Leveraging Psychology to Keep Your House Tidier

Source: "Bingqian Li / Pexels"

Some people have a natural instinct to keep their environment tidy. I, unfortunately, am not one of those folks. I tend to prioritize other activities over clearing and organizing–writing, my vegetable garden, a cookie recipe I’ve been wanting to try. The house frequently spirals out of control, and I become frustrated with myself.

Hoping to break this cycle, I looked for research studies that would provide evidence of what would help me stop procrastinating and be less messy. My attempt at a literature review brought up nothing. Home cleanliness, it seems, is not a major research field. Then I had an epiphany: what works to change health behaviors would also likely work to change cleaning behaviors. As a health psychologist, I decided to take a taste of my own medicine and practice what I preach. Here are nine principles from health psychology to help you, like me, keep your home cleaner.

1. Identify a realistic, achievable goal to start. Setting good goals is one of the most common, effective starting points for changing behavior. If your entire home is chaotic, “cleaning the house” might be too vague and too ambitious of a target. Make the goal more specific and realistic for your time frame, such as “declutter the living room” or “collect all of the dirty dishes scattered around the house and wash them.” You might also identify an ongoing goal related to changing a habit, such as “start the dishwasher every night before going to bed.”
2. Problem solve what might get in the way of your goal. There’s a reason we don’t all have perfectly clean houses all the time: things get in the way. Identifying barriers will allow you to problem-solve in advance. If you want to clean out the garage over the weekend but the space gets uncomfortably hot in the summer afternoons, you can block out morning hours on Saturday and Sunday for the project. If you find it hard to get up after sitting on the couch to scroll through social media after dinner, you can intentionally put away your phone until the dishes have been washed.
3. Start with a few easy tasks to increase self-efficacy. “Self-efficacy,” a term coined by psychologist Albert Bandura, refers to our belief in our own capability to do or achieve something. Self-efficacy is an important precursor to behavior change. We can build self-efficacy through early, easy wins. When cleaning up, start with something relatively easy, such as throwing away noticeable trash lying around the house, or putting away items that have an obvious destination (like dirty clothes, dishes, or books). The satisfaction of seeing progress from these early steps will propel you to tackle more difficult tasks.
4. Use positive self-talk to increase self-belief. When we want to make a change, focusing on the negative and mentally punishing ourselves for failures often leads to giving up. Focus on the positive to further build your self-efficacy. Imagine yourself succeeding in changing your habit. Focus on how you achieved change in the past. Learned to apply deodorant every day when you hit puberty? That’s a behavior change. If you did that, you can make this new change, too. Celebrate every time your house gets incrementally better - no matter how small.
5. Limit your cleaning and organizing to finite chunks of time. Time-based pacing is a tool used in pain psychology to prevent overactivity and improve function. When we focus on project completion, we are at risk for overexerting ourselves, which can lead to exhaustion and a prolonged period of inactivity. If you resolve to clean out your closet until the job is finished, you might end the day with clothes spread all over your bedroom, feeling discouraged and spent. Instead, limit your activity to a predetermined amount of time, with a planned period of rest afterwards. These intervals will vary based on schedule and physical ability - one person may work 30 minutes followed by 30 minutes of rest, whereas another might find a sustainable rhythm with an hour of activity followed by a 15 minute break.
6. Take before and after photos. It’s easy to dismiss ten spare minutes, thinking, “I won’t have time to get much done, I might as well check social media instead.” But if you take a picture of your living room before and after a 10 minute pick-up, you will likely be surprised (and pleased) at the difference. This behavioral experiment teaches the brain that ten minutes of tidying is actually useful, and the reward of seeing the change in your space will encourage you to use small chunks of time similarly in the future.
7. Pair your cleaning activity with something pleasant. Dread handwashing pots? Turn on your favorite playlist to make the scrubbing more enjoyable. You might just get lost in a podcast while cleaning baseboards. Even having a cup of tea to periodically sip while folding laundry may make the task more inviting. Pairing something you like with cleaning and organizing builds positive associations with the activity, which will make you more likely to build a regular habit.
8. Enlist someone else to encourage you. Involving social support is a key aspect of many successful behavior change interventions. Ask a friend, family member, or even a therapist to help encourage you in your efforts to keep your home tidier. Call them when you start falling into negative thinking and ask them to help you celebrate your wins. It can even be helpful to find a friend who wants to partner with you in cleaning and organizing: you could plan a 30-minute weekly call to catch up while you both take on a decluttering project.
9. Give yourself a reward after meeting a goal. Basic behaviorism suggests that we tend to repeat behaviors that are positively reinforced. Small rewards can take all forms - eating a single chocolate, watching a favorite TV show episode, or taking a nice long shower. If you are trying to change a daily cleaning or organizing habit, try transferring a few dollars to a special savings account every day that you complete the task. Over time, you can buy yourself something nice with that fund to celebrate sticking to a new routine.