Too often we dread doing tasks around the house like cleaning up, and putting things away. However, these things aren’t going to magically go away so we need to find a way to make these tasks more fun to complete. Today I’m going to share two ways to help you out with that.
If you’re new here, my name is Jillian and I help people simplify their homes by clearing out unnecessary clutter to create a calm and enjoyable space.
The other day, I woke up and came down to our kitchen to find out that we had forgotten to run the dishwasher the night before. Now, unloading the dishwasher first thing is part of my usual morning routine so right away, I felt off my game. Usually, I unload the dishwasher as I’m getting breakfast ready for the kids and putting lunches together. So since nothing was clean, I had to run it in the morning and unload it later in the day, right around lunch time. Now, I was not in the mood to unload it and didn’t feel like it so I did what I do when I need a bit of motivation…I gave myself a challenge!
I was heating up leftovers in the microwave for one and a half minutes so I challenged myself to see if I could unload the dishwasher before the timer on the microwave went off.
There’s something about a challenge that just makes it more fun to complete a boring everyday task like cleaning out your dishwasher.
Set a Timer
So the first way to motivate yourself is to Set a timer and challenge yourself to finish your task in that specific amount of time.
What you’ll find is even if you don’t happen to finish your task in that amount of time, you’ve got two options. You can either be done and give yourself a pat on the back for doing as much as you could or what you’ll often find is that you’re so close to being done anyways that you might as well finish the task so that it’s completed and you’ll feel good for the sense of accomplishment.
Play a Pump Up Song
The second way of making tidying up fun is to Play a Pump Up Song. Now this is just like setting a timer, since a song is a specific length, however, it’s more fun because you can enjoy listening to some favourite tunes as well.
When I help to put our kids’ laundry away, we usually challenge ourselves to see if we can have all the laundry put away by the end of whatever pump up song we choose. I find this to be a fun and motivating way of getting the kids to do tasks around the house. Everyone loves a little music so I let them choose whatever song they want to listen to and we get going.
This is a strategy I use quite a bit at home. I’ll tell myself that I just have to do a task for as long as a song is on. So I’ll work fast to complete whatever it is and usually by the time the song is over…If I want to, I can take a break or what usually happens is I’m already so far along that I want to just finish whatever I’m doing. (washing dishes)
Think about the tasks that you don’t especially like doing around the house and I’d challenge you to actually time yourself to see how long some of those tasks usually take. I’m guessing that a lot of tasks don’t take as long as we think they will.
For example, I timed myself this week doing a few things and this is what I learned…
- Making my bed – 1 minute
- Unloading the dishwasher – 2 minutes
- Collecting the garbage around the house – 3 minutes
- Cleaning one bathroom – 7 minutes, 5 minutes
It’s funny how we often will build up these tasks in our head and put them off because we just don’t feel like it when in reality it doesn’t take very long to complete things. If we would just do them first and then reward yourself with something like watching your favourite show or whatever is appealing to you.
So if you don’t currently set a timer or challenge yourself with a pump up song when it comes time to complete certain tasks. I’d like to encourage you to give it a try and see how it goes.
I’d love to hear if you have some other ways that you make tidying up fun in your house. Let me know in the comments below. If you haven’t yet, I’d love for you to subscribe to my channel if you enjoy videos like these. Have a great week and I’ll see you in the next video!
