Wouldn’t it be great to be able to clean more without feeling like you’re cleaning more? Turns out, we can and it’s all about something called “habit stacking" or TRIGGER CLEANING.
Bundling tasks together can help us do more with less effort, so if there’s a chore you tend to put off because you’re not motivated to do it, build it into one of your already-established habits. When you do a certain thing at a certain time or in a certain place, you can add an extra task - in this case a chore you’re avoiding - to that and it becomes the trigger. These are some ways to build “trigger cleaning” into your routine to get your house noticeably cleaner without having to make any drastic changes.
- Empty all household garbage cans before taking trash to the curb- To make sure you get ALL the trash out of the house on garbage day, empty smaller trash cans and recycling bins into the big household ones.
- Clean the bathrooms when you return their empty garbage cans- When you bring the now-empty trash can back, take the opportunity to clean the rest of the room. Wipe down mirrors, scrub the sink and countertops and clean the outside of the toilets.
- Put in a load of laundry while the coffee is brewing- Keep the laundry monster away by doing a load a day - start to finish, that means folded and back in drawers, not living in a basket for a week. Since you probably start the day with coffee, let that be the trigger for doing your daily laundry load.
- Tidy up your desk before turning off your lamp- Make it a habit to straighten the surface of your desk before you switch your desk lamp off. Doing it daily keeps it from being a drawn-out chore and doing it at the end of the day means you get to sit down ready to work the next day.
- Reset the living room when you click off the remote- Make turning off the TV at the end of the evening a trigger for sprucing up the living room. Return blankets and pillows to their rightful spots and take glasses to the kitchen so it’s nice and neat in the morning.
Source: Apartment Therapy