Sometimes advice comes from the most unexpected places. I recently was given homemaking advice from my 22 year old brother. If that’s not in unexpected source, I don’t know what is.

A couple months ago he told me he had a good topic for my blog. Seriously? I didn’t even know he read it. But since he tends to be knowledgeable in strange areas, I decided to listen. His advice was this: “When you clean a room, just grab all your shit, throw it in one big pile, and say to yourself ‘ok I’m just gonna organize this pile.’ It makes cleaning soooo much easier.”

Hmmm. Ok. Despite the delivery, his advice actually kind of made sense. Make a big task into a smaller more accomplish-able task and it will be more doable. I tried it and I like it.

I guess  my brother shares my gene for organizational ADD. Picking up an entire room can sometimes seem so overwhelming, I just push it off. By bringing the mess down to one 3×3 foot area, all I have to do is accomplish this one area. I can do this.

One place I have employed this technique is in my room. I put everything that needs attention on my bed… Laundry and other clothes that need to be put away, last night’s towel, miscellaneous items on my bureau, the jewelry on my end table, glasses that have accumulated that need to be brought to the kitchen, etc. Now that the room feels clean (with the exception of my bed) I WANT to fix this pile of mess. Having everything right in front of me makes it easier to start to process, and motivated to not finish until the bed is clear.

Sometimes there is no way to make a mess physically smaller, in which case I’ve found if I break a job down into smaller, more manageable tasks it’s a twist on the same idea: make a mountain into smaller, more do-able mole hills, and plug away at accomplishing tiny tasks one at a time until the bigger task at hand is complete.

For example, emptying the sink. It’s impossible to shrink the sink down,  and it’s a pretty small space to begin with. But when its full of dirty items that need attention, it can feel like the size of my 25-foot living room. I now group the items and tackle them one at a time. First, I start with JUST the big items that need scrubbing – bowls, pans, cutting boards, etc. Once those are done, the sink is looking pretty empty, but still slightly overwhelming. So I focus on the utensils because they are all over the place and add to the visual mess. Then all that’s left are glasses and plates that needs to be put in the dishwasher.  Piece of cake.

For my brother it was a visual thing: bringing a 12 x 12 bedroom down to a 3-foot pile of “shit” that is manageable.  For me it’s a mental thing- small tasks are quick and easy to accomplish. Either way, it seems to get the job done. And even if you only have time to finish to first 2 steps, at least you made a dent. (And you can assign your husband to the rest!)