Someone once suggested that I set aside a small portion of my income every month. I’ve been doing this for years with an automatic bank transfer so I can’t mess it up.

I was reflecting on this habit recently, and had a thought: what if I treated cleaning the same way?

I’ve never been good at cleaning. Every place I ever lived was a bit messy, except when expecting a visitor.

The idea became: every day I’d “invest” 15 minutes into our home by picking a small cleaning task and doing it immediately after breakfast. I shared the idea with my wife, and we agreed to test it out together.

For the first few days, we found things to do easily, such as organizing cables, tools, pantry items and clothes. Then, we moved on to cleaning tasks, like scrubbing cabinets, washing floors, and cleaning the sofa.

These kind of things used to be so hard for me to get done, but now I’m doing them every day, and it’s even fun doing them together with my wife. We also do a little “demo” when we’re finished, to show each other what we accomplished.

We’re only 2 weeks into this, and our home looks noticeably nicer. I also find it easier to keep it nice, since any small mess now stands out way more than it did before.

I’m sure there’s a novelty aspect to why I’m enjoying this, but even so, it really does feel like a sustainable habit, especially since it’s only 15 minutes every day.