I firmly believe that nailing motherhood is all about putting things in place to make your day to day life easier. For me, that’s having my eyebrows microbladed so I can walk out of the door without having to do my makeup, having 3 baby bags packed so I can grab one and go and having a clutter-free home to shave precious minutes off my daily household chores. One of the hardest challenges I’ve found when it comes to motherhood is keeping my house in order. I have never been one to prioritise cleaning or tidying, but it is quite simply a part of life when you’ve had a baby and I find that getting the boring things done actually makes me feel like I’m doing a great job. When I had Jolie, I genuinely had no clue how you are meant to successfully juggle feeding, naps and changing with washing, dog walks, hoovering and cooking. When you have a baby, everyone tells you to put housework on the back burner as you dedicate every ounce of effort to keeping your little one happy. Which is all well and fine but after a while, the piles of washing and dust bunnies start to affect my zen and I just want to do a deep clean and throw away all of my belongings in a strop. The reason I think it’s so hard is that there’s 1678 tasks to do and no big block of time to complete them so it’s easy to feel like you’re spinning plates without actually achieving anything. What I’ve learned over the last nine months is there is indeed an art to running a household and that’s what I’m going to share with you today. Yes, I’m writing a blog post about cleaning and de-cluttering and I’m quite frankly excited about it. Does this mean I’m getting old?
Minimise clutter
While I’ve never been neurotic about being tidy, I’ve learned that the fewer bits and bobs you have, the less time you have to spend tidying so the first job on the list is to banish any unwanted clutter from your home. Marie Kondo’s decluttering method is a great one to follow here. (The Netflix documentary is totally classed as housework right?)Walk around your home and ask yourself if an item brings you joy. If it doesn’t spark joy, it doesn’t make the cut! Simple!
Maximise Storage
A new baby means an influx of toys, tech and toiletries so you’re going to need to up your storage capacity. There are so many aesthetically pleasing storage solutions available now. I invested in lots of little grey wicker boxes when I was pregnant to create little changing stations in every room and I also upgraded our shoe rack in the hall to a small sideboard to keep all of our knick-knacks in one place utilizing it for extra storage. The oak designs are super sturdy and hardwearing and they look great too. It was the perfect place to store our ever-growing medical box not to mention our baby bottles, bottle warmers, perfect prep filters and bottle brushes. We also invested in a changing table with drawer space to stow away the endless piles of baby grows not to mention creams, wipes and nappies.
Clean Clean Clean
The boring bit. Once you have de-cluttered and organised the rest of your belongings, you can then get down to cleaning your home. My best advice to do this as quickly and painlessly as possible is to put a timer on it. Give yourself 30 minutes and do a quick whip around while the baby naps. Sidenote: Watching Mrs Hinch’s Instagram stories totally counts as cleaning. I also find that buying some fancy cleaning products also makes me want to tackle chores more and I may have spent a LOT of time in home bargains buying all the Zoflora. Just me?
Create a Rota
Making a plan makes running a house a lot simpler, so start by making a list of all cleaning chores and allocate an equal amount of chores to each day of the week. Spend 30 minutes cleaning each day and this way it doesn’t all pile up and you aren’t left with total carnage in every room at the end of the week. Don’t forget to include a little reward for ticking off all of your chores for the day!
*This was a collaborative post but my hatred for cleaning is 100% my own.
