The Lazy Girl Clean Routine: The Most Efficient Way To Clean A Chaotic Room
a step by step guide to cleaning your room without losing your mind:)
Cleaning your room can be such a frustrating task. Sometimes it seems like no matter how hard you try, your room never stays clean long enough to warrant how much work goes into putting it back together. A never-ending cycle of taking up massive amounts of energy and time, causing stress and overwhelm — with little reward.
I’ve been there countless times. Overwhelmed with the thought of having to clean it all, knowing it’s going to take a lot of time and all of my severely limited energy. Wondering why I always waited so long to clean the darn thing before it turned into chaos. And when I finally couldn’t push it off any longer, it would always take multiple days to clean, just to have it turn back into a disaster a couple weeks later. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t keep myself from destroying it. Until I designed a life-changing cleaning system that finally worked.
This system allowed me to make cleaning easier, faster and less overwhelming. Cutting the cleaning and stress in HALF — every time. This streamlined process has turned my decade long procrastination habits into actual progress that I could see in real time. In the past, I felt like I barely made a dent if I spent an hour cleaning my room, now I can see progress in minutes. In this post I’ll be covering:
How I Cut My Cleaning Time In Half With Less Overwhelm and Stress
What It Means To Clean The Lazy Girl Way
The Lazy Girl Clean Routine: How To Clean A Chaotic Room Quickly and Easily
So if you're tired of wasting your precious time and energy, getting overwhelmed by how much needs to get done, and avoiding the cleaning for weeks, you've come to the right place! All of that is about to change after today!
How I Cut My Cleaning Time In Half With Less Overwhelm and Stress
Cleaning my room was one of my least favorite chores to do (a close second to washing the dishes). I had a difficult time starting, finishing and willing myself to do it. It always seemed overwhelming and I would be dreading the amount of time and energy I knew it would take. I don’t know how I do it, but I have a gift for making any room I’m in complete chaos. This “gift” is one I’ve had for as long as I can remember. It was so easy to make the mess within less than a day, but would take several painstaking hours to clean up later. When I tried to clean, I had a hard time willing myself to start and focus. I would eventually get overwhelmed by how much there was to do and would need to take a break. Needless to say, I would take a lot of breaks, which would prolong the task even further without seeing any progress.
Being someone who is always looking for more efficient ways to start and complete tasks, I would look up what other people had to say about the subject. And to put it bluntly, I was not impressed. I was rather shocked at how complex and inefficient their suggestions were. All I saw were these cleaning “challenges.” You know the ones — the ones where they would give tasks like “pick up everything that is green” and “pick up everything that is white,” resulting in wild goose chases in your own room that are ineffective, waste time, and feel like you haven't made a dent after 30 minutes of work.
After years of struggling with this problem, I had finally designed the best way for me to clean any space that I will inevitably destroy. This is the cleaning strategy that is the most efficient, allowing appropriate stopping points for breaks as needed and actually allows me to see impactful progress as I clean — not just after a couple of hours.
What It Means To Clean The Lazy Girl Way
Cleaning your room the lazy girl way means utilizing your time and energy for the maximum impact. That everything we choose to spend our precious resources on, will actually be fruitful and get us to our goal. All while not ignoring our personal obstacles that may come up like overwhelm, stress, or low energy, but implementing helpful techniques to carry us through to the end of every task despite the obstacles. I think one of the ways the Lazy Girl Clean Routine accomplishes this is by leaving natural stopping points for when you do feel the need to take a break. You can do this without feeling like you made a bigger mess after starting and know exactly what phase to continue with after your break. Ultimately, having the cleaning process be broken up into bite sized pieces that are manageable to start and complete with any room.
Read below to learn the routine that will take you from procrastination to progress and from hours to minutes!
The Lazy Girl Clean Routine: How To Clean A Chaotic Room Quickly and Easily
Step 1: The Biggest Furniture Piece
Whatever furniture piece takes up the most space in a room is where we begin. Usually this will be your bed, couch, or lounge chair. Start by changing the sheets, fixing blankets, making the bed, and fluffing pillows. If you have any items on your bed, like clothes, trash, bags, etc., throw them on the floor. Don’t worry, you can tell your mom that I told you to. ;) Your bed needs her shining moment without interference!
This is the part of your room that is typically the biggest and that your eyes are drawn to first. If you clean this first, you are able to see a lot of progress quickly which can help ease overwhelm. Not to mention, it also makes a great place to put other items later when we are sorting things out.
Step 2: Flat Surfaces
Clear and tidy up all countertops or anything with a flat surface. This could be dressers, a desk, a window sill, etc. When you see more clean counter space, the more visual impact and progress you'll see in your room.
Step 3: Clothes Off The Floor
Gather all clothes lying around the room and put on your freshly made bed or couch. We want to take some volume off the ground so we can see what we are working with.
Step 4: Remove All Trash
This one is my favorite to start cleaning the floor with, because it's so easy. It either goes in a trash bag or gets recycled. If you don't recycle, I can tell you don’t live in Oregon. If you want to, today is a great day to start! :*)
Step 5: Pick Up And Put Away
Put anything else that’s left on the floor back where it belongs. Books, homework, backpacks, bags, shoes - anything that isn’t clothing, pick up and put away!
Step 6: Clothes
Last and most definitely least, are the clothes. We are absolutely grateful to have them, but know they are the worst to put away. Start by separating the clean from the dirty clothes on your bed. I like having them on the bed because they are easy to separate without having to bend over constantly. Then, put your dirty clothes in the laundry basket and keep the clean clothes on the bed.
Step 7: Separate And Hang
Now we divide the clean clothes from items that need to be folded and the ones that need to be put on hangers. Grab your hangers and put all clothes that need to be hung on the hangers. I like to stack every clothed hanger on the bed until all of them have been done, before I start putting them in the closet. This way, I'm not wasting time walking back and forth, but can take one big load over and place all the clothes in the closet quickly.
Step 8: Fold
Lastly, fold all remaining clothes and put them away. Now, your room is officially clean! Whoop whoop, you did that thang!
I know cleaning a room can be hard, but often I find that once I get started and can see noticeable progress after each cleaning step, I am way more inclined to keep going and clean my whole room in one sitting. If there's a situation where I can't complete the cleaning ritual and have to continue later, I know exactly which step I need to start with to reach the end goal. More progress. Less overwhelm.
Thank you so much for reading and I’m hoping this helps you on your journey to wellness! You know what they say, “ A messy space = a messy mind”. Create more peace, function and wellness in your life with The Lazy Girl Clean Routine.
To your everlasting growth and success,
Natalie