The lazy girls guide to being tidy

‘If you want to get rid of stuff, you can always do a good spring-cleaning. Or you can do what I do. Move.’ – Ellen DeGeneres

Most people have a tidy up in spring which is said to have come from a Jewish practice of thoroughly cleansing the home in anticipation of passover which occurs in the springtime. However we’ve always been a fan of having a post Christmas de-clutter. The timing seems even more perfect than spring to me; new year, new start and all that, plus you need to make room for all the new toys Santa brought you.

I am an actual, honest to God, bone fide, scruffbag with the genetic inability to keep things neat and tidy, which infuriates anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of sharing any dwelling with me for any length of time. In fact the quote ‘Jesus Christ Helen we’ve been here 45 minutes and your suitcase has vomited everywhere’ by my friend Lorna when we went to Amsterdam will forever make me smile. Nail on head. You get the message. I’m untidy

Last September we joined the 21st century and replaced our ducted air heating system with cosy fancy dan radiators (ooooh la dee dah I hear you say). So now we had a lovely cosy warm house and no longer had to wear my duvet into the bathroom on a winter morning, I decided it was about time i grew the eff up and started making a conscious effort be tidier. The main problem I have is that i have too much stuff, clothes, jewllery, make up and it’s everywhere. So after a thorough Autumn clean and flurry of eBay activity (which helped out Project Vegas – you can read more about that soon!) the clear solution was I needed some pretty yet practical storage to house all my remaining stuff and help keeping everything in place.

Living Room

My favourite place to do most of my life admin is on the sofa in front of Made in Chelsea so you can usually find me by following the trail of emery boards, fake tan bottles, wine glasses, nail varnishes and 6 month old copies of Heat magazines. I picked up this box from Pound Stretcher for about a fiver and it’s ideal for shoving everything i use on the sofa into without having to get off my lazy arse to go into another room to put it away. My polar bear blankie even fits in too (just)! #winning

Master Bedroom

This is the room that would exasperate Dave the most when it was left a mess. My biggest problem was I would wear something like a pair of jeans (that I think you’ll all agree are good for multiple wears before they need a wash) so instead of just putting them back, I would dump them on the floor, along with last weeks pair of jeans i swore I was going to wear again the next day. So we got these cute little laundry baskets from Asda which look so nice it motivates me to not surround them with half worn stuff and I made a huge promise to put clothes away if they didn’t need washing.

I’d also started to realise my bedside table was becoming a  dumping ground for all things I’d forgetting to take off before going to bed, mainly jewellery; if i’d been wearing dangly earrings that i couldn’t sleep in they’d be cast aside here never to be put away again. We were in B&Q looking for some coving for the kitchen (nope, no idea either) I saw these coloured drawers and inspiration hit me. They’re perfect to put those earrings and statement necklaces I’ve accidentally impaled myself on after drunkenly crawling into bed.

Spare Bedroom

I’m lucky enough to have my own bedroom to get ready in, mostly because Dave stays in bed for half an hour while I dry my hair (or activate the ‘noise gun’ as he calls it) so this is where all my make up and hair tackle live. It takes quite a lot to make this mush look presentable so I own a lot of beauty products. If you’re like me I have a game you can play that will help. Put everything on your dressing table in a carrier bag and leave it by your feet. Every day take out the carrier bag the stuff you need that day and leave them on the dressing table. After a week of doing this it will become pretty clear what stuff you use on a regular basis therefore deserves a spot on the dressing table. I’m not saying get rid of all the other stuff i’m just saying there’s no reason it can’t live in a drawer for you to only use when you need it and frees up valuable space for your essentials.

It also really helps if you have a hubby who’s handy around the house who added these hooks to my chest of drawers, which along with a cheap rotating tie rack, are perfect for keeping my necklaces tidy. I found the sunglasses stand on ebay for about a fiver because, well,  even Beyonce needs somewhere to keep her knock off Ray Bans.

Bathroom

Again the bathroom fell victim to me just having too many products, most of which i would try once and then leave lying at the side of the bath because i didn’t want to use them every day. There really isn’t a secret to keeping the bathroom tidy to be honest, it’s the room that requires the most effort on my part. I did however invest in some salon sized bottles of Bed Head Dumb Blonde shampoo. Not only do they look high end sitting on the side of the bath but the coloured bottles mean you can decant your usual shampoo into when the bottles are finished and they still look really cool. The pump action bottles mean the shampoo doesn’t spill and stain everywhere, bonus tidy wife points for me!

I think if you’re inherently untidy like I am there’s very little getting away from the fact that quite often you’re not going to live in a show home however after such a huge investment on the new heating it would be a shame for our house to not be tidy as well as cosy. I will maintain though that although I’m untidy but I’m not by any means unclean. They’re two different things in my dead. The clothes I leave lying around are clean clothes, because I actually hate the thought of mites and little pest running around the house. If you feel the same https://www.pestcontrolexperts.com/local/texas/ might be worth checking out.

However I’m yet to find a solution to the fundamental, scratch my eyes out, want to rip off my and throw it at someone boredom that is putting clean clothes away, so if someone knows an easy way to do that, i’d pay you a lot of money*

*in thank yous and smiles