Pick Up

      I have a single-mom home. It looks pretty much the same way as any other family home. We have the garage disaster that my son inherited from his father and carries on the messy garage tradition. We have dinner times and home cooked meals along with evidence of such on nights when we are too tired to clean up. We have messy kid bathrooms and piles of laundry. Of course, living in the country you can add the occasional messes of several animals of varying species. What I love about my home though is that it is perfectly comfortable for us and can clean up quite nice when I want to entertain.
    I have a single-guy friend who owns a home. I am curious what a single-guy home looks like. Certainly it can't look like the bachelor pads I have seen where guys pile stuff along narrow walking paths in small rented apartments. He actually bought a house and the investment of ownership assumes a certain amount of upkeep and care.
    The two most difficult rooms to keep up with are the kitchen and bathroom. In my four bedroom, two kid house, we struggle constantly maintaining the cleanliness of the kitchen and the bathrooms. Would it be easier to keep up with just one person? I look around my house and realize that we all seem to have a certain room that we leave our mark in. My son's is the garage, mine is the office, and my youngest just leaves a trail wherever he's been but everyone contributes to the messes in the kitchen and bathrooms.
    I can only imagine that even my single-guy friend's home has areas that are harder to maintain than others. The kitchen may be spotless because he claims he doesn't cook. I just want to take a peak in the kitchen cabinet and see if he owns any pots and pans or even plates and silverware for that matter. Is the refrigerator empty? Maybe he doesn't even own a refrigerator. My guess is that his favorite appliance is the trash compactor in order to efficiently discard the fast food wrappers.
   I love my trash compactor. The only part that doesn't seem to function is the part where the kids actually get their trash put into it. I have a routine of walking through rooms and picking up as I go. I constantly try to remind the kids to do the same especially in their high use areas.  If you can keep up with the clutter, a home can maintain a certain level of readiness for spontaneous socializing or for more peaceful family time. The pick up as you go philosophy does two things: one it is easy to see exactly whose mess it is cluttering the room and it gets you in the habit of putting things back in there place when your done. If the kitchen is clean, it's much easier to go in and prepare a meal and dishes are much easier to clean before the food dries and hardens on them. If things are in their place, it is much easier to find them when you need them next time.
    In addition to maintaining a pick up as you go through philosophy, make sure you build enough time in your daily routine for putting away projects. Assign a place for any ongoing projects, so that when they are not being worked on they have a place to be put away that offers easy access to retrieve them when you want to continue working on them. Clean up the kitchen and bathroom after every use. Don't give up encouraging the kids to do the same; one day they might surprise you. Whether you live with a mob of kids and animals or on your own, stuff gets overwhelming if you don't maintain a constant vigilance over it. If you're behind the power curve, use the pile a day removal plan together with the pick up as you go method and it won't be long and you will be enjoying the peace that a clutter-free space can bring.