you go to bed, wipe down the kitchen and surfaces. 
  • A tip to wiping down the kitchen or bathroom is have your cleaning supplies easy to get to in order to be able to do a quick clean. 
•  Did you walk by an item? This falls into the never leaving a room empty handed. Pick it up and put it away what doesn’t belong and put it back in its home. 
  • Generally, one habit that makes a huge difference for a tidiness household is to take an item or two with you when you move from one room to another room. Don’t just move a pile, put something away from one the pile. 
  • Personally, I love to stick to and keep in mind the “one touch rule” this means that ideally you only want to touch items one time before you put them away or back into their places. This is something that tends to become a habit over time. 
• Laundry? Do you get a mountain of laundry — dirty or clean? Toss the dirty clothes into a dedicated basket and get your clean ones put away. The best way to get clean laundry put away is to put it away as it comes out of the dryer. Then you have a very simple pile to put away instead of a mountain to take care of another time. 
  • Do you feel like there is a lot of laundry to get accomplished? Then simply try to get one load accomplished every day. Start the load in your morning routine and then as you get home it is ready for the dryer. This will help in giving a habit of accomplishment for the laundry. 
  •  Personally, I do laundry as specific baskets get full – such as our hang up clothes, regular laundry, my husband does his work laundry on his last day of work and then we get our gym clothes washed every couples of days.
  • If you have children, when can your kiddos start helping or doing their laundry? 
• Quick resets are helpful when everything in your home has a home. I would encourage you to make sure everything has a home, so you don’t misplace an item and you are able to quickly reset or return items to a space. 
  • Morning and night resets — this is making sure that everything lands back into its designated place. 
  •    This can be a quick 15-minute nightly clean up that happens each night. You can involve the family. This is the must-do routine before hopping in the bed. 
  • My resets became very important for my vacuum to be able to do its job! It  couldn’t do its job if the floor was not picked up and ready. I love that it can vacuum every single day and clean up the dirt, dog hair and dust that happens each day from three dogs, us and guests going in and out of our house. 
• Are you bringing in a new item? Can you donate or toss an item? This will help manage the items within your household. 
• Get up? Make the bed each morning. This will help you have the bed prepared for your nighttime routine. 
  • This helps in making your spaces look tidy and neat and only takes a couple of minutes. 

Topic 3: Who should help tidy the house?

•  If you live with other people, then get them all involved. It is helpful to spend a little bit of time to teach your children age-appropriate jobs to help them better understand how to do a task and for them to help you in doing the task. 

•  Each age group has task they can help with and it is important to make sure they understand the task they are being given before just expecting it from them. Here are some age group suggestions but start with a chore chart for your children. Be specific, participate with your children by showing, be consistent with the chore and how they should do it, and of course make it fun! An important aspect here it for you to be a role model for your children in keeping a healthy and decluttered house starting with the habits of keeping a clean house.. 
  • Toddlers (1-3) are usually capable to help with simple tasks around the house. In each development stage you can begin to give them some responsibility. They will need your supervision, but they are very capable. This might look like picking up their toys, filling the cat or dogs bowl with food, putting their clothes in a hamper, wiping up a mess, or help load the washer/dryer are just a couple of examples. 
  • Preschoolers (4-5) are at a stage they feel a desire to help parents. They might be able to make their bed, clear the table, pull some weeds, water flowers, sort laundry, match socks, put food and water out for an animal, help bring in groceries, plus everything they could do as a toddler. 
  •  Primary schoolers (6-9) these are children who can handle task with less supervision skills. They are learning and can-do task that are a little more complex. Though they might rebel against the idea of chores, but really this is why you want to build these as habits. They are able to sweep the floor, load the dishwasher, vacuum, wipe down counters and sinks, make themselves a snack, fold and put away their laundry, empty the trash, put away groceries, or help pack lunch.
  •  Middle schoolers (10-13) are those children who are more independent and held responsible for task without a reminder that is constant. These children can be responsible for the dishwasher to load or unload, prepare a meal, take out the trash, vacuum, or clean the bathrooms. 
  •  High Schoolers (14+) these are your children who have reached high school, and they are capable to do household tasks and can be assigned a specific task or they can be asked to help. 
•  The overall important aspect with children is to start them as toddlers with age-appropriate tasks because you cannot ask a high schooler to help with a task you never taught them how to do. Creating the habits for a clean house starts with getting your little ones to clean up or help clean up. 

• One of the benefits of having a decluttered and clean house is the wonderful feeling it brings when returning home after a long day at work or a trip.

Call to action: Pick two micro habits that you are going to implement this week and tag us on Instagram @stacked_intent or send us an email to share how they are helping your daily declutter.