I've approached tidying my home in big weekend clear-outs, frantic evening resets and the odd rage clean thrown in, when clutter finally tipped me over the edge.
But I've actually realised very recently, due to a few life changes, that it's not the big messes that make my house feel chaotic, but actually the smaller everyday habits that seem to undo all my good intentions. The small tasks that don't rank highly on any decluttering checklist.
What I've realised from writing various storage and organisation articles (and shadowing my enigma of a MIL), what most people with tidy homes always have in common isn't endless storage to work with or hours of free time. It's actually a few simple daily routines, quick decision-making and the ability to not let little jobs pile up into overwhelming ones.
So instead of vowing to be tidier this year, I'm breaking up with a few bad housekeeping habits that I'm guilty of and that make my home harder to manage than it needs to be. It's definitely a work in progress, but my logic is that if I write it down here, I have to stick to it! You'll all have to hold me accountable.
1. Not decluttering toys as I tidy them away
This is definitely my most hated task that I always leave until we're at a crisis point: tidying the kids' endless toy collection.
Every time I tackle tidying the playroom, it's more of a shove every item I find out of place in the various clutter buckets and toy storage, until they get pulled out again half an hour later. What I've realised is that I'm just storing the same chaos for tomorrow's tidy job.
Now, I've started to include little mini declutters at the same time. Armed with a bin bag, any broken things get chucked out, outgrown toys go into a donate box, and anything no one has even looked at or touched in months gets some serious scrutiny. It does take a little longer, but it's totally worth it to stop clutter from building up.
Cute toy clutter buckets
2. Using my chairdrobe
For as long as I can remember, I've had the bedroom chair. You know the one, that slowly becomes a wardrobe for the clothes that aren't dirty but not clean enough to hang back up.
It's always stacked with jumpers, jeans, you name it, but this year I'm forcing myself to make a quick decision instead. I either hang it up, put it in the wash or fold it away. For those particularly difficult decisions, I've installed this peg rail, £9.99 from Amazon, to hang the few items I know I'll wear again the next day.
Chairdrobe alternatives
3. Not sorting before putting away
I used to 'tidy' fast, and not necessarily smart. When I was in a rush, I'd hide things in drawers and cupboards with the idea that I would sort them at some later stage, and then, well, never really sorting them.
Everything always went back to where there was space, and surfaces were cleared without much thought. Now I try really hard to sort as I go so that kitchen clutter, for example, gets returned to its proper home and random items don't just get hidden.
It takes a little extra time and mental capacity, but when I put my mind to it, the process stops the cycle of constantly re-creating and re-tidying the same mess over and over again.
4. Leaving clean laundry in baskets for days
This is such an issue in our house! We do so much washing, mostly of tiny kids' things, so it feels like a lot of hard work to sort it all out right there and then when the dryer's just finished, even with the laundry room upgrades we installed to make it all more manageable.
I realised, though, that I was prolonging the agony by leaving it all heaped up in baskets. Freshly laundered clothes would sit in baskets, waiting to be folded and put away "later", which somehow always turned into a few days.
What I've done to make it easier is to fold the items as part of the washing routine. Then it's easier to take the basket upstairs and put the clothes straight into drawers and cupboards. It takes a little longer, but it saves future me a big headache.
5. Forgetting to put on my robot vac
I bought one of the best robot vacuum cleaners to make life easier, but do I use it? Not as much as I should do. Mostly because I simply forget to open the app and schedule it, and also because it can be a faff to make sure there are no obstacles in its way, completely defeating the purpose of having it, I might add.
I've now scheduled it to run a few times a week, overnight, and I'll press it on before we go out. The floors stay cleaner without any effort, cleaning up while we're fast asleep. All those crumbies are long gone.
I'm not going to lie, breaking these small habits hasn't been easy, and they haven't made my home picture-perfect by any stretch, but it has made it feel and look calmer and easier to manage. Goodbye, decluttering overwhelm!
