Image source: A life of Productivity
In most cases, procrastination is not considered to be a good thing. Often, people who procrastinate are stressed out or have anxiety over life goals, evading tasks, guilt, fatigue, and much more.
However, in some circumstances, you’ll find people who can procrastinate positively by taking up other tasks like cleaning, cooking, exercise, volunteer work, etc., to lower their anxiety.
At least, when doing these things, you flip the coin and use your extra energy to do other meaningful activities.
Using procrastination positively is one of the methods advocated for amongst other approved online ADHD treatments for people trying to deal with the effects of ADHD.
If you are a serial procrastinator, we can probably both agree that you are easily distracted. This point of this process is to make cleaning your main distraction.
If cleaning out your home is your way of coping with the emotion, then this guide will lead you on how to do it:
Contents
1. Declutter First
The first signal that the brain receives at the sight of a cluttered home is that the clean-out process will take up a lot of time. Therefore, if you want to procrastinate the right way, consider decluttering your space first to make the whole process manageable.
You can set aside a day or a few hours to clean out, depending on your home. Have a separate box to stash away all the things you’ve decided to get rid of once you’re done and store them in a different place. You can later decide whether you’ll donate or sell them, depending on their value.
2. Have a Plan
Cleaning by itself is not an easy way out of your problems, but if it is your chosen way of procrastinating, you need a plan to make the whole process seamless. You’ll be amazed at how well a plan will help you save time. So, here’s how to do it
- Write down a list of the regular chores you do in your home and outline tasks that require more time and effort.
- Break tasks down into small doable tasks, for example, if it’s your kitchen, clean dishes first, clean the counters, clean the floor and take out the trash. These can all be separate tasks, accomplished at different times.
- Partner up if you have a roommate or ask for help and divide out the tasks. If you’re doing it all by yourself, don’t overwhelm yourself by doing all the tasks simultaneously. You can do all the chores in bits over a week until you are done.
3. Time Your Tasks
The whole idea is not cleaning to perfection but making progress. That’s why you had to list down all the tasks to determine how much time you would take on each chore.
Start with the simple tasks that take up less time and progress to the more demanding tasks. You can set a timer for 5 minutes for simple tasks and 20-30 minutes for more involved tasks.
You’ll be surprised at how fast working within a specified time keeps you focused and prevents you from dragging for long on one task.
Doing this also makes the whole process more manageable, and you won’t have to spend a lot of time on one thing.
4. Create a Routine for Daily Tasks
Of course, besides the wholesome home cleaning, there are other tasks like dishwashing which need to be done every other day.
It’s not a given that everyone does laundry over the weekend. Some people find themselves in a procrastination mode when there’s a pile-up of dirty items.
To make it easier, you can decide to do your laundry daily since you’ll be dealing with a smaller pile of clothes.
Also, if you have time in the morning hours, start them by doing the least favorite chores like cleaning dishes. At least in the evening, you won’t have a large pile of utensils, and it only gets easier to clear out the stack when it’s smaller.
5. Outsource for Help for Stressful Tasks
In your daily search for a better living, it may be almost impossible to have time to clean up everything as you desire. If you’re genuinely time-constrained in doing all the home chores on your own and you can hire someone to do it for you, then why not?
You do not want to get fatigued, so you can call in the help to do the more strenuous tasks like laundry once a week or twice weekly, especially if you have kids. Dividing the days may be manageable, and they could also attend to the other areas of your home when necessary.
6. Treat Yourself
For some, doing a home clean-out may not be a big deal, but it is a real struggle for others. Rewarding yourself is a motivator to keep you going. You do deserve it! After a thorough clean-out, you can reward yourself by ordering takeout or going to your favorite restaurant.