How to Manage Your Home (without losing your mind)

by Janine, Apr 2021

Improving your home management skills can make life less complicated and a lot less stressful. But what is home management? It can be overwhelming when you consider all the aspects of your home including cleaning, maintenance, finance, cooking etc. Successful home management is organising all these areas in a way that fits your family’s needs!

Organisation

A big part of managing your home is having a fool-proof organisation system in place. If you’re not the most organised individual, this can take some practice – but once everything in your home, has a home, you will find that all other home management is a lot easier!

Before you can implement your new organisation strategy, you will need to declutter. Check out our previous article on decluttering by clicking here.

Cleaning

There’s a few key questions to ask yourself when it comes to cleaning your home:

Is cleaning allocated to one family member, or will you all have assigned jobs?
How often do these jobs need completing?
Can you outsource any of these jobs?

Research shows that British women do 60% more housework than men, so the chances are that if you’re the female of the household, you’re probably doing the lion’s share of cleaning. Giving family members allocated jobs can ensure that this imbalance is addressed.

However, we believe question number 3 to be the most important. Hiring a regular domestic cleaner can not only reduce your stress and help you to manage your home more effectively – but it can also prevent arguments about who does what. If you’d like to understand how a Well Polished cleaner could bring peace to your home, click here to contact your local office.

Money & Budgeting

Having a handle on your household finances can be the ultimate reducer of stress. Getting into the habit of creating a budget and sticking to your budget is an important part of your home management.

We think that the budget planner over on the Money Saving Expert website can be super useful for this.

Meal Planning

Meal planning fits in with managing your budget, but also with managing your family’s health and wellbeing.

There’s nothing worse than getting to 6pm and realising you have no idea what you’re going to cook for dinner, especially when you have a hungry family waiting!

Using a meal planning whiteboard or noticeboard can help. On a Sunday, list what meals you’re planning on cooking for the coming week and then make a list of the ingredients you need to buy.

Home Maintenance

Keeping your home in tip-top shape means your home is being looked after and maintained.

All homes will need some form of maintenance at various points, whether this be as simple as a lick of paint or as serious as a new roof.

The level of involvement in the task may be the deciding factor as to whether you attempt the job yourself, or hire in an external contractor. It’s always wise to have a ‘rainy day fund’ for unexpected home maintenance jobs.

Routines & Schedules

Having a routine in place for your family can really help with home management. Most families find that a morning routine and an evening routine are the most effective.

For example, knowing that your morning schedule includes breakfast, exercise, shower and perhaps a quick tidy of the kitchen before heading out the door. This sort of schedule will help you get things done on autopilot and without really thinking about them.

Some Final Tips…

Make your bed every morning as soon as you get up
Put your clothes / shoes away immediately after you’ve worn them
Do the dishes straight after dinner
Empty the overnight dishwasher first thing in the morning
Action, shred or file all post / letters as soon as they arrive
Have a collection of boxes / baskets etc to hide away neccessary but unsightly clutter
Combine household chores with more enjoyable tasks (i.e. ironing whilst watching TV)

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