12 ways to motivate yourself to clean

If before each cleaning you “rise from the dead” with a drawn-out: “Get up, the country is huge, get up for the sake of death,” then you are simply motivating yourself incorrectly!

You may not like cleaning for many reasons: as a child, you were forced to do general work under pressure with tedious lectures; the activity seems like a waste of time to you; you work a lot and get so tired that you can only reach the pillow; you feel comfortable in your glove compartment, but you don’t know why; banal laziness and much, much more. Let's put aside the search for reasons and try to find a way to motivate ourselves to clean. But remember - the success of the enterprise will depend on you, your desire to at least try to change something, and your imagination (some methods will have to be properly imagined and visualized).

Get out when no one is home

Most people find it easier to put things in order when they are alone at home. Even if this makes it impossible to involve household members in a useful activity.

Don't try to start cleaning when you might be interrupted. Apart from unpleasant emotions like irritation, this will bring little.

It’s terribly infuriating when someone immediately makes a mess of everything that you just recently neatly tidied up. Or it interferes with wiping the floors, running from one room to another.

Where to begin?

So, you have already figured out how to force yourself to clean your room, you are charged with a positive attitude and are ready to get to work. What should you do first? We propose a procedure that, as practice shows, is the most effective.

Write a list of the rooms you are going to clean. Let the first one on the list be the easiest, for example a bedroom or a bathroom.
Close your eyes and imagine what the rooms in your apartment will look like after cleaning.
Next, prepare the equipment you will use - a vacuum cleaner, mop, detergents, cleaning products, rags and sponges.
Play fun, upbeat music in the background (but not a TV series!).
At once collect all the trash, papers, and things lying around in a large basket.
Vacuum, wipe off dust, wash the floor clean. Behind the sofa and under the bed too.
Go through all the trash in the basket. Organize the things you need and put the rest in the trash.
Allow yourself a little rest, drink a cup of tea or coffee.
Now clean up the rest of the rooms.

Advice
While cleaning, try to maintain a positive attitude. Remember that only a home that is cleaned regularly is comfortable.

Make a schedule

Think about how it’s easier for you to clean: once or twice a week for a couple of hours or every day for 20–30 minutes. If you're not sure, at least try the second method. This way, the work front will stop scaring you, and putting things in order will become something commonplace.

For example:

Monday: sort out clothes in the closet.
Tuesday: wipe off the dust, put things on the shelves.
Wednesday: wash the floor throughout the apartment.
Thursday: Clean the bathroom.
Friday: Clean the stove.
Saturday: sort out old things on the balcony.
Sunday: change bed linen, send things to the wash.

As a result, there are not many things to do around the house every day. And it will take no more than half an hour to complete them.

The main thing is motivation

Even the simplest activity seems overwhelming if you don’t want to do it. There will always be a lot of excuses and reasons. This is why proper motivation for cleaning is important, especially if you have to “generalize” the entire apartment.

Simple psychological techniques help change a negative attitude.

If you have children in your family, think about the impact your attitude to order and cleanliness will have on them. Parental example is very important. It is useless to explain to your child the importance of regular cleaning if you yourself often shirk your daily responsibilities.
A house is a reflection of the people who live in it. Think about whether the things around you create a special mood, comfort? Are they in the right place? Or do you want to leave your home quickly so as not to see all this horror?
You will be surprised, but problems at work, in your personal life and even excess weight are interconnected with cleanliness in the house. It is impossible to lead a healthy lifestyle and think positively if there is chaos and dirt around. Agree, in a clean house your thoughts become cleaner and clearer, and your soul and body find peace.

Unusual techniques

If you are still not in the mood to clean and are wondering how to force yourself to do the cleaning, then you should try other techniques. You can use any option you like or even several at once.

Invite your guests. You don’t have to throw a grand party; it can be a regular tea party with friends or work colleagues. Here, willy-nilly, in order not to fall on your face, you will have to clean the apartment.
Rearrange the furniture. Psychologists say that you need to change the environment around you at least once a year. This has a beneficial effect on your mood and makes you look at your home in a new way. And, of course, during the rearrangement you cannot do without cleaning. This way you will do two useful things at once.
Sports training. We put on a tracksuit, sneakers and start exercising. Stand on your tiptoes and dust off the top shelves. Now we train our arm muscles - we clean the sink, the stove, and wipe the table. Abdominal exercises: starting position – kneeling, wiping the floor with a rag (towards you, away from you, to the sides). We finish the training only when the house is sparkling clean.
A method for the lazy. If you are completely discouraged, try to persuade yourself to work for just 10 minutes. Agree, not so much. To avoid accidentally overworking, set an alarm clock or timer. You will be surprised, but even in such a short time you can get a lot done. Liked? Try spending another 10 minutes cleaning your apartment.
Extreme measures. If a lot of trash and dirt has accumulated, then the best solution is to use the help of cleaning service specialists. They will put things in order in your apartment, and you will only need to maintain it in the future. Another advantage of this method is that you can discover the secrets of quick, effective cleaning.

Advice
Instead of forcing yourself to clean every time, involve all household members in household work, including children. Responsibilities shared by at least three people will not seem so overwhelming and difficult.

Start scrubbing something specific and requiring care

You can slowly and meditatively touch the stove, bathtub, or toilet. You can finally defrost the refrigerator, or disassemble the wardrobe. In the end, you can get to the rack with tools and move the grinder from the bottom shelf to the top. Usually after this you get involved in the process and, unnoticed by yourself, you begin to disassemble and declutter everything. True, there is a risk of finding yourself sitting on the mezzanine, hugging old magazines. But this also has its own thrill.

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Planning

Photo: ru.freepik.com.

If the battlefield is large, write a combat plan. Just the thought of having to sort through clutter all weekend can put off cleaning indefinitely. To avoid self-intimidation, make a to-do plan, estimating how much time it will take for each item. It may turn out that the panic was in vain. Enter the battle with a light heart and the expectation of a quick victory.

Don't think about the fact that you don't want to clean

Don’t stress yourself out while lying on the couch, don’t think about how you don’t want to do anything. These are psychological tricks of our consciousness, or simply put, this is mother laziness trying to gain a foothold in your consciousness. Better think about how clean and beautiful your home will be. Imagine how your household appliances will shine in the kitchen or reflect on the mirror. Dream about how after cleaning you will sit down on your soft sofa with your favorite book or a cup of coffee. Believe me, you will immediately want to do something to achieve results. Turn on some energetic and fun music, do some warm-up exercise, and get started. Remember the result and go.

We delegate responsibilities

This doesn't mean it's time to call a cleaning company - divide the responsibilities between family members, even if you think you can do a much better job. Yes, at first the result will be worse than expected, but over time the family can pleasantly surprise you. We recommend that you be patient and stock up on encouraging phrases that will show how valuable your family’s help is. This will make cleaning less time-consuming, teach children self-care, and demonstrate the importance of housework.

Following these tips will help you not to like cleaning, but at least to be tolerant of it.

Useful tips

Be that as it may, establishing order and cleanliness is far from easy work. To make cleaning your apartment easier, use the following tips.

Don't let dirt accumulate, clean every day. Many women put off cleaning until later in order to clean everything in one fell swoop. But the more garbage accumulates, the less you want to “shovel” it.
Make a list of responsibilities for the week. If possible, distribute them among all family members. For example, on Monday and Thursday you clean the bathroom and toilet, on Saturday you sort out the cabinets, on Sunday you clean the carpets, etc. You can entrust your children or husband with watering the flowers, wiping the dust, and washing the dishes.
Choose special clothes for cleaning. It should be comfortable and easy to wash.
Make it a rule to turn off your phone, TV and Internet while cleaning. It's better to turn on fun music. This way you will finish your work faster and there will be less temptation to get distracted.
Don't try to do many things at once. Objectively assess the amount of work and your capabilities.
Always learn new, effective ways to clean different things. This will save your energy and time.

Remember that a woman is the keeper of the home. Who, if not her, can create an atmosphere of comfort in the apartment? Perhaps this is the most correct answer to the question “how can you force yourself to clean the house.” You just need to realize your feminine essence and role in home improvement.

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Call a cleaning service

If your income level allows you to splurge, then you can call the cleaning service employees and entrust them with the solution of this dusty matter. However, remember that such services are quite expensive, so calling a cleaner every week can go broke. This option is good when you don’t want to do anything at all and all the useful tips described above do not help. Having spent a decent amount of money, you can conclude that you can clean it yourself, and use the money you save to go to the movies or go shopping.

Make cleaning easier

It will be much easier to clean up if you don’t accumulate mountains of garbage, but do some small household chores systematically. For example, wash the dishes after eating, put dirty laundry in the basket, and immediately throw out unnecessary garbage. Teach yourself not to hoard junk: tights with holes or stretched socks are unlikely to ever be useful to you. Division of labor will also help here.

Another rule for easy cleaning: once you start, don’t get distracted. It is better to devote 15 minutes to cleanliness without switching to other activities than to run from the bathroom to the TV or computer for half an hour.

The main thing is not to turn this process into punishment. Try to tune in to a positive wave - in the end, you will still have to do the cleaning. If you are very tired or not feeling well, postpone it until the next day if possible. If you need to clean today, limit yourself to washing the floor and visible surfaces.

Motivation to clean - psychological tricks

First of all, cleaning is not only necessary, but also important. It should not be done for any reason, but to eliminate chaos. Order in the house stabilizes order in the head, soul, and in relationships with loved ones. Children are an unconditional incentive and motivation.

But there are little tricks that will help shift your laziness towards cleaning and putting things in order:

Clearly plan and allocate time with awareness of the scope of work;
Determine the real scale of action, measuring the strengths and capabilities;
Comfortable clothes and hairstyle are important (tying two ponytails, for example, is another bonus for a playful mood);
Make a clear plan, it is better to break all actions into stages;
The right mood - anything that can lift your spirits (favorite music, a cup of hot chocolate or wine);
You should start with visible disorder; an instantly visible result provokes further action;
Find accomplices (children, husband, friends can be assistants); working in a company for a common result gives pleasure and brings moral satisfaction;
Immediately give yourself a reward for the work done (a delicious dinner, a cake, a good movie, a book, a meeting with friends)

Psychologists advise that you should start cleaning as soon as this thought arises. Most often, having put one thing away, you involuntarily grab the next one, the main thing is not to stop. It is best not to neglect your home, get rid of unnecessary things in a timely manner, wash the dishes right after you and put everything in its place. Follow the golden rule: every item in the house has its own place of residence.

If you really have a catastrophic lack of time for cleaning, and are overcome by terrible laziness, use the services of a cleaning company in St. Petersburg. Professionals will help you quickly restore order to living spaces of any size.

Folk recommendations on how to force yourself to clean your apartment

If you don’t have the strength to clean the house, you can use popular recommendations:

use a mixture of essential oils and soda instead of floor detergents;
You can quickly and safely remove the smell from the refrigerator using pieces of black bread;
Before you start cleaning, you need to clear the room of unnecessary trash - put dirty textiles in the wash, put things from open surfaces in organizers;
to quickly and safely clean metal utensils, you need to boil the containers in water with the addition of 2-3 drops of soap;
To quickly and easily get rid of stains on glass surfaces, use old newspapers or sheets of paper.

“Grandma’s” methods are quite effective; they help get rid of varying degrees of dirt without the use of detergents.

The use of simple and affordable equipment, as well as a good mood and focus on results are important components in cleaning a room. Before carrying out the procedure, you can draw up a plan, define goals and objectives that will correspond to the desired result. If you don’t want to tidy up, but you need to, it’s important to create motivation.

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Ways to make cleaning more enjoyable

In order not to be lazy in the process of cleaning the house, work begins in a good mood.
It is better to do this right in the morning, when a person is cheerful and full of strength. For this work, it is better to wear comfortable clothing that does not restrict movement. To lift your mood, you can use household chemicals with a pleasant aroma. It will fill the room and inspire new achievements. For the same purpose, it is recommended to take high-quality accessories, sponges and brightly colored rags.

To make the process go quickly and the cleaning to be of better quality, you can use a time limit. Then there will be no desire to be distracted by extraneous matters. As an incentive, you need to come up with a small reward for yourself for quality work done. And you won't have to redo everything.

Even more household lifehacks:

Go paperless

Paper is an outdated format for obtaining information. Modern people are accustomed to reading the latest news in electronic format and even purchasing books from special services.

Firstly, paper editions of newspapers or literature will clutter up your space, and secondly, giving up paper makes you one step more environmentally conscious.

Buy a humidifier

Nowadays, many people are purchasing air humidifiers that minimize the accumulation of dust on various surfaces - from sofas to wall shelves. However, it is important to remember that the optimal humidity in the room should be somewhere around 50%. It is not advisable to significantly exceed this number.

Take a closer look at cabinets with glass doors

If you are used to storing dishes, books, decorative items and other things in cabinets, it is better if they are closed with glass doors. This will prevent dust from settling on all your things and help avoid unnecessary cleaning.

Try to change your bed linen more often

In fact, bedding should be changed every ten days, especially for those who sweat profusely during sleep. We must understand that a humid environment promotes the growth of bacteria, which we have absolutely no use in bed. Plus, bedding that hasn’t been washed for a long time collects a lot of dust, which scatters throughout the room when you shake it.

In addition, going to bed in a fresh and pleasantly smelling bed is a special pleasure.

Don't forget to ventilate the room

This not only helps refresh the space, but also directly affects our thought processes and healthy sleep. The thing is that when people breathe, they actively emit carbon dioxide, the concentration of which increases where there is no access to fresh air.

The increased content of carbon dioxide and lack of oxygen interferes with the normal functioning of the brain, so it is useful to ventilate the apartment.

Author: Dmitry Petrosyants

Come up with an incentive

If you can’t just force yourself to put things in order, you can try to find motivation. Ask yourself: why do you need cleanliness in your apartment? For some, the answer will be the realization that it is easier to breathe in a clean apartment, and dirt and dust are harmful to children. Others see cleaning as an opportunity to give the body exercise. It is also believed that clean housing attracts good luck, happiness and prosperity into the lives of its inhabitants.

Waiting for guests can be a great incentive. Invite your friends over for dinner, and then, willy-nilly, you will have to clean up.

In addition, you can come up with some kind of reward upon completion of cleaning. Let's say, promise yourself to lie in the bath with an interesting book or eat your favorite dessert.