A Clean Kitchen: Building One Habit to Make Me Feel Good About My Home

At the beginning of this summer I began to contemplate what my life with four children (ages 5 to newborn), a house, a husband, and a home school would look like. Let me tell you, I felt overwhelmed quick!

Then I realized a few things. First, I possess the knowledge of how to do the tasks required to manage my home and family. Second, I never established the habits necessarily to apply my knowledge. And third, my life and home are only going to spiral completely out of control if I don't make some changes.

So I set out this summer to create habits in me and my children that I should have built throughout the last decade. I started out slow; I've tried different systems in the past and they never lasted (Flylady, anyone?). I determined this time would be different.

As I thought about managing my home, family and school, I considered what ONE HABIT could I create to make me feel good about my home?

That was easy. Go to bed every night with a clean kitchen. By clean I mean, dishes all washed (I am the dishwasher) and drying in the drainer; with table, counters and stove top wiped down. This may seem elementary to you but for me it's been a difficult habit to establish.

I committed to create the habit (something done automatically with little or no thought) to have a clean kitchen when I go to bed. Here are FOUR STEPS I followed, though not consciously at the time:

1. IMMEDIATELY wash the dishes after supper. Later or “soaking” only results in procrastinating until tomorrow.
2. KEEP AT THE TASK UNTIL IT IS COMPLETE. If the drainer fills up and there are still dirty dishes I must dry the dishes and wash some more!
3. RETRAIN MY THINKING. Instead of: “I'm so tired.” “I hate washing dishes.” Think: “One more dish. I can do one more dish.” “The kitchen will look nice when I'm done.” “I'll be glad I did this in the morning.”
4. FIND WAYS TO BUILD IN SUCCESS FOR MY FLEDGLING HABIT. In this instance, find ways to reduce the number of dirty dishes. For me that meant using cheap-o paper plates for every meal. Once a month I bought 300 paper plates for about $5 at Wal-Mart. Cooking on the grill helped eliminate dirty pots and pans.

Have I built my habit? It's been slow going but gradually, more mornings than not, I awoke to a clean kitchen. I discovered that the more I saw a clean kitchen the more I wanted to keep it clean. Which meant after two or three weeks of washing dishes after supper I started making sure they were washed after breakfast; and then lunch; and now I've included afternoon snack dishes.

Do I WANT to wash the dishes? NO!! But, I'm training myself to think “I can get those lunch dishes done in about 3 minutes and then it's over.” Much better than dreading it for hours during the afternoon. Notice that after months in this process I'm still changing my thought patterns. That means it's not a habit, yet; but it's getting close.

With the aid of this one habit the future, as well as the present, no longer feels as overwhelming to me. Which is why I'm sharing my journey in habit building with you. I want you to experience the same kind of satisfaction and pleasure in your home that I'm experiencing. Will you join me on this journey of habit building?

What ONE HABIT can you create to make you feel good about your home? What does that habit look like? How can you apply the four steps to build that ONE HABIT into your life?