How Keeping a Clean/Organized Home Can Actually Save You Money!!!

How Keeping a Tidy/Organized Home Can Actually Help You Save Money!

How many times have you stared solemnly into the sink full of dishes around dinner time while your stomach growled in anticipation? If you are like me, you have done this quite of few times and the hunger and tiredness just over took the urge to wash the dishes and make dinner. Around these times it seemed as though my stomach would scream “FAST FOOD!” and I would reluctantly give in.

This can get you into big trouble! If you give in to the temptation at least once, you are bound to make it a habit and that is not good for your health or your wallet! Having clean dishes is a great motivator to make wonderful home cooked stock pile meals!

Stress free way to always have clean dishes:

Unless you make a gourmet meal every night, you probably don’t dirty up a ton of dishes for just one dinner. I find it easiest to “clean while you cook”. This means while you are preparing your meal, put away stuff as you use it and rinse out the dishes when you are done using them. If you don’t have a dishwasher you could load up the sink with hot soapy water and just place the dishes you are done with in there so they are ready for you. This will make the task of doing the dishes a lot easier when you get to it. Also you can have your family help out by rinsing off their dishes and placing them in the sink when they are done eating. This way after dinner you should be able to just load the dishwasher or wash the dishes you placed in the soapy water in a matter of just 5-10 minutes. Less mess, less stress, and next time you go to make dinner you won’t have a sink full of dirty dishes persuading you to spend your hard earned money on fast food!

Have you ever been searching for something in your home that you need and just can’t find it? You just know that you had one before, but can’t find it anywhere! If you are like me, you end up assuming that you lost it or don’t have it anymore so you go out and buy a new one. This happened to me just the other day when my husband told me that he needed a pair of warm winter gloves since the weather was getting much cooler. I would have sworn that he had a pair last year, but since we couldn’t find it anywhere in the house I started researching sales to get him a good pair. Two weeks later when we were packing up our house to move to a new place we found an unlabeled box that was tucked away in the basement that held 5 pairs of winter gloves! We apparently hadn’t looked hard enough, but we wouldn’t have had to if we kept our things more organized!

Organization tips:

I absolutely LOVE storage tubs and storage drawers! They last a long time, come with secure lids, are affordable, and come in funky colors! Wal-Mart has great selections of storage tubs and drawers at really affordable prices all year round. The special colored ones (such as orange, or red and green) also tend to go on sale around the holidays. These work great for storing things such as winter/summer clothes, holiday decorations, scrap booking materials, other craft items, and much more. They can also easily be stacked away in a corner, closet, or basement so that they don’t clutter your home. I just label these with some masking tape and a permanent marker so that I know what each tub contains. The storage drawers are great for organizing little items such as sewing materials, recipes, and more. The new place that we recently moved into did not have a lot of shelf space in the closets and since I got rid of my dresser that was falling apart; I really had nowhere to put my underwear, socks, and bras. A hot pink 3-storage drawer that I placed in the bottom of my closet that only cost $15 worked out perfect!

Once you start organizing all of your extra items and there is a place for everything and everything is in its place you will start to notice that you know exactly where everything is and don’t have to run out and break your wallet to buy more of what you already have somewhere!

Another great tip:

Cleaning and organizing can be really tiring, especially after coming home from a long day of work. I know when I came home from working all day I just wanted to plop down on the couch and never get up again! However, it did not feel as relaxing to come home to a dirty home, and just the thought of cleaning it made me more tired and stressed out.

This is when I started the “15 minute tidy”. Every day, whether in the morning or evening, I would take just 15 minutes to pick up the stuff lying around, straighten out the counters and tables, and put things in their places. 15 minutes isn’t enough to tire you out, but it is just enough to get things put away so that your home looks and feels clean. This way you can relax in an organized home and when it comes time to really clean, you won’t have to pick up as much and can just focus on the cleaning part rather than the tidying part.

I was reluctant to try these tips at first, but now it has become part of my daily routine and really makes my days less stressful and helps me to spend less money! I hope these tips can work the same way for you!