Housecleaning Chores that Take 5 Minutes or Less

Do you hate housework? Or are you just short on time? I've found that I often avoid doing various chores because in my mind, they are bigger and will take longer than the reality. Often they take only a few minutes, but make a big difference in how my home looks.

To help motivate me, I timed how long it takes to accomplish certain tasks. Here is what I found:

1. Put away the pile of shoes by the front door: 1 minute. No one in my family wears shoes in the house. Consequently, there is always a pile of shoes by the front door. Ideally, everyone would put away his own shoes, but that just doesn't happen, at least not with any regularity. A pile of shoes by the front door is an unsightly mess, so putting them away makes a big difference in how the house looks. And it only takes one minute!

2. Emptying the dishwasher: 3 minutes. Often dishes get piled up in the sink because the clean dishes in the dishwasher have yet to be put away. Why procrastinate when it comes to putting the clean ones away when it takes such a short amount of time? Even if I don't have time to refill the dishwasher right away, at least when I do have time, the dishwasher will be empty.

3. Putting away groceries: 5 minutes. Obviously, I always immediately put away items that need to go into the fridge or freezer, but I'm often tired when I come home from the grocery store, so the temptation to leave the bags of canned foods and dry goods sitting on the floor for "awhile" is great. If I just push myself and do it right away, in about 5 minutes, the groceries are put away and I no longer have to walk around bags of groceries on the floor. Why procrastinate when something only takes 5 minutes?

4. Taking newspapers out to the recycle bin: 2 minutes. Newspapers make a house look messy more than almost anything, and it takes so little time to deal with them. Again, why procrastinate when getting them outside of the house takes next to no time?

5. Taking out the trash: 5 minutes. As long as you're taking out the newspapers, why not take care of the trash that is in various trash cans throughout the house at the same time? This is especially true if you need to put shoes and coat on to go outside. Do all the little things that require going outside at the same time in order to get more done in less time.

6. Wiping down the bathroom sinks and toilets (2 bathrooms): 5 minutes. If you use those handy cleaning wipes, you can spruce up two bathrooms in only 5 minutes. What are you waiting for?

7. Dusting the furniture: 3 minutes. I'm not talking about using lemon oil, but the time it takes to use a good quality ostrich-feather feather duster. You can zip through the rooms in no time, getting the dust off the furniture. Tap the feather duster against your heel to move the dust from the duster onto the floor. Which brings us to the next thing:

8. Vacuuming: 5 minutes per room. As long as you've just dusted, it is a good time to vacuum. If you don't have time to dust and vacuum the entire house at one time, just do one room. Between dusting and vacuuming, you can have a room spruced up in only about six minutes.

9. Making the bed: 3 minutes. An unmade bed makes an entire room look messy. Taking just a few minutes to make the bed is one of the quickest ways to spruce up a room, so why not just do it? Besides making a room look a lot nicer, it is much more comfortable to crawl between the sheets of a bed that is made rather than a bed that is a rumpled mess.

10. Re-shelving books: 3 minutes. Of course, if you have a lot of books to re-shelve, it will take longer than three minutes, but you can put away a lot of books in just a few minutes. Obviously, if you are still reading the book, go ahead and leave it on your nightstand or end table, but if like me, you tend to grow a stack of books, putting them away can make a huge difference in how your home looks.

The great thing about knowing how long these various chores take is that I can chose an amount of time such as 15 minutes and decide which chores are a priority. For some reason, using a kitchen timer and trying to get the chosen chores done in 15 minutes or less really motivates me to keep moving.

If you're a housekeeping procrastinator like I am, perhaps considering how much can be done in such a short time will motivate you to spiffy up your home. You'll be glad you did!