A More Peaceful Home in 15 Minutes

You can have a more peaceful home in just 15 minutes. Even when the whole house is cluttered from top to bottom and everywhere you look makes you want to scream. Even when it would take several dedicated days to get the whole thing back to an orderly state, and even when you have kids, pets, and partners who are less than helpful.

It’s a little trick, but a good one, and it can help you keep from pulling your hair out by the roots.

In his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg McKeown says, “As painful as they can sometimes be, trade-offs represent a significant opportunity. By forcing us to weigh both options and strategically select the best one for us, we significantly increase our chance of achieving the outcome we want.”

But how does this relate to YOUR home?

For neurodivergent folks, we see things in ways that are sometimes too granular and too broad at the same time. How many times have you thought, “I have to clean up in here! I’ll start by taking all these cups to the kitchen,” so you grab a couple of cups and walk toward the kitchen… but on the way, you notice the soccer jersey on the floor and you know your daughter will need it tomorrow night, so you scoop it up to throw it into the wash… But then in the laundry room doorway is a toy the dog has destroyed, so you throw the cups and the jersey on the counter, sweep up the bits of fluff and cotton, and wouldn’t you know it, the trash needs to go out!

So now you haven’t really accomplished anything, but you’re even more frustrated and overwhelmed than you were when you picked up the first cup.

This is what is meant by trade-offs in this scenario. When you decide to pick up the jersey, you have abandoned the task of removing all the cups from the living room. And then with the dog toy, you abandon the jersey. And then with the trash, and so on.

The trick is to look around the room where you’re sitting and ask yourself, “which ONE task would give me the most peace right now if it was completed?”

If that’s removing the cups from the living room, you start there. But that means you are giving yourself permission not to worry about the soccer gear, or the dog toy, or the trash, at least for the present time. It doesn’t mean you’ll never take care of those things, just that you won’t be doing them until after the cups are in the dishwasher. You’re making a trade off – the peace you’ll get from a living room that’s not full of cups versus the other things that are going to stay on the floor elsewhere. Then you can go back and sit in your cup-free living room and breathe a sigh of relief.

This method is not a magic solution for every single thing you want to accomplish in your home, but it WILL give you greater peace and relaxation with just a few minutes’ effort. And all for the price of deciding what is most important for you right now.