One thing we often hear from our clients is how much they love walking into their home after Take Time has been there. “Energized, a great pick-me-up, happy and more patient with kids, New-lease-on-life” …. Just a few of the reactions we hear from clients.

Having a clean home is a huge boost to a person’s sense of well being.

Blogs and websites that focus on cleanliness and organization are numerous — for instance, Things Organized Neatly, Apartment Therapy and Unclutterer, to name only a few examples. Pinterest contains countless organization pictures and tips, and Buzzfeed regularly runs listicles designed to appeal to “your inner neat freak.”

What is it about a clean well-organized home that makes people so satisfied? Why do some people spend their free time scrolling though blogs that teach them how to clean efficiently or rearrange their closets or the best way to color-code their filing cabinets?

Keeping things clean and organized is good for you, and science can prove it.

A study led by associate professor NiCole R. Keith, Ph.D., research scientist and professor at Indiana University, found that people with clean houses are healthier than people with messy houses. Keith and her colleagues tracked the physical health of 998 Americans between the ages of 49 and 65, a demographic known to be at an increased risk for heart disease. Participants who kept their homes clean were healthier and more active than those who didn’t. In fact, house cleanliness was even more of a predictor for physical health than neighborhood walkability.

In 2011, researchers at Princeton University found that clutter can actually make it more difficult to focus on a particular task. Specifically, they found that the visual cortex can be overwhelmed by task-irrelevant objects, making it harder to allocate attention and complete tasks efficiently.

The human body is made up of tens of thousands of integrated biological and neurochemical systems, all of which are — yes — organized. Many of our cells operate on strict schedules, or circadian rhythms. Even at the atomic level, we are well-regulated and well-organized. Without this organization, our bodies would collapse into chaos. Maybe we crave symmetry and cleanliness in our homes because it supports our physical state.

Whatever the reason, staying clean and organized is a good thing. It helps us feel better about ourselves, it keeps us productive and it may very well keep us physically fit.

Want to have a clean and organized home but just don’t have the time to keep it that way. Give us a call! Take Time Home Cleaning & Lifestyle Services 204-770-7103

1. Divide your pantry into zones. For example, group dried rice, beans and quinoa together in one zone. Then create another zone for flours, another for sugars and so on
2. Use clear storage containers so you know what you’re looking at.
3. Tape cooking or soaking instructions for rice, grains and beans on their respective containers, as well as the dates you last filled each bin.
4. To organize cans, use Can racks to keep cans in control. They come in varied shapes and sizes. Tip:Make sure your labels face out in order to easily identify the contents of each can.
5. Use shoe racks:You read that right. Hang a shoe rack (the type with pockets) on the back of your pantry door. You can use it to store anything from packets of yeast and instant oatmeal to measuring spoons and afterschool snacks.
6. Use Magazine racks to organize the lids of plastic food storage containers or pots and pans. You can also use these racks as receptacles for boxes of foil, plastic wrap or parchment paper.
7. Next, hang a dry-erase board or chalkboard on the door of your pantry. When you use the last of an item, note it on the board. That way you’ll always know which dried goods you need more of and won’t have to suffer from any shortage or surplus.
8. Alternatively, you can keep track of inventory by making a list of items you always keep in stock, along with the quantity you currently have. For example:

• Marinara sauce — 2
• Cans of black beans — 4
• Aluminum foil — 1

When you use an item, update the list by reducing the number, so that you never have to worry about being caught without your favorite food or necessary cooking materials.

9. Hire Take Time Home Cleaning to help you plan this out and set it up for you.

Take Time Home Cleaning offers a full menu of additional services all designed to help you TAKE TIME to live well!

Check us out at www.taketimecleaning.com or call us at 204-770-7103.

You want to get the best out of your home when you put it up for sale, and we can help you do that. Homes often need a little help getting ready to go on the market.  Our Showcase service will help you get your home market-ready and looking fabulous while maximizing your home’s sale potential. Staging is a great way to put your best foot forward and to showcase your home to potential buyers, and we are passionate about helping you display your home’s potential!  We assess the areas you need help with, both inside and out, and get to work helping you get your home ready to show.  From house cleaning to decluttering, we make the inside of your home buyer ready. We can also help you maintain the outside of your home with lawn-mowing or snow removal services, and help fix up anything that needs a little sprucing up, from painting to re-attaching baseboards to repairing holes in your drywall. From inside to out, and anything in else that needs a little work, we’ll help you get your home ready to show and help maximize the value of your sale while minimizing headaches for you in the process!

If you’ve been thinking about “going green ” at home and in your life overall, but aren’t sure where to start, or are worried about maintaining it once the initial feel-good vibes wear off, there are a variety of apps out there to help you make this important lifestyle change. Living green and being eco-friendly isn’t just about saving the planet, it’s about living a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle which benefits everyone!

In this post we’ll share five of our favourite eco-friendly apps to help you get started on your sustainability journey:

1.Green Kitchen

Green kitchen is an app designed to help you make healthier meal choices. Banish those carps and fatty, processed food and explore a variety of organic, vegetarian (delicious!) sustainable dishes which require less energy consumption to make. It features hand-picked recipes which are easy to follow and beautiful photos which will have your mouth watering!

Available on: iOS

2. Green Genie

If you’re new to the idea of living sustainably, this is the app for you. Green Genie is developed by a slew of eco-friendly professionals and features a massive database of green living tips, sustainable projects to make your home more eco-friendly, and resources to help you make the right purchasing decisions.

Available on: iOS

3. Locavore

Locavore uses your phone’s GPS to find farmers market’s and farms close to you which sell in-season, local food. Locavore gives you profiles, directions, and lists of what’s in season, as well as a ton of delicious recipes to put that locally-grown food to good use. Yum!

Available on: iOS and Android

4. UNEP Carbon Calculator

The UNEP Carbon Calculator is an app designed to help you understand the impact of your emissions as you travel. As many of us know, greenhouse gasses have some of the worst effects on global climate change, and understanding and curbing those behaviours is one of the best ways we can work to be more eco-friendly. This handy calculator lets you calculate how much CO2 is given off when you travel.

Available on: iOS

GoodGuide

Are you the kind of person who wants to know which toothpaste is the greenest, or how “green” your makeup products are? Then this is the app for you!

GoodGuide is a terrific little app which allows you to scan the barcodes of more than 120,000 products to see if they’re safe to use or consume, healthy, socially responsible, and green. You can look up the ingredients, nutritional value,  impact on animal welfare and human rights, how energy-efficient the product is, and more!

Available on: iOS

Do you have any favourite green or eco-friendly apps? Tell us in the comments!

Do you ever get that feeling that your home or car or office (or all of the above, simultaneously) will never be tidy? The challenge of keeping your home and your belongings clean is that it is constantly ongoing. Even if you clean one room or all the rooms of your house, you start thinking about all that crap that’s been sitting in the trunk of your car for 3 months, or you even start thinking towards next week when you’ll be in the exact same position of having to clean the house again. Cleaning anxiety is common with almost every homeowner, and one way you can ease the stress a bit is to throw stuff away.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you have too much stuff. There is something in your home that can be thrown away or donated, more likely, lots of somethings. At least once a year, you should go through all your belongings and make a giveaway pile. At first, it can be tough. Human nature is to maintain what you own for as long as possible, but when you do it once, you’ll realize that the 10 shirts you gave to Goodwill hadn’t even crossed your mind since you dropped them in that bin. Cleaning anxiety comes from the things you don’t see, so when you get rid of that stuff that’s at the bottom of the drawer or sitting in the basement, you’ll not only be decluttering your home, you’ll be decluttering your mind.

With that, here are 5 tips to decluttering:

1. You don’t have to do it all at once! Check out https://www.365lessthings.com/ to see how getting rid of one thing a day can change your life.

2. Make a list of rooms. Start with your closet. Next week, do your bathroom. Next week, your car. Similar to tip #1, one step at a time, people.

3. Use boxes or bags. If you just start with piles on the floor, you can lose track of what’s what in the early going. Start with clearly marked boxes for garbage, donations and keepers.

4. Music. Put on your favourite cleaning playlist . Marvin Gaye and Joni Mitchell are there to help you.

5. If in need, call for help! Get help from your kids, your husband, your neighbour. Or if they’re not around, call us!