How do you keep your motivation to keep your house tidy after a busy day/week?

I remind myself that life is a process, and that the joy is in the process. Every day, mundane tasks must be repeated to keep an orderly home, a fit body, an enlightened mind, or any other goal worth achieving. Focusing on the peace in the process and enjoying the simple zen imparted from the act of cleaning lets my mind coast through the task while my hands do the work.

I struggle with this! First of all I think it’s ok to give yourself compassion and let it go now and then. Trust that you will always fix it later, and that’s fine. But when I really want to push through my own resistance, here’s what helps me. 1- visualize your clean and tidy space and how good that will feel. 2- know that just getting started is the hard part. Tell yourself you’ll do it for 5 minutes, and then you can stop. Odds are, once you start you’ll feel fine continuing! 3- put on a favorite podcast, music, or a good tv show that doesn’t need your full attention to keep your brain engaged and make it fun. 4- I tie things like tidiness to valuing myself and respecting myself. When I think about it this way — it’s not a chore to take care of myself! — it’s very motivating. Good luck!

This has been a struggle for pretty much my entire adult life. After working 8-9 hours I just want to be on my own time and do nothing that is in anyway responsible. With four kids at home, I’m also tired. But one day I looked around and realized a) the state of my home wasn’t relaxing, b) playing games on an iPad isn’t relaxing it’s procrastination, and c) I’m going to be tired whether I clean or not. After I started keeping things tidy I found I was actually able to fully relax and enjoy time to myself because it wasn’t just me avoiding things.