How to Manage Your Household

Last updated on June 22nd, 2025 at 06:10 am

Managing your household properly is all about creating something that specifically works for you and your family. Today, I’ll be sharing what works for me and our family when it comes to cleaning and managing our household, but how you manage your household might be a bit different. That’s okay. That’s the point. But let’s get into some specific things you can do to start to build out a plan for managing your home.

Set up a cleaning routine that works for you

I recently wrote about how to keep your house clean with tips for doing just that. But basically, it’s all about doing a little each day so you don’t get overwhelmed by your home. If you’re cleaning as you go, doing a load of laundry every day, and making sure everything has a place, you’re in a good position to keep your house clean.

In general, you want to create a schedule that works for you when it comes to actual cleaning tasks. You’ll often see schedules online, and I personally find them to be overwhelming and not reflective of what needs to be done. Of course, deep kitchen and bathroom cleans are essential. You’ll want to keep your floors clean. Dishes and laundry are everyday things.

But there also might be things that aren’t important to your family. For example, I never make my bed. I simply don’t care, so I don’t put energy into that. Think about what needs to get done and figure out when you’re going to do it.

Pay attention to what you’re already doing

The trick to managing your household is to pay attention to what you do naturally and build your house around that. That’s the key. You don’t want to create any systems that are the opposite of what you do naturally because it’ll then be really hard to maintain them. Our goal isn’t the perfect way of doing things. Instead, our goal is a realistic way of doing things.

So, if you find yourself dropping your keys on the counter every day, create a space or a basket for it so it’s at least contained. If you find yourself with a chair or section full of clothes you don’t want to wash yet, get a storage container for that, so it makes sense and looks more contained. For us, we leaned into the fact that we hated sorting and putting away clothes by buying sorting hampers. We just throw our clothes into baskets essentially, and we’re done. It’s made our life much easier because we leaned into what we were already doing.

This might include some new habits as well. For example, if your sink is constantly full of dirty dishes, you might want to shift to making sure anything that can go into the dishwasher does so immediately.

Set up zones in your home

This is something my friend taught me. When you have specific zones in your home, it makes it easier to maintain things because everything has a specific place to live. You’re not dealing with scattered items and wondering where something is all the time.

For example, you might have an exercise zone in your home where you keep everything related to exercise. You might have an office zone where you store absolutely everything related to office, from notebooks to scissors to pens. That way, when you need a pair of scissors, you know exactly where they are and you don’t have to go digging.

In our home, we were storing kitchen stuff everywhere because we have a very small kitchen. So, I had stuff in the dining room and the area off the stairs. This made cooking annoying because I was constantly trying to figure out where something was or leaving the kitchen to get something. So, we did an intense declutter and reorganization so we could have everything in our kitchen, small as it is.

Declutter ruthlessly

This brings us to decluttering. You should do so regularly, and you should be pretty ruthless about it. Obviously, if you use something or it brings you joy, you don’t need to get rid of it. But aspirational use doesn’t count. If you keep looking at an item in your home and going, “Wow, I should use that,” but then you don’t, get rid of it. It’s not worth keeping. This helps you manage your household because it keeps your stuff from becoming a problem.

My friend has a system where she stores everything she thinks she won’t need in a box, and if she doesn’t have to go into the box to get it after six months, she automatically throws it away. This way, she knows for an absolute fact that she’s not using it, and she’s not going to use it.

I also regularly go through my kids’ toys and store/throw away anything they’re not currently interested in. Some of it goes into storage for toy rotation, but anything that’s broken or doesn’t make sense to keep gets thrown out.

Have a hub where you keep essential information

When it comes to managing the part of your household that’s all information, it helps to have a central hub that everything can refer to. The most important thing is some sort of calendar that keeps track of everyone’s important dates and appointments. Having it right in front of you every day can be super helpful.  

This hub might also be where you store and sort your incoming mail. It could be where you store your grocery list that everyone can add to or where you write down crucial notes for everyone to know and remember. Maybe you even keep a chore chart there, and everyone can check things off when they’re complete.

Whatever information you need to communicate with the family or keep track of should be in this central hub.

Managing your household is all about coming up with systems and routines that make sense for you, even if they wouldn’t make sense to others. Lean into what’s already working or what you do without thinking, and it will be much easier to come up with a plan. If something’s not working, adjust it in a way that feels natural. You’ve got this!