The New Year is universally synonymous with brand new beginnings. For many people, it’s the symbolic and more appropriate time to make changes and come up with resolutions to improve their lives. From setting fitness goals to just learning new hobbies, the New Year helps people discover new things about themselves while at the same time bettering themselves in the process.
Another popular New Year’s resolution most people have is to be more organized. It’s why popular coffee shops release next-year planner notebooks on an annual basis. Regardless whether it’s to be more organized at work, at home or in terms of thought,it all starts from home. If your home isn’t organized, there’s a large chance it trickles down to your workplace and your relationships. Start from your home and life, in general, will be simpler and more organized. Here are a couple of tips that can help you keep your condo in Sta Rosa clean and orderly.
Create A SMART Goal
At the end of the day, New Years’ resolutions are declared goals. Vague as they may sound, it’s what you as a person with those resolutions deeply desires. That being said, it’s important that these goals are stated in a SMART way: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
In order for this desire to manifest, you need to clearly visualize the result you have in mind. Specify what it is exactly that you want to accomplish. It also needs to be measurable in terms of quantity or quality. After all, you can only improve on something if you measure it and if you can practically count it. You also need to make sure that it’s achievable in that it’s realistic in that it’s within the bounds of reality. Lastly, it needs to have a deadline, meaning perhaps the end of the year.
As an example, a basic SMART goal pertaining to cleanliness and organization might look something like this:
“Should have cleaned all 4 rooms of the home 52 times by December 31, 2022.”
“Should increase house space by 10% by December 31, 2022.”
Given that they’re smart, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound, it’s much easier to create a content plan for it. It also gets easier to follow through it because it’s visually clearer to you now what the New Years’ Resolution looks like.
Plan Your Cleaning Approach
The adage goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Whenever you have a goal in your mind, it’s important to plan how to achieve it. In this case, it could be as simple as looking at your online or phone calendar and setting up schedules to remind you to clean your home. If you want to get into detail, you could open up a Google spreadsheet and come up with a checklist for maintenance. All you need to do is assign a specific time and date for cleaning and get to work.
When it comes to the actual cleaning, plan your approach in tidbits. You can tackle cleaning on a room per room basis, moving from smaller spaces to larger ones. Focus more time and energy on spaces that have high foot traffic as those can potentially have the most dirt and grime either from the outside or from within.
Start cleaning walls and surfaces and then progress towards the walls and individual elements of your room. Make sure to deep clean each of these rooms on a regular basis (preferably weekly) in order to maintain cleanliness and to get rid of potential airborne pathogens.
Look Internally When Decluttering
Whenever people try to adapt a minimalist lifestyle, they almost always ask themselves this question whenever they try to declutter: “Does it spark joy?” It makes sense in part because decluttering is an important part of organizing and cleaning your home. It’s also important to be purposeful when organizing your home.
Following the basic concepts of minimalism as a lifestyle, having items in your home that serves an intended purpose is just as important as having items that make you feel fulfilled and happy. This requires you to dig deep, look at the things in your life that you need and want and focus on what really matters to you.
Ask yourself if you really need to have that designer couch that takes almost half of your living room space? Would a simple and comfortable living room set do? Reflect on that antique closet and if you really need it for your bedroom. Would a simpler and relatively cheaper multipurpose desk do instead? Whenever you declutter and get new stuff for your home, always look within and stay purposeful.
Develop That Good Habit
At the end of the day, keeping your condo in Sta Rosa clean and orderly is a habit you have to develop. And habits require two things: 1) consistency and 2) emotional investment. Consistency is relatively simple because you just have to make sure that you do an activity on a regular basis. Emotional investment is a little tricky because you need to look at the reason why you’re trying to develop this habit.
When you come to a point that you feel too lazy to follow through on your goal, remember why you started. As mentioned earlier, cleanliness and organization starts at home and trickles down to work and relationships. Follow these steps and soon cleaning and organizing your condo is a habit you’ll have in a relatively short period of time.