When you’re busy with everything that life throws at you, things like keeping your home clean and organised tend to fall by the wayside. It’s not that such tasks are not important; rather there are other matters that take precedence.
The problem, of course, is that an unclean, disorganised living space can affect most other facets of your life. Even your quality of sleep can suffer if you don’t tidy things up.
Fortunately, there are plenty of solutions that will help you keep your home straight. The simplest way is, of course, to hire professional cleaners to do it for you. It isn’t possible or practical all the time, however, so the next best thing is to do what professional cleaning companies do: make the most of modern-day innovations.
Downloading a few apps on your smartphone is a great start on making cleaning and home organisation so much easier. Below are a few recommendations to help get you started:
Chore Scheduling Apps
The term “household chores” seems simple enough but in reality, it encompasses a lot of individual tasks. These can quickly add up and feel insurmountable.
To make things more manageable, you can adopt a room-by-room method. This way, all the tasks are properly categorised and you won’t forget any to-do’s. A chore scheduling app is a big help in this regard. With this type of app, you can add individual task lists per room and schedule every item based on how often you want or need to do them.
There are also chore scheduling apps that give you task suggestions per room, or even give you tips about which areas to clean first.
Personalised Chore Apps
If you live with other people, such as your family or your roommates, cleaning becomes a shared responsibility. This makes things a little easier but also quite complicated when it comes to keeping track of whose turn it is to do which task.
Enter, personalised chore apps. These nifty little apps allow you to create a task list and then assign each task to individuals. What’s even better is that you can set alarms and reminders, as well as shuffle things around to accommodate different schedules.
For parents, this type of app also makes it easier to teach children about chores and responsibilities.
Decluttering Apps
One of the things that make cleaning and organising your home more difficult is clutter. Each item not only contributes to a surprising amount of dust, but also adds up to the number of things you end up misplacing.
Thus, an easy fix for home organisation is decluttering. Of course, this task is easier said than done so feel free to download a decluttering app to help you out. This app essentially guides you through the process of getting rid of things you don’t need, especially in terms of establishing goals and assessing whether or not an item has value to you.
Depending on what you download, you may also find social media sharing integrated with your decluttering app. This helps you stick to your new habit and thus minimise the risk of reacquiring more clutter.
Calendaring Apps
Keeping your home organised isn’t only about keeping things clean (although it’s a big part of it). To maintain order, you also have to be on top of everyone’s schedule. This way, you know which individual is available for a certain chore on a certain day; more importantly, you won’t miss out on important events.
For something a little more straightforward, you can use your smartphone’s built-in calendar or your email provider’s calendar app then share access. For something with more functionality, download a calendaring app or a home organisation app. The way it works is like a centralised calendar, where an “admin” can set roles and tasks.
Many of these calendaring apps can also be linked to Google or Apple, so the details auto-update whenever there’s a change in any of the members’ schedules.
Meal Planning Apps
If meal planning eats up a lot of your time and effort (and budget), it may be time to get a meal planning app. Aside from letting you create weekly menus, a meal planning app also provides you with recipes along with the accompanying shopping list. You can then import this list to your calendar app, provided that the two apps are compatible.
You also don’t have to worry about variety, diets, and religious considerations because many of these apps have a wide range of options. From vegan to halal, you can easily find a meal planning app that meets your needs.
Budgeting Apps
Last but certainly not least, another non-cleaning part of home organisation that you need to pay attention to is budgeting. There’s so much that depends on your household budget, including home maintenance, so you need to get your finances in order to keep most everything else in order.
Like calendar apps, you can make use of a native spreadsheet app to keep things simple. However, you can also download free or low-cost budgeting apps that will give you more features. These include things like setting financial goals and accessing money management tips via articles and videos.
In all honesty, organising your entire home can be exhausting. Hopefully, through the help of these apps, you can make this task a whole lot easier.