With the last few articles, we have discussed habit loops and how to build new good habits, and have also discussed the power of conscious thought in making those habits happen in the first place. Now that we know how to change our bad habits, and have a few useful strategies to support our change efforts we should be all geared up and ready to get organized, right? Right!
The only thing standing in the way is a few bad habits! A few bad habits that resulted in a messy house, piles of dirty dishes, loose leaf paper on most surfaces and unwashed laundry in bedrooms. Exaggeration aside, building new good habits is a very involved process for our brains, and it is very easy to get overwhelmed by trying to change too much at once.
The habit building experts at ZenHabits suggest trying a new habit for two weeks before moving on to another one. Depending on how messy or disorganized your habits are and what pieces of your routine need adjusting, you may find yourself with a whole new set of habits within a few months. You may be thinking to yourself “I can handle a little more than that”, but there are a ton of pieces to consider if your end goal is a clean and organized lifestyle and household. Do you think you would be able to remind yourself to hang clothes up, organize loose papers (receipts, school handouts, notes from work, bills, etc), do the dishes immediately, take the trash out to your bins, and place everything in its proper determined place, every single day?
If you broke each of those things down into a two-week long habit building process, wherein you consciously remind yourself to meet the specific goal for that day, you would be amazed at the results. The steps are very simple. As we mentioned in our last article; write the goal down (‘Make sure the sink is empty of dishes and clean, each evening’ as an example), make sure what you’ve written down is somewhere visible (on the backsplash of your sink) and finally; track your results.
Are you meeting the goal each day of the two weeks? If after the first few days, you are not, think about sharing your daily results with a friend or relative in order to stay accountable. Having someone else prompt or remind you to send them a picture of your spotless sink and shiny clean dishes should be enough motivation for you to remember your daily habit goal. Of course, don’t forget to reward yourself for meeting a daily goal. Dishes done and sink clean? Treat yourself with an extra 30 minutes of Netflix (or whatever your evening pleasure is!) time. The important thing in this process is to not get down on yourself if you slip up and miss a day. If you slip up, take the time to look at why you forgot to wash the dishes, and what you can do tomorrow to make sure you don’t forget again.
As always, if time and energy to keep things clean and organized just is not happening, reach out to us! At Maidstr, we offer our home cleaning customers a prompt, professional and personal service.
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash