Seven Step Essential Home Reset

When life gets busy, the house gets messy. 

No matter how many routines, systems, good habits, and intentions you set, messes and piled up dishes are bound to happen from time to time. 

When you find yourself facing a house that looks more like a disaster clean up site than a place to live, follow these seven steps to an essential home reset to get things back on track efficiently. 

Click below to watch the video: 

This seven step reset works for any room of your house, or your whole entire house! I focused on my kitchen, living room, and master bedroom and it took about two hours. You could apply these steps to your entire house and set aside a whole day, or just tackle your kitchen if you have a shorter window. 

Realize that this is an essential home reset. These steps will take things from disaster area to neat-and-tidy, but it won’t dive into deep cleaning and organizing. 

Ready to dive in? 

Step One: Gather the Trash 

When you get the trash out of a space, you remove any extra clutter that you don’t need to deal with. It’s a quick win that doesn’t take a lot of mental energy. Food wrappers, junk mail, boxes from packages – all of it can go straight to trash or recycle. Just by clearing out the trash you’ll start to see a little more breathing room in your space.

Step Two:  Do a Macro-Tidy-Up

This reset will have two steps of “tidying up” – in this first one, focus on any big things that are out of place. Maybe there’s a laundry basket by the stairs that you’ve been meaning to take up, or a table or chair got moved out of place. Anything that’s noticeably out of place, in the wrong room, or dumped across the floor should be picked up and straightened in this step. 

Step Three: Collect Laundry 

Laundry has a magical way of spreading all over the floor. Towels in the bathroom and pajamas and workout clothes can end up in piles on the floor. Gather up all of the dirty laundry, and if you have time, go ahead and start a load. 

Step Four: Make the Bed

If you’re overwhelmed by a messy house and only have five minutes to do one thing, I’d recommend making the bed. A made bed will transform a messy bedroom, and it will give you a workspace to use to fold laundry later. 

Step Five: Do a Micro-Tidy-Up

Now that the laundry is gathered, the bed is made, and the trash is gone, it’s time to go back through for the second round of tidying up. Now is the time to give your attention to the smaller things that are out of place. Papers on the kitchen island, clean dishes that need to be put away, and kitchen appliances that have been left out. Dishes and laundry will be addressed in the next step, but anything else (toys, throw pillows, books, school supplies) should be tidied up and put away in this step. 

Step Six: Wash the Dishes 

I hand wash all my dishes, so this step can take a significant amount of time. But, with or without a dishwasher, the dishes do have to be washed! One crucial step of washing the dishes is making sure they get put away, rather than just left out to dry. If they’re left out drying on the counter it will be difficult to use the counter, and that will quickly lead to more mess and clutter. Once the dishes are put away, you may also want to do a quick wipe down of the counters. 

Step Seven: Fold and Sort the Laundry

The last step of this essential home reset is to put away any clean laundry. This is when you’ll be glad you have that made bed to work off of! Just like the dishes, it’s so important to follow through all the way and get the laundry put away instead of just leaving it in a “clean pile” to get strewn about. 

If you follow these seven steps you’ll be able to quickly reset a home that’s gotten out of control. 

A great follow up to this Essential Home Reset would be to join us inside the Clean Sink Challenge – this challenge will give you the motivation you need to keep up with your dishes for 21 days straight! Once you’ve reset your home, you’ll want to keep it that way, and this challenge will help you form good habits to do just that. Click here to learn more about joining the Clean Sink Challenge.

Organization that actually sticks for busy, happy lives.