How to Stay Tidy While Living With Others
10 steps for becoming and staying organised
LAST UPDATED: 03/11/2021
The most annoying thing about living in a messy house is when the mess is not yours. Wherever you look, there’s someone else’s stuff laying about. How do you cope with it? Do you try to put up with it, or are you in the habit of clearing up after others, forever tidying things away and feeling resentful for it?
If you want to live in an organised, tidy home but others are letting the side down, then this post is for you.
First, we must understand the problem…
The problem with shared living
Whether you live with a partner, family or friends, the source of the problem remains the same: shared spaces belong to everyone, but they also belong to no one.
Think about your living room. Who decorated it? Whose things are in it? To whom does this space most belong? Usually, the more someone has a say over a room and the more they have personalised it, the more they want to look after it.
Who keeps the least of their things in this room, uses it the least and has the least say over it? I can guarantee this person will care the least about tidying it and will be most likely to ignore responsibilities for it. ‘Shall I take the rubbish out? Nah. Someone else will soon do it and save me the effort. I’ll just pretend I didn’t notice.’
Ideals vary on how to live in a space too. Some might prefer their things out and ready on surfaces (or the floor!), others might prefer to keep them stored away. It is simply impossible to allow everyone to keep their home exactly as they wish when they live with other people. So what to do?
Here are ten practical steps you can take to create and maintain an organised home and to stay sane when you live with others.
1. Hold a house meeting
I recommend that when you get together, you start with letting everyone know why you love living with them. Things often go more smoothly when you start from a place of kindness and gratitude.
Then, briefly let everyone know why it is important to you to keep your house tidy and state your intention for the meeting: to see if, as a household, you can come up with a way of living together more peacefully. State that you realise what’s important to you might not be to everyone else, and like you’d like this to be a team effort.
If you’ve got children and they’re old enough to understand what’s going on, get them on board. Chances are they’ll relish being part of a decision-making discussion.
2. Define house rules
Start by each listing a few things that are most important to you in your home. It can be anything from wiping the hobs after use to taking shoes off at the door. Don’t pick too many. You can add to it and adjust over time.
Now you have your list, agree as a household to do your very best to honour these things for the sake of making everyone’s life a little happier. Write them out and pin them on a wall so that no one needs reminding of them.
3. Plan chores
Next, write out a list or draw a map of all the areas of the home and the tasks that need doing in it. You can prepare this in advance if you think it’ll stop others losing interest, but again try not to overwhelm.
The key to a shared space is not to create rotas, but to give people something for which they’re 100% responsible. Consider who uses each area the most and who likes doing which task/chore the most. If hoovering is your least favourite task, for example, you’re not going to want to do it, even when it’s your turn. So, give each chore to the person who likes doing it the most and make sure people are responsible for areas they use a lot. For young children, you can break this down into tasks they’re capable of doing.
Agree on a rough standard for performing each chore and keeping each area. Then, write out your responsibilities. It would be brilliant if everyone could make the following pact:
1. To try their very best to remember to complete their chores (as well as sticking to the main house rules)
2. To try not to concern themselves with anyone else’s tasks and to agree to let others complete them at a time which suits them
You can agree to review these tasks as and when needed. There will be some which you might all like to be responsible for, such as washing up your own things if you’re in a shared house. You can add these to the house rules, though I’d recommend you assign chores as much as possible.
A side note on washing up in a shared house… Nothing is more annoying than someone washing up the things they’ve used and leaving a single mug in the sink because it wasn’t theirs. Be a team player. If this sounds familiar, you might consider adding this to your house rules: when there are only a few other things in the sink, wash up everything that’s there, regardless of who used what.
4. Give everyone an area that's 100% theirs
When you live with others, you must have a place which you can call your own. It will usually be a bedroom, though couples and children who share might not have a space that’s 100% theirs. If this is an issue, divide shared bedrooms if necessary or allot spare rooms if you can.
Everyone should be able to keep their area as they wish, so don’t include them in the chores list or the house rules list, unless of course, you have young children. Set clear borders in shared bedrooms if you’re splitting them down. Contain these areas so that they don’t affect others.
If you have young children, you’ll need to show them what it means to be tidy. Teach them the process. Help them to tidy up their toys every day, and try to get them into the habit of putting one thing away before getting a different – unrelated – toy out. Of course if they’re getting a load of toys out that they’ll use together, that’s fine. But they should put a puzzle away before getting out the Lego. Even at this young age, they’ll still need their own space and place to put things.
As they get older, you can start to back off a bit, but still offer gentle and positive encouragement and support when it’s needed. This might mean teaching them how to dust and hoover while they’re young and perhaps giving them a gentle reminder if you feel their room is in dire need of it! But try not to do everything for them. It’s better to teach them the processes from a young age and give them responsibility than to be their maid till they leave home, else they’ll never learn how to do things for themselves.
Saying that, it is of course a balancing act. You shouldn’t leave them to it entirely as they won’t learn that way either. Give them responsibility and control of their space as they get older, while being there if they need you. The skills and good example you’ll have shown them to this point will rub off.
5. Be an inspiration, not a nag
Leading by example is one of the best ways to get other people to want to be tidier. A messy person will see you happily organising an area and will see how it energises and uplifts you. While it might not make an immediate difference to their behaviour, if you keep it up, they will eventually start to think to themselves ‘maybe I could re-arrange my x….’. In the meantime, you’ll be happier because your house is tidier.
6. Plan for personal items in shared spaces
Keeping a tidy shared home is centred around respect. You respect a shared space by doing your bit to look after it. You respect others by honouring what is most important to them (the house rules). You respect their right to a private space of their own, and finally, you respect their possessions by leaving them alone.
It can be frustrating to return to an area to find that your things are not where you left them because they have been tidied away by someone. Nor is it much fun being the person who feels as though they are tidying up after everyone. Is this a problem at your house? Try to decide what personal items you are comfortable with being left out in shared spaces, as well as roughly how much. Are there any areas which should always be kept clear? Put this on your house rules if it is a real issue.
Do not tidy up/away after others. Not only is this a respect issue, the more you do for other people, the more they’ll allow you to do for them. Your martyrdom creates their laziness, plus micromanagement breeds resentment for everyone. This might be very difficult for you if you’re used to being fully responsible for keeping the house tidy, or if others don’t meet your expectations. But if you can, try to be more accepting of others and have faith that they are doing their best.
7. Declutter
If the problem is that there are too many things lying about, perhaps you can agree to assess the most cluttered area first, as a team/group/family. Set aside a time to go through everything together in all shared spaces. Look at what you need and want to keep and what you can let go of to help make it easier to keep things organised.
8. Organise
Of all the organising tips I can give, this is the most important. Everything MUST have a home; the home MUST make it effortless to put the thing back. If you have to move five items in a cupboard to put something back, chances are you are going to return it to the front instead or pile it on top. If you have to walk upstairs to get something which you regularly use downstairs, chances are it will end up staying downstairs when it is not in use. That is how mess and disorganisation occurs. So keep things where they are easy to get to and easy to put back.
9. Praise
Have you ever noticed that when you point out a bad habit someone has, they seem to start doing it more? That is because, unless we’re very aware, it’s easy to adopt the labels people give us as part of our identity.
It feels better and is often more effective to make an effort to notice and comment on the positive things people do. So try to adopt this approach around the home and don’t forget to say thank you. We all have naturally different standards and expectations and cannot read minds. No matter how much you plan things by taking the steps above, there will always be extra tasks that need doing, especially if you created your chores list and house rules with priority and simplicity in mind, as you should have. Try to accept that these extra chores might not be obvious to others, ask for help and kindly thank them for it. Don’t worry about reinforcing the roles of manager and helper by saying thank you. Try to think of it as being polite.
10. Hire a cleaner
Hiring a cleaner is not a cop-out approach. Learning how to be tidy takes practice and effort. Outsourcing the cleaning tasks ensures that organising remains the primary focus. Cleaners are not very expensive these days, and if it saves arguments and creates more peace in your house, it’s well worth it.
