Work Full-Time? Here’s Why You Need to Clean Your House (Mindset Shift)

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Organizing and cleaning mindset plays a significant role in how motivated we are to keep a clean home.  A simple mindset shift can increase motivation and ensure that women who work full-time are cleaning for the right reasons.

How would you feel if you came home to a clean kitchen, with wide open countertops?

A cozy, uncluttered living room with toys, movies, and games stowed safely away?

A sparkling bathroom, perfectly organized to make your morning and evening routines run smoothly?

You’d probably feel less stressed.  More relaxed.  Maybe even happier.

But life happens, right?

Between work, family, activities, and a million other things, that vision of a clean, beautifully organized home takes a back seat.  In its place materializes the reality of a grimy, cluttered home.

Take heart, friend, and read on.  There’s hope.

Or, check out my YouTube video explaining this organizing and cleaning mindset, and how it changed my life.

Organizing and Cleaning Mindset:  Scarcity

I believe that for most people, a messy, cluttered home results in a messy, cluttered mental state.  A cleaning mindset of scarcity, overwhelm, and failure.  In my experience, surrounding yourself with clutter and mess adds a layer of stress to your home life.

I totally get it.  Keeping your house clean is hard, and it’s even more challenging when you work full-time.

You come home.  You’re tired.  You worked all day, ran errands, and you’ve just had enough.  Your energy’s sapped, and you can’t think of a good reason to clean.  And your house reflects that.

Your house looks like you don’t care.

But the kicker is, you DO care.  You want a clean, awesome-looking home that you can be proud of, but you just don’t have the time or energy.

I struggled with this too, for years.

I’ve worked about 60 hours over 6 days per week for the past 8 years, and I come home tired every single day.  It used to feel crazy to expect myself to keep my house clean on top of working that much.

I would skip cleaning for days or even weeks, then have to work 3 times as hard to get my house clean again.  I got so behind on my cleaning at one point that it took me weeks to get my house back to where I wanted it to be.

It felt like there wasn’t enough time or energy to keep my house clean.  Thanks to that scarcity mindset, I was constantly telling myself that I couldn’t have the clean, great-looking house that I wanted.

Then, one day, I had a cleaning mindset shift that changed everything.

Organizing and Cleaning Mindset:  Self-Care

Now I have almost no trouble keeping my house clean even though I work a lot.  I actually don’t mind cleaning and organizing at all anymore.

How did I do it?  A simple mindset shift.  Here it is.

I started thinking of cleaning and organizing as a form of self-care.

Sounds totally crazy, right?  I know.  But stick with me for just a second here.

The thing is, you deserve a clean, organized, beautiful house.  You deserve less stress, more contentment, and pride in your home.  You truly do.

But the only person who’s going to make that happen for you, is you.  …Unless you hire a maid, which is an entirely different topic.

Like with so many other things in life, you have to put in the work to get what you deserve.  No matter how tired you are, how much your feet ache or your brain hurts, you have to get up and clean a little each day.

That sounds less like self-care and more like torture, you say?  Let me break it down for you.

How Cleaning and Organizing are Forms of Self-Care

That disorganized, messy environment that you don’t have time to clean stresses you out, doesn’t it?  It overwhelms you, leaves you feeling defeated and ashamed.

That’s all the more reason to get up and clean.

By cleaning and organizing your house, you’re taking control and eliminating future stress for yourself.

You’re giving yourself the clean, beautiful environment you long for.  You’re stepping up to the plate and honoring your own wishes.  You’re banishing overwhelm and embarrassment from your house.

You’re saying yes to easier mornings, keeping nooks and crannies organized, and being proud of your home.  You’re telling messes and clutter that they don’t get a vote in how you feel.

Basically, you’re putting in work now to improve your quality of life tomorrow.

Put In the Work

I’m not saying this organizing and cleaning mindset shift is going to make it all better.  It won’t.  Cleaning after a long day at work still usually sucks.

But if you adjust your mindset to think of cleaning as something you’re doing as a gift to yourself and your family, it’s monumentally easier to stomach.  And way easier to get motivated to clean, too.

When you need to clean your house and organize your stuff, tell yourself that you’re doing it for you.

Mr. Clean isn’t knocking on doors, offering to get your house sparkling and admire your reflection in his shiny, bald head.  That means you’ll have to put in the work to give yourself the clean, organized home you want.

By the way, grab your copy of my free cleaning checklist if you need help figuring out what to clean and when.  I also wrote a super helpful post on how to start decluttering your home if you need help in that area.

Organizing and Cleaning Mindset:  Conclusion

When it comes to organizing and cleaning motivation, it’s all about how you look at things.

If you see cleaning and organizing as bothersome chores that are keeping you off the couch, you’ll be miserable.  And maybe your house will be a mess.

But… if you see cleaning and organizing as something you’re doing for yourself, to:

• Give yourself the kind of home environment you want and deserve
• Eliminate stress for yourself in the future
• Be proud of your home when guests stop by

…then you might be more motivated to keep things clean.  As a result, it’ll feel less like a bunch of chores, and more like progress toward a goal that’s near and dear to your heart.

I challenge you to try this mindset shift for just a week:  Cleaning and organizing as self-care.  See how motivated you feel to do a little cleaning each day.

Want even more helpful cleaning and organizing tips for working women?  Join the ShowMe Suburban community and learn simple habits and routines to keep your home clean and organized, so you can relax away from work without feeling the stress of a messy home.  Sign up below!