We all dread it, we put it off, the situation gets worse and worse and worse until we just can’t take it anymore. No, I’m not talking about our taxes I’m talking about housecleaning. No one really likes housecleaning unless you have some sort of mental disorder or your obsessive-compulsive or you’re lucky enough to be married to somebody whose obsessive-compulsive and in that case, you probably don’t have to worry about cleaning the house because they make sure it’s spotless. No, for most of us in the real-world house cleaning for lack of a better word, stinks.
Here are some tips to make housecleaning a little more fun or a least a bit more tolerable.
Tip to make housecleaning a little more fun number one. Recruit a friend. No, I don’t mean call your friend and asked them to come over and clean your house. I learned this secret from my old college roommate who would call me to catch up. We would have some great talks sometimes they would go on for over an hour I never really paid too much attention to the noise in the background. What was that background noise you ask?
My old college roommate had a secret trick that I would soon learn. Before she began to clean her house, she would put a headset on her phone and start calling people until she found somebody that was available to talk, then she would chat away about this and that while she cleaned her house. For her, she hardly noticed she was even Las Vegas cleaning services, an hour would fly by, she had caught up on all the latest gossip and voilà her house was clean (all except the noisy activity of vacuuming, she couldn’t do that while talking on the phone). When I figured out her plan, I decided to try it, I called an unsuspecting victim, my brother who lives in Virginia, we had a great conversation, I even talked for 15 minutes about his wife who I can’t stand.
I’m sure she was so impressed about how interested I was and how I was willing to take the time to talk about his life when secretly I was using him as my cleaning companion. From that day on I hardly clean my house at all unless I can get somebody on the phone to be my cleaning victim, and in over two years of doing this not once have I been busted for cleaning while talking on the phone.
Tip to make housecleaning a little more fun number two. Reward yourself. Set up a reward for getting tasks done. Maybe you want to take yourself to Starbucks, maybe there’s a shirt at the mall you want, maybe there’s a show on TV would like to watch tonight. Find something you want and tell yourself you can’t have it until the cleaning is done. If you have to do the work it’s certainly acceptable to reward yourself for a job well done.
I have seen people even go as far as filling a bowl with their favorite candy and every few minutes of cleaning or so earns them another piece. For me, I don’t have the willpower to just eat one and would end up fat with a sink full of dirty dishes but hey if it works for you give it a try. I do however set goals as for when I want my housecleaning done, for example, my house is messy right now and I’m not going to allow myself to watch a movie tonight until it’s done, that’s my rule and I’m sticking to it. Now if I can just find somebody to call.
Tip to make housecleaning more fun number three. Make a game out of it. I know this sounds a little bit crazy but sometimes you just need to pretend that you are made at a fancy hotel, or there is a race to get house clean before Brad and Angelina show up to tell you how nice your house looks. It’s okay to play these mental games with yourself, throw your iPod on pretend your house is the Beverly Hills Hotel and get to work. Heck when you’re done you can leave yourself 20 bucks on the bed. The point is, your attitude has a lot to do with whether or not your housecleaning is going to get done. As bad as you think it is it’s not that bad and if somehow you can remove yourself from the situation mentally it will make your housecleaning that much easier.
