How to Get Rid of Your Household Chores and Get Things DONE When Working from Home
Household chores could be one of the nagging tasks you have to complete on a regular, everyday basis and of course, the longer you let them sit, the more pressing they have to be completed.
Not only is setting tasks and time management important to lead a productive lifestyle when working remotely, there are other aspects that can help you lead your work life and personal life smoothly.
Some tips won’t apply to you or your lifestyle, but I’m hoping that you can at least use a few of them to benefit your productivity.
I have some tips that can help you personally keep a better time management to balance both work and household chores, but also tips to help you make your life easier entirely, eliminating the necessity for you to complete the chores. These three lists of nine ways can help you maintain your household and your career at the same time.
Keeping Chore Households under Control
1. Have the Children Tidy up after Themselves
Children often are the sources of the majority of the mess in your household. One way that you can really reduce the amount of clean up that children cause is, no matter how old they are, to teach them how to clean up after themselves. From teaching them how to place their toys back to where they need to be or that their dirty clothes should simply be thrown into a basket. These are simple tasks that might take your kids to remember to get into a habit, especially the younger they are but are also great lessons to teach them about for when they get older.
Make it a game rather than rewarding them with an allowance.
I’m not here to tell you how to raise your children, but allowances really aren’t necessary. Teaching them that they have to be responsible in a fun way can make more of a lasting impression than rewarding them with money every time they pick up their toys. If you make it a game, it could even be fun for them, you might even see your children initiating clean up if they associate the chores as a fun game.
2. Delegate Tasks Out
To help delegate tasks to family members or other members of your household, you can set chores even through technology, like the Chore Buster App
Instead of simply assuming others know what they’re supposed to do, take advantage of the technology already in the hands of each of your family members. These Apps can help you delegate tasks and help remind, even you, to get them done. These Apps can be extremely effective and can take away the need for you to be the nagging one.
1. Giving your children or family members doable tasks throughout the house, even deeming pets as their personal responsibility not only takes those things off your shoulders, it can also teach them about having to get things done and time management. That way, you are taking care of the house, saving you time and effort, and teaching responsibility, all at the same time.
3. Tidy up as You Go about Your Day
Instead of doing all the necessary clean up tasks at the end of every day, try and clean up immediately after you or another family member uses something. If you just make it a habit to quickly take a few minutes to clean up right after, then those few minutes won’t accumulate at the end of the day to an hour, or hours of mundane, boring, and even tiring work. You can spray the shower or squeegee it immediately afterward, make your bed right in the morning after you wake up, fold your clothes right when they’ve come out of the dryer. This will not only help you have a clear mentality because it won’t leave you with a long to-do list but breaking the long list of tasks down into mini-tasks can help it seem more achievable and less painstakingly boring.
Wash, Dry and Put Dishes Away Immediately After Eating
This is just one of the tasks that you can do quickly and immediately after usage. If you break up the tasks into a family affair and assign each one of your family members a section of the assembly line, for example, one wash, one soap, one rinse, one dries, and one puts away, this can even feel like much less work.
4. Do Deep Cleaning and De-cluttering in Intervals
Pick a day of the month or however often you would like to get a deep cleaning done throughout the house and stick to it at intervals. This way, you can have your house clean as a whole, and your daily tasks or household chores requiring cleaning will be much shorter or require much less time. This will eliminate or reduce the necessary time for you to take time away from your remote, at-home career just to clean the house.
If you do this on Garbage Pick Up day, it’s perfect to throw away old food too.
On these cleanup days, you can line it up with the days that the garbage removal system comes around for your street, which is highly beneficial for your home, street, and environment. When you’re cleaning, make sure to check expiration dates on your food, throwing out expired food and clearing up space for new groceries.
5. Write a To-do List
Planning out what needs to get done and being able to cross it off a physical checklist can help you plan better and take care of your necessary household chores. This will help you also delegate tasks that need to get done to other household members or place them on a list for your to hire others to finish the tasks. You can do this every day, for the week, or even for the month for appointments that are not so often. This will help you with time management as well.
6. Meal Prep or Cook and Then Freeze
Since you need to eat every day and might need to cook for other members of your family or household, you can also eliminate the time during the week that you would spend doing this by meal prepping or doing the dishes on an every day basis. This can be done once a month and the meals are frozen and prepared for the day, or just one day at the beginning of the week, having the meals prepared and separated for everyday consumption. This tip will not only save you time to focus on your remote job but also money. The money you spend cooking or buying food every day can lead to impulse buying or restaurant prices.
7. Make a Timeline or Schedule Before the Week or Day Starts
This schedule, not just a task list, can help you plan your day or your week much better. Although we know that life happens and you can’t really carry out those plans minute by minute, it helps to have a bit of an outline (if you like that sort of thing), to follow to keep you on task to get the things done that you need to with the time you have. This timeline can either be just for you, including a schedule with your home and work life or both integrated or can involve your entire household.
8. Store Your Cleaning Supplies at Your Problem Areas
Such a minuscule change to make, but having your cleaning supplies exactly where you need it the most will not only eliminate the effort and time it takes to clean but also might remind you or encourage you to clean. For example, keeping bathroom cleaner underneath the bathroom sink, or your kitchen cleaning supplies underneath the kitchen sink might remind you and facilitate your effort when you just want to wipe down the counters or spray and clean the sink or toilet quickly.
9. Pay All Your Bills Online One Day in the Month
I don’t like to spend brain cycles every month thinking about if I missed a payment or that I have to waste precious hours going to banks. I have a Google spreadsheet listing all the bills I have to pay for the month ordered by due date, I use it as a checklist so I know exactly what I have to pay, when are my due dates and where I can pay online.
It looks something like this:
Getting Your Household Chores Done with the Least Amount of Work as Possible
1. Hire Someone to Help You with Household Chores or Cleaning
There are so many services out there that you can outsource others to get the jobs done, which takes those tasks off of your to-do list but might cost you a bit of money. Of course, if you are working from home with a good salary, it should be a good investment, because it frees up that extra time for you to work when you would otherwise be getting those household chores done. Another reassuring fact about outsourcing household chores would be that you are at home most of the time working anyway, so if you have trust issues with other people in your home or with your children, you can keep watch on them as well as work.
Hire them at least once a month for deep house cleaning
Among many other tasks that I will lay out for you later on in this article, household cleaning is a common task that gets outsourced to be done at least once a month. This not only keeps your house tidy if done often — once a month, for example — it reduces the amount of time to keep the house clean throughout the month that you will most likely be doing on your own.
2. Get a Roomba and Program It to Do a Cleaning Cycle Every Morning
I just love my Roomba. I got my first Roomba initially to get rid of my wife’s hair but after we got our hairy cat (Tita) we started using it daily to clean up her hair and the day-to-day dirt and dust that gets tracked into the house.
I program it to automatically start cleaning every morning but usually Roombas get stuck on small things on the floor so make sure there’s nothing around that can get in her way like cords, shoes, etc.
I currently own a Roomba 880 and I love it, is a lot easier to clean up than the previous one I had (Roomba 560)
3. Find Someone to Take Care of Your Kids
If you don’t trust anyone with the care of your family members, like your children, or pets, you can find a relative, such as their grandparents, or an aunt that can help take care of your kids. Try carpooling with family friends that you trust to eliminate the need to pick up your child from school or to and from extracurricular activities. Obviously, I’m not suggesting that you give up the joy it is to care and raise your children, but a little help goes a long way and the less you can spend (from your wallet, that is) when it comes to raising a child. After all, the saying goes: it takes a village to raise a child.
4. Automate Almost Everything You Can Do on a Reliable Time Schedule.
You can set your bills to be paid automatically by your bank on a certain day.
You can refill your prescriptions on a schedule and all you will have to do is pick them up.
You can mow the lawn automatically and vacuum the house with robots, such as the Neato Botvac and the Robomow, or have a mopping robot like the iRobot Braava.
You can even use a SmartFeeder to feed your pets automatically.
Technology has gotten so advanced, that for a price, you can pay to clean almost anything in your house with a cleaning robot. For example, you can clean the showers with the Automatic Shower Cleaner or squeegee after every use, you can clean the gutters with the Looj, and clean the windows, especially the ones up high, with the Winbot. Of course, watering the lawn with a sprinkler system has been done for ages.
5. Reminders on Your Phone Are Perfect for a Timed, Automatic Way to Help You Remember to Get Chores Done During the Day.
Think of this as your personal assistant without having to outsource and pay for one (see below). This is a simple, automated way that can help you manage your time and plan tasks or household chores around your work. Breaking them up into small segments of time can also make them seem more achievable.
6. Have Your Weekly Groceries Delivered to You with an Online Grocer, or Your Meals Picked up for You with UberEats
An online grocer can be outsourced, not only can you outsource it with the service called Dream Diners, you can even do online shopping and then get it delivered right to your door, or pick them up at the grocery store after they were done for you.
7. Eliminate Some Shopping by Using Services Where Your Groceries or Personal Items Are Delivered Right to Your Door. For Example, Amazon’s Subscribe and Save Program.
Not only can you get this task done online for your grocery shopping, you can also turn to this task with your everyday items, like toilet paper and tampons. An example of this sort of program is Amazon’s Subscribe and Save Program. Not only do you get your shopping done in the easiest way, you can also save money doing it since they offer specials or reduced prices for members.
8. Laundry Services That Offer Pickup and Delivery.
Laundry is already so automated with machines that are so technologically advanced when it adds the detergent or dryer sheets for you. But there are laundry services that offer pick up of your dirty clothes and deliver them back, right to your front door, when they are washed and cleaned for you. Of course, this includes special services like ironing and delicate clothes that require specific cleaning methods.
9. Have Your Pet Adjust to the Litter Robot, Which Eliminates the Need to Empty It out as Often.
This is also another great technological advancement that can eliminate the task of cleaning up after your pet or reduce it down to once every couple days when the machine is full.
For 89 different, highly technologically advanced inventions that can help you make your household chores easier, here is a list: https://www.trendhunter.com/slideshow/household-chores-easy
Of course, you should be willing to pay a bit out of pocket for these genius machines that will save you a lot of time in the long run.
If you aren’t willing to buy all those technologically advanced robots for fear of something playing out like the plot in I, Robot, you can stick with human help.
Not only can you hire someone to clean your house for you, people can also work in a variety of different chores.
These people have a variety of titles, ranging from HomeCare to House Manager.
They can help you maintain care and order around your house, being responsible for tasks ranging from cleaning to supervising pregnant young women or older people to ensure they meet appointments and other responsibilities.
Here are a few tasks that can be met by outsourcing and taken care of while you work remotely.
Outsourcing Household Chores:
1. Help Prepare Breakfast or Cook
Having someone cook in your house can free up some time for you and get you the food you and your family needs to eat. Especially if you’re not that great of a cook, this can be a good investment. This is also a great alternative to someone who doesn’t want to spend the extra money on take-out. You can also better control what goes into our food and make it healthier, rather than relying on fast food to fulfill your family nutrition.
2. Maintain Calendars for Appointments and Extracurricular Activities
Having someone maintain a family calendar will not only keep your household members more accountable but will also help them realize that they need to get it done. If you have children or spouses with a lot of extracurricular activities, then writing it all down on a calendar will help your chances of never forgetting an appointment, practice, or special event. For a job like a nanny, this is perfect to have when for your kids.
3. Help Manage Food Budgets and Other Household Budgets
Someone taking control of your finances gives you the peace of mind that everything is taken care of and is one less thing to take care of. For those who also are not so savvy with numbers, this can help give you less stress in that area of your financial budget.
4. Drop off and Pick up Children from School and Extracurricular Activities (as Easy as a School Bus)
If you trust whoever you hire, they can help you drive to and from your child’s school or extracurricular activities. If you don’t want to spend the extra money, you can help arrange a carpool shift with your neighbors or children’s friends (their parents, of course), that can work out best for everyone.
5. For Odd Jobs, There Are Websites like TaskRabbit and Angie’s List
Instead of spending an ample amount of your time trying to figure out to fix a sink because you don’t trust the guy who did your plumbing last time, you can check out TaskRabbit or Angie’s List, which are sites that outsource odd jobs that have been a nuisance around your house and can get them done for a good price with some trustworthy people. Most of these workers are reviewed and graded, so their quality and price are no secrets.
6. Lawn Services
Instead of buying one of those pricey mowing robots I mentioned earlier, you can outsource the need or task to mow your yard or care for your garden. Whether it is the kid down the street looking for a few extra bucks to push your lawn mower around or it’s a professional lawn service, this task and household chore can easily be outsourced with a reliable worker.
7. House Cleaning
As stated before, it is recommended to hire a house cleaner at LEAST once a month to really maintain a clean house for the majority of the time. If you get someone to do a deep house cleaning once a month, this also reduces and eliminates the usual cleaning during the week or the rest of the month. This will also leave your family happier and healthier because there are a lot of negative effects of a dirty, or unclean house.
8. A Personal Shopper or Personal Dresser
You can easily hire someone to do your shopping for you. Whether it is grocery shopping or shopping for the abnormal oddities, even picking up dry cleaning, there is someone you can hire that will get the job done for you. There are even people that can help figure out your professional outfit for you and go shopping for you with your clothes and shoe sizes. This can help save you time that you could or would rather be working. Although these services cost money, as I stated earlier, you can be working and earning money during the time that these tasks normally would take.
9. In General, Hiring a Personal Assistant
Within reason, some people are willing to do the most abnormal tasks for you to do, without even batting an eyelash. For whatever task you may need, there is usually someone that you can hire that would be willing to do it. This means hiring a personal assistant. Contrary to popular belief, personal assistants have been more normal than say, ten years ago, and can help you anywhere from your financial or business assistance, to personal assistance, like maintaining your budget, social media pages, the sky is the limit.
There are so many ways to get your household chores done without having it get in the way of building or maintaining your successful career which you care for remotely. Choosing to work from home or from wherever you are is an opportunity to shed other responsibilities, but is only done in vain if those responsibilities are replaced quickly with household chores.
Working from home should improve your productivity and lifestyle. You will be able to set your own hours, get the tasks done when you can, and spend as much time as you need on your projects. However, life does get in the way and when you are working from home, you don’t really have an office to get away from it all. Therefore, those pesky household chores and tasks are always staring you in the face.
However, if you try some of these ideas or purchasing some of these products or services, you can eliminate some of those household chores, all while getting the work and productivity done that you need to have and maintain a successful career.
I hope this list has helped give you ideas to reduce or eliminate the time you need to do household chores and increase the time you have for what’s more important to you, being either your work or your family and personal life.
