Everyone knows the experience of just wanting to sit down to relax only to be called to do some chores. Household chores make for a lot of work for many of us, but they have to get done, or else things fall behind. This is why it is recommended that all people look at how they work on time management for household work to get them done.
Time Management for Chores Before and Now
Between managing my kids’ activities and trying to keep all the household chores up, I always felt behind on everything. I had some bad time management skills when I first got started. However, I was willing to learn and wanted to improve myself. With those thoughts in mind, I decided that it would make sense to try to work on some skills and tricks that could put me in a better place with my time management. If I could tweak at least a few things to get better results, I believed I could make a big difference in my and my children’s lives.
It turns out that I could get everything done after all. I just needed to concentrate my efforts more forcefully on the tasks ahead of me to make it happen. Once I got that under control, things started to happen for me in a big way.
25 Time Management Tips for Household Chores
1. Work With the Schedule That is Best for You
One of the first things I learned was that it was best to work with a schedule that worked best with my biological system. In other words, I had to learn which hours I could be at my biological prime. Once I had that figured out, I knew when I would be most productive and which tasks to knock out.
2. Using Timers
I can’t recommend the use of timers enough. Set a timer for some time (I usually opt for 15 minutes), and then keep working on a task until you have completed it or the timer goes off. You will get so much more done this way. One of my favorite timers is the Pomodoro timer because it allows me to apply the Pomodoro method (25 minutes of work followed by a 5-minute break until it is all done) to my chores.
3. Assign Certain Chores to Certain Days
One way to keep up with the mountain of dishes or laundry you are working through is to assign that chore to a particular day of the week. Stick to that, and you should accomplish a lot more. This works excellently for chores such as vacuuming and cleaning floors.
4. Keep Supplies Centrally Located
I cannot tell you the number of times I have wasted precious time and resources looking for supplies I already had. I just needed to place them in one spot to find them going forward easily. Once I started doing that, things weren’t so bad anymore.
5. Give Your Children Some of the Workload
You can always hand your children some of the workloads as well. They may complain about it but must also contribute to the household. This is part of the privilege of living there. Besides that, learning responsibility is a good thing for children and will help them mature.
6. Create Zones in Your Home
If you box your home off into different zones, you might be able to look at your chores in a new light. Instead of seeing your entire house as a mess, you need to get to and take care of one zone in your home at a time. Doing this saves you from being overwhelmed by everything there is to do.
Use this tip with tip #3 about assigning certain chores to certain days for maximum impact!
7. Use Multiple Vacuums
I have to say that one way to get things cleaner more quickly is to use more than one vacuum in the house. One big vacuum is excellent for picking up the majority of things that you need taken care of, but you may need to use smaller vacuums to get around the tight corners and other areas that need to be taken care of.
8. Plan Ahead
Try to think about the chores you will do and the order in which you will do them. Sometimes, it makes more sense to stack certain chores in a particular way so you aren’t constantly backtracking and doubling up your work when you don’t have to.
9. Get Up Earlier
It is too easy to let yourself sleep in longer than you should. We are all guilty of it sometimes, but you should try to put the clamp down on this behavior simply because you don’t want to let yourself fall under the spell of believing that you can always get more done the next day. That is a recipe for never really getting everything done; we know that is not the way you want to live.
It is no question that it is challenging for the body to wake up earlier in the day, but the reward is that chores can be completed earlier as well, and many find that a nice benefit.
10. Always Put Away Laundry ASAP
Putting away laundry is easy to let go of. You can always stack it in the corner for the time being. The problem with this is that you will always be behind on getting it taken care of if you do this. Put your laundry away ASAP, or risk adding more to your chores.
11. Group Smaller Chores Together
People with all time management styles can agree on the need to batch smaller chores together. Knock out those pesky little chores simultaneously so you aren’t struggling to get caught up.
12. Know What Truly Can Be Put Off
There are some things that you truly can put off until another time. Understanding the difference between the things you can and cannot put off for another day is the difference between someone who gets things done and someone who does not. Make sure you are the type of person that gets things done.
13. Consider the Seinfeld Strategy
The famous comedian Jerry Seinfeld had a strategy for getting things done. He would hang a giant calendar in his home and mark a red X every day that he sat down and wrote some jokes. His strategy was to try to build the chain as long as he possibly could. It gave him the motivation to get his work done. You can steal the Seinfeld strategy for your chores too.
14. Do a Small Amount Each Day
Instead of making yourself take care of all the chores simultaneously, why not try to do a small amount each day? It will amount to something much more significant when you do it this way, and you will be pleased with yourself and the results when you work at it like this.
Perhaps you will clean the kitchen one day, the mirrors the next, and so on. Before you know it, you have made significant progress on your goals.
15. Delegate Time-Consuming Tasks
You can hire people for cheap to take care of the small tasks draining your time. There are apps like TaskRabbit where you can employ gig workers to do things like pick up your groceries. Save yourself the time and energy of doing this.
16. Do Deep Cleans Sometimes
Now and then, you should do a deep clean and get everything to where you want it to be. This is time-consuming, but it will be well worth the trouble once you have a clean home that you can sit back and enjoy.
17. Get Your Paperwork in Order
People sometimes forget they need to get essential papers as much as possible. Those papers are important and may need to be accessed regularly. Make this part of your cleaning routine.
18. Budget a Certain Amount of Time for Each Chore
Make sure you are not spending more time than necessary on certain chores. That is to say that you should budget a certain amount of time for each chore that you need to get to today, but you shouldn’t go overdue. If a particular chore is not producing massive results for you regarding productivity and happiness, then you should allocate less time to it.
19. Change Your Approach as Necessary
You don’t have to stick to the same approach because it has worked for you. If something else makes sense in the future, then change it up.
20. Give Yourself Praise for a Job Well Done
Make sure you also take time to give yourself some praise for a job well done. There are times when you may need a bit of encouragement to get yourself to the finish line on some of your tasks, and there is nothing wrong with recognizing all the work you have already put in.
21. Add or Remove Chores As Necessary
Don’t forget to add or remove chores from your list when necessary. What begins as a must-do thing on your list may not stay that way forever, and you need to be prepared to remove it from your list if it no longer serves your purposes. Strange as this may sound, it is helpful for people to remember to cross off and remove certain chores after they finally have the chance to get them knocked off the list.
22. Take Shorter Breaks
You need to take breaks from your chores from time to time to recharge, but you might want to shorten the length of those breaks to get more done. Your shorter breaks still give you a chance to catch your breath, but they won’t leave you so much time that you swiftly get off task.
23. Repurpose Supplies You Already Own
People waste time going to the store to buy supplies they already have lying around their houses. There are plenty of cases of people buying duplicates of a product they already own simply because they have forgotten that they have it. This is not the proper way to take care of your cleaning chores, and you should do everything in your power to avoid making this same mistake.
24. Clean as You Go
Were you passing through a room on your way to do something else? Why not take a moment and clean up as you pass through? It will only add a few minutes to your day, but it could save you time during your chore days.
25. Dust and Polish Surfaces First
You should dust off and polish your surfaces before taking other steps toward cleaning things. This step must be done first because it takes care of some surface-level problems you are looking at. That is a big deal, and you should take care to get it solved today.
Conclusion
Chores aren’t fun, and no one likes to handle them. However, they are necessary for the operation of the house. If you are going to make forward progress on your goals, then you need to get these done so you can put them behind you. A few time management tips will help you get there.
