One of the most effective cleaning tools you can have in your tool belt is NOT a particular cleanser, it is a timer! The 10 minute tidy can be executed by all ages and quickly spruce up a family room, a game room or a bedroom!
Even when people have homework or any other pressing matter, almost anyone can spare the 10 minutes!
Here’s the recipe: gather your people: maybe it’s you and 3 kids. (Perhaps it’s more or less)! Explain clearly what you need done, for example, we need to tidy the play room before we go to the park! Then announce, we are only going to work on it for 10 minutes! Inspire your team to engage in this task! If everyone truly works with full effort for all 10 of the minutes, you may be surprised with the outcome. Once the vision is clear, then set the timer and get going! Lead out in quick and efficient cleaning! Count it down occasionally, like when you are down to 5 minutes and then 3 minutes and tell everyone to hustle! Usually enthusiasm comes in quite handy here!
Then keep your word, when the timer goes off, congratulate your team for a job well done!
A three year old, 13 year old or even a reluctant 33 year old can help with this challenge! While 10 minutes is not enough time to overhaul the garage, it is enough time to tidy the family room, or clean up the kitchen!
Play some fun music! Make it a game! We literally just did this today at my brother’s cabin pulling weeds with 10 people, the youngest of which was 14! Most of the teenagers were reluctant to leave their games and phones, but we reminded them that many hands make light work. Plus, we added a prize for the top two weed pullers! (That was hard to determine in the end, but an extra layer of fun incentive!)
10 people working hard is 100 minutes of labor. We probably could have done 20 minutes with this older group, but 10 minutes of effort can still be magical and make a difference!
Sometimes when I am cleaning by myself and the task is huge, I set a timer and go full out and then work on something else. Bite size cleaning can whittle away a project!
This might not be new to you, but if you haven’t pulled out your timer in a while, give the 10 minute tidy a try! It’s a small thing that can make a big difference! 🙂
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