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How 15 Minutes Saves Me Money, Time and Energy - April 2019

​Our home has been respectably tidy for years from a tip I read in the Tip Store. At the time our two children were five and seven and we seemed to live in a chaotic mess. I read a tip that recommended setting a time each day for a ten minute tidy-up, where everyone in the house went and picked up their belongings and put them where they belonged. I chose a 15 minutes time block right before bath time. At 6.45 every evening we would all stop what we were doing and tidy up. That was eight years ago, and our children are now 13 and 15 and we still do the evening tidy-up. Yes, they grumble and moan, but they do it. It's habit now and we all do it automatically. For eight years our home has ended and started each day neat and tidy. The impact this has had on me as a working mum, and on my husband and children can't be measured. I stopped feeling hard done by because of the mess, hubby was more relaxed because I wasn't grumpy and our kids have learnt that they tidy up after themselves regularly. Has it saved us money? Yes! We rarely lose anything, so we're not replacing things we already have. It has certainly saved us time - it's so much easier to find 15 minutes once a day than 3 - 4 hours over the weekend to tidy up. And energy - again, working for 15 minutes takes far less out of me than struggling to tidy up for hours after working all week.  Best tip ever!
Contributed by Wendy Leith