Six Cleaning Motivation Tips

I believe that our homes can be a heaven on earth, our peaceful place from the whirlwind of the world around us.  But for me, if my home is messy, cluttered, and dirty, I don't feel very much at peace.  I can handle a certain level of messy, but after a certain point, I start to feel crabby.  

As the wife and mother, I play a major role in setting the mood around my home.  If I am crabby, other family members begin to feel crabby too and that doesn't lead to a peaceful home.  So I try to keep my home clean to a point.  Not a pristine magazine kind of clean, because there are people who actually live here, but clean enough that there is a sense of order.  

However, even though I want a clean orderly home, there are days when I am just not in the mood to clean.  On some days, chores feel monotonous.  Like, hey, didn't I just make that bed, wash those dishes, sweep that floor, clean that mirror, wash those clothes yesterday?!  Why, yes, I did.

Do you ever feel that way?

When I'm feeling unmotivated to clean my home, these are some of the things that help inspire me to get to work:

• Play Music:  Music makes me happy, it lifts my mood and it increases my energy level so I can get to work.  I use Pandora to find the right music to energize my mood.  Sometimes the vintage sound of Dean Martin gets me moving and other days the young sound of Taylor Swift does the job.

• Pretty Scents:  Sometimes just lighting a pretty smelling candle or cleaning with pretty smelling cleaners, like Mrs. Meyers line of cleaners (the basil scent is my favorite!) makes cleaning more pleasant.

• Before and After Pictures:  I'm pretty sure that most of us like before and after pictures. We see them everywhere on blogs and in magazines.  A couple of times I've taken a picture of a room I'm cleaning when it's dirty and disorganized and then taken an after picture when the room is all clean.  It's fun to see the difference.

• Call and invite a friend over:  I don't know about you, but if I know someone is coming over, it totally motivates me to clean.  So if I'm not in the mood to clean my home, inviting someone over for a lunch date or a play date, quickly sparks my motivation to get to work.

• Reward yourself with a piece of chocolate:  this kind of motivation probably isn't the best kind for me, but when push comes to shove, I bribe myself with chocolate.  If I load the dishwasher, I get a small piece of chocolate, if I fold a load of laundry, I get another piece of chocolate, and so on and so forth.

• Make a list and cross things off.  This can make cleaning a dirty house seem less overwhelming as you get to visually see all the progress you're making when each individual chore is crossed off.

Do you have any other motivating tips to clean your home?  If you do, please share! I'd love to hear them!