Owning or renting a place to live is something we all dream of when we reach adulthood; we want to be able to stand on our own two feet and have that independence that being aged 18 and over promises us! However, having a place to yourself means a lot of work needs to be done, and usually, on a daily basis. After all, you don’t want to be living in a pigsty, and you definitely don’t want to be losing the TV remote every 5 minutes!
Which is why we can get so annoyed with the general idea of housework. We all have chores to get through, and some of us handle them better than others, but when you’ve already got a thousand other things to do, sweeping up and wiping down is the last thing you want to do.
There are so many day to day things we have to do within our homes that annoy us; don’t worry, you’re not alone in conveniently not finding the time to finally get the vacuum out and get all that fluff off of the carpet! But there are some things we can do to help us handle those annoying everyday home tasks we all have to contend with, so let’s go into a little more detail about them below.
Get your notepad out and make yourself a to do list – we’re going to help you put one together properly! (Pexels Image – CC0 Licence)
First of All, Try to Group Things Together
What you want to do, first of all, is to try and group your tasks together. To make sure you get round to them, on at least a regular basis once or twice a month, batch them up into similar categories. Or failing that, just simply take care of things as you walk past them – say you’re on your way to the bathroom to brush your teeth (a normal everyday task), pick up any clothes that are on the floor as you go.
But when it comes to forming task groups, make sure your groups make sense, and are booked into the diary to be done as often as you need them to be. Your home is a big place to take care of, when you really think about it, and being able to get that dish cloth soaked in disinfectant into all the nooks and crannies takes a lot of effort!
So, first of all, start at the top and work your way down, so you’re not making the bottom of your house dirty all over again when traipsing rubbish from upstairs through it to the trash outside. You could either batch tasks by room, or you could batch them by category – dealing with wet items or dealing with dry items, etc.
Batching is also about time management. Think about the areas outside of your house – the garden, the car you have parked outside, etc. How often are they going to require maintenance? Most likely once a month, so put an end of the month date in the diary and leave them be until you’ve made an appointment to face them. And now you’ve just got your home to contend with; what a weight off!
Learn How to Clean Out a Kitchen Appliance
Kitchen appliances can be very hard to get into and clean out; just think about your oven here! It’s greasy, gritty and full of burnt food bits in there, and who knows how old that collection of grease on the bottom of the oven really is. And sure, you don’t tend to think about how clean your oven is, as long as it does the job for dinner each and every night, but you probably really need to get some degreaser in there!
But if you know how to clean out your kitchen appliances, you won’t feel so daunted about getting the job done the next time around. The oven is of course the number one appliance for a thorough cleaning, so make sure you know about the best materials to use to get those burnt on stains off again. Be sure to also put down some protective material on the floor in front of your oven door, to ensure you’re not having to get down on your hands and knees to scrub the floor as well!
And don’t forget the smaller appliances either! Things like the toaster or a coffee maker can be jam packed with bacteria; make sure you turn these off and take them apart on a regular basis, and give each of their parts a thorough wash. Thankfully, these appliances usually have removable parts to make it easy for the owner to clean them, so your job is made a lot easier right here! Fill a bowl with hot, soapy water, and then dump these removable parts in and give them a good scrub down.
Learn How to Arrange the Wires Behind the TV
The TV is a focal point in your home. It’s mostly likely against a wall, standing on a cabinet or attached to the wall, and it’s a big focus for anyone in the TV room or the living room. And seeing as TVs are just getting bigger and bigger these days, and there’s a lot more DVD systems and video game consoles on the market to connect up to the TV, being able to keep things tidy behind it or beneath it, or even just keeping the TV safe and secure in the first place can be really tricky!
So, make sure you know what wires are back there, first of all. Make sure there’s no excess wires that are just collecting dust or potentially fraying away and becoming a fire hazard without you even knowing it. Then rearrange the wires – try to keep them linear to what they connect to, and even think about labelling them with electrical tape. You could very well invest in a cable tidy, to ensure your messy plug socket is covered up and kept away from making any eye sores.
You might want to get in touch with a TV dismount service if you’re planning to move your TV around; the biggest TVs, or the Smart TVs we have in our homes most often take more than one person to move around and apply to a wall bracket – how do you feel about your living room DIY skills? You can very easily mark off an annoying home task right here and now by getting in touch with a professional, and you barely had to lift a finger in the meantime!
Clear Out Your Desk Drawers
Yes, the time has come again to make sure the desk you work at isn’t cluttered to the brim with unnecessary materials. After all, we can just shove all kinds of papers and files and miscellaneous debris in those drawers and then forget all about them, until one day we open the drawer and it all comes flying and falling out.
So, instead of letting this happen again and again, it’s time to come up with a filing system. If you’re someone who works from home, either part time or you’re a remote worker full stop, you’re going to need to do some serious rearranging here. The name of the game here is decluttering, and removing the potential fire hazard that could be your waste paper basket underneath your desk near all of those computer cables.
First of all, clear a space for your new filing system – make sure you’ve got a cabinet to slot into your home office, or the back of your living room, or even just get an external hard drive to create a digital library of everything you could need to know about how you work. Make sure you know what you need to keep and what you don’t; those receipts that aren’t in any way a business expense? They don’t need to be slotted into the same box as the rest of them.
Keeping an Eye on Your Drains
Finally, make sure you’re always keeping an eye on your drains as well. After all, the bathroom and the kitchen are both heavily used parts of your home, and are going to require the most day to day maintenance overall. Most of all, make sure you’re never tipping oil or fat from a pan right down the sink!
But at the same time, you’re going to want to keep an eye on the drains and gutter pipes outside as well – they all work in tandem, and you don’t want some kind of new type of bush or fungus growing across the drain pipe on your roof. Clean these gutters out every time the season ends.
So, can you handle the most annoying of home tasks that always plague you? Of course you can, as long as you know how to manage your time, where to focus your energy, and also how to get the best cleaning materials to attack the situation with!
Kori
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