Now that we have been stuck at home for the majority of a month (or perhaps longer) to help keep the coronavirus from spreading, I think that all of us are getting a little stir crazy. It’s an unprecedented time in history, but once the joy of sitting at home and binging on Netflix wears off, we may be wondering, what’s next?
Of course, we all realize that it is beneficial to stay indoors and to stop crowding outdoor spaces. It’s healthier for us and it’s healthier for others. As it turns out, something that we wished for, perhaps for years, ends up being a lot harder than most of us could have ever dreamed.
Now that we are home, sometimes 24/7, we might begin to wonder why we aren’t able to manage our time as effectively as we did before. Perhaps we envision the time that we were at home being full of productive activities. We may have seen ourselves going from one corner of the house to another, taking care of our chores that have been put off for months.
When our calm activities don’t exactly pan out as we thought they would, we might begin to get a little disappointed with ourselves. We can stop beating ourselves up, because Melissa Maker, a cleaning expert, has a different spin on that story. She says that it is fine if you aren’t checking every to-do item off of your task list at the moment.
When you really stop to think about it, we are in the middle of an unprecedented, once-in-a-lifetime pandemic situation. Even though we are doing what we can to protect our physical health, we might neglect our mental health to a certain extent.
That being said, Melissa knows that there are going to be times when it is important for us to clean during the global lockdown in order to maintain our sanity. At the same time, you shouldn’t feel pressured to clean everything in your home at the moment.
If you see yourself in that situation, don’t be overly concerned. One tip that Melissa provides us with is taking care of the “MIAs” which are the most important areas of the home.
“MIAs essentially means that you pick the areas that are most important to you that stress you out the most if they’re not cleaned, and those are the ones you focus on,” she says. “Everything else, frankly, can wait until another time. But if your kitchen and your bathroom and your bedroom are important to you, and have to look and feel good every day for you to feel sane, that’s where you focus your cleaning energy.”
There are other parts of the whole that don’t necessarily drive you nuts when they are a little dirty. These can include baseboards, inside closets, vents, cupboard fronts, etc. In a nutshell, Melissa would like you to focus your energy and your effort on the things that affect you the most.
“This time is all about maximizing the amount of time you spend cleaning on the most important things and then moving on to all the other things you have to do,” she says.
I don’t know about you, but I feel better already! Check out Melissa’s video below that will make you feel even better!