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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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The 5 Secrets of People Whose Homes Are Always Clean

Jul 6 116 Comments

We all have that friend: every time you go to her house, everything is in its place, the counters are shining, and the toilet doesn’t have that pink ring around the bowl.

I used to think that these kinds of people were like Monica from Friends: genetically wired to love cleaning. I assumed that they had intensive cleaning schedules with at least an hour of work each night and then multiple hours of deep cleaning on the weekends. I wrote off maintaining a clean home as something that I just didn’t have the time or energy for. Or at least, I had the time, but I would rather spend it living my life, thank you.

Now, I still don’t have the time or will to clean my home for hours and hours each week. But as I’ve become more engaged with simple living, I’ve found that there are a few tricks to keeping your house looking good a solid 80% of the time. These are the secrets of people whose homes always seem clean.

We all have that one friend whose house always seems to be clean. These are the 5 secrets to keeping your home just as neat and tidy. (Hint: It doesn't include cleaning constantly.)

1. They know the difference between tidy and clean.

A house could be clean in that the surfaces and floors are scrubbed, the furniture and carpets are vacuumed, and the bathrooms are shining. But if there are clothes all over the unmade bed and toys all over the floor and piles of books and papers everywhere, that house will not give the appearance of clean because it isn’t tidy. I can function and feel at ease when my home is tidy but a little dirty; I can’t relax when it’s clean but cluttered.

2. They make tidiness a daily habit.

People whose homes always appear clean don’t wait until it looks like a bomb went off and then snap and spend hours and hours cleaning up the wreckage. They have routines (note: not schedules) to keep each room looking tidy. This might mean rearranging throw pillows and folding blankets when they’re done in the family room each night, having kids put toys back in the toy box, hanging up clothes at the end of each day, and folding the laundry right when it comes out of the dryer.

3. They clean as they go.

Much like making tidiness a habit, they make cleaning as they go a habit. They do the dishes right after dinner, they wipe down the bathroom counters after getting ready for the day, and they sweep the crumbs off the floor after having a snack. By keeping major surfaces relatively clean throughout the week, they don’t have to spend time doing these tasks during more intensive cleaning sessions, leaving more time and energy for things like mopping floors and dusting baseboards (you know, occasionally).

4. They collect less stuff.

It’s hard for a home to look cluttered when the owners don’t have tons of stuff. Instead of spending tons of time organizing the stuff they do have, just to have it all go back to chaos a week later, these people keep their stuff simplified in the first place so they don’t have to organize it.

5. They have a junk drawer. 

Because no one is perfect and not everything can have a place. It’s just the truth. So for the few things that are cluttering up the counter when last-minute friends stop by, those few items can be swiftly swept into the drawer and forgotten about for the moment.


 

These habits are easy, simple, and less time consuming than you would think—in fact, they save time in the long run. If you want to have a home that always appears clean, start with just one of these secrets and integrate it into your daily or weekly routine, building up from there.

I have a pretty strong inkling that having a baby and then eventually, I hope, multiple kids, will throw me for a loop in this area. There will be adjustments periods, and that 80% number may become something more like 50% or 60% at times. But I do believe that these habits are totally possible with kids running around, especially if you get them in on helping. I don’t think there’s a better time to keep stuff simplified than when it comes to acquiring baby stuff and kids’ toys, and truly, keeping possessions limited is more than half the battle. And for the moments when the things you do own are everywhere and the kitchen is covered in crumbs and the toilets haven’t been scrubbed in weeks, remember: you’re doing just fine.

People whose homes always seem clean know the difference between #tidy and #clean. 4 more secrets: Click To Tweet

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Filed Under: Simple Living & Minimalism Tagged With: cleaning, habits, home, minimalism, simple living

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
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It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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