Cleanliness isn’t a virtue; you can have the messiest, dirtiest house on Earth and still be lovable, deserving of rest, all the things. Cleaning and organizing are skills, ones that some of us were fortunate enough to learn from our parents (likely our moms). Personally, I have been polishing wood furniture and scrubbing toilets since I was a kid, and my mom organizes homes in her retirement now. She always taught me everything you own should have a home — a place where it can be put away — and that flat surfaces are for using, not storing things on top of.
So when I look at my house and get that icky feeling of “God, it’s so messy in here,” I don’t automatically think of myself or my family as gross little goblins for just living in our space (even though, yes, sometimes we live hard). Instead I think, OK, what’s happening in this room that doesn’t jive with my brain? Why does the mess keep reappearing, and how can I fix that problem? These are the things that make your house look messier than it actually is, and what you can do about them.
Daily-Use Items That Don’t Have A Home
Mom’s lesson No. 1: If you own it, it needs to have a home. Decor items can sit out, sure, but everything else should have a storage place out of sight — behind a closet or cabinet door, in a drawer, in a basket — to reduce the visual clutter in your space. This is especially true of the things you take out and use daily. Are you tossing your bag and keys on the kitchen counter when you get home every day, or hanging them up in the entryway closet?
Yes, “just put your sh*t away” seems like an obvious tip, but sometimes we’re not putting things away because we’ve never considered where, or the place we picked doesn’t flow with our lives. I moved all my shoes and my daily bag to an entryway closet near my front door instead of in my bedroom for this reason. Those things are now where I actually need them and will put them away when I arrive home.
Items On The Floor
Any parent knows your kid being home and taking their toys out over the course of a Saturday is automatically going to make your house look and feel insanely messy. But aside from the toy mess, I find that when other items are sitting around on the floor — shoes near the front door, a pile of jackets lying on the stairs to carry up later — it only adds to the feeling that the house is a hot mess. If the mess in my house is making me hive-y, I start by clearing the floors.
Again, if you give all your items a home, that’s a start. I also find that having baskets around is a huge help. I can quickly gather everything in a room that doesn’t live there into a basket and carry it around the house to put those things away instead of making 10 trips back and forth. Even a basket of things sitting on the stairs to put away later is less messy-looking than a pile of loose stuff.
Not Running The Vacuum Often Enough
In my house, there are two chores that happen every single day: we vacuum, and we do dishes. I have a 5-year-old, and yes, he eats in the living room a lot, so there are always crumbs underfoot. And when I’m walking around barefoot and have to keep wiping my feet off on various rugs, I quickly start feeling like my house is disgusting and I should probably just burn it down and start over.
If you have pets and kids, you probably also deal with shedded hair and crumbs everywhere. Spending 10 minutes vacuuming every day might be the thing that single-handedly makes your house feel clean again.
Having So Much Stuff That It’s Hard To Use Your Items
You try to pull a book off the shelf and have to hold up all the sideways ones on top to prevent a literature avalanche. You reach for one blouse in the closet and the tightly packed hangers tangle. You pick one giant Stanley cup from the cabinet and all the others come tumbling out at you.
If it’s hard to get to an item you want because you simply have too many stored in one place, it’s time to declutter. When there is friction in your life as a result of clutter, your brain feels that as mess — even when everything’s put away neatly.
Cords. Cords everywhere.
My husband loves a 10-foot phone charger and has them stashed all over the house. Or rather, I stash them, because seeing them hanging out of the wall outlet and tangled on the floor immediately makes a room look messier. I loop them up and tuck them into end tables often.
Cable management around TVs and home computers is also a whole thing, but I think it’s worth the trouble in the long run. A little effort to conceal cords and power strips always makes a room feel so much cleaner. Nothing collects dust and is harder to clean than a pile of cables anyway.
Too Much Clutter On Flat Surfaces
Tables, desks, countertops — these are work surfaces, not holding areas for stuff. As a maximalist who loves decorations, I have to remind myself of this all the time.
You can certainly keep things on your countertops or desk that you use often, and a few decorative items too. It’s when the kitchen island becomes the place for junk mail to rot and backpacks to get thrown on that you’ll start to feel the mess level rising. When your work surfaces have room for you to work on them, when you can walk up and just start using them, your brain feels a lot clearer.
Company Coming Over
Real talk: If you have house guests coming, it’s probably going to throw any messy parts of your house into stark relief. I love having people over, mainly because it’s a hard deadline that compels me to make my house spotless. I don’t recommend living like that — and actually I believe in having people over no matter what your home looks like inside — but still, nothing will make your house look messier than worrying about how your mother-in-law might perceive it.
