This rule greatly helps with organization and significantly reduces the mental load. Find out how to change your tidying habits using the ‘one minute rule’.
Some consider their home a true haven of peace. So cleanliness and order are priorities…but not the only ones. Hence the habit of putting off certain tasks until later, out of laziness or an apparent lack of time to put away or clean certain objects. Because what comes first in busy lives: sleeping or washing clothes? Wash a cup or walk the dog? Everything is important, and during the week you may spend more time watching videos about tidying and cleaning than actually getting started. Often, part of the weekend is devoted to these tasks, but each time with the impression that what we put away is not enough.
Hence the importance of adopting a daily habit allowing you to clean and tidy these little details without thinking about it; without having to add a reminder to a calendar. This is the objective of the one-minute rule, also called the Japanese Kaizen method. This rule suggests that a task should be completed immediately if it can be completed in less than sixty seconds.
Take for example a stain on the counter, a hairbrush lying around in the bathroom, or a pair of unfolded pajamas on the bed. These are all examples of inconveniences that can be resolved in less than a minute. By dealing with it right away, we can move on. But procrastinating leaves an unpleasant feeling of “pending tasks.” If you group them together, it takes more time, increasing the mental load. And above all, we create in our mind a veritable gigantic “to do list” which seems to overwhelm us.
Popular sayings say that “all work is pleasure if done without thinking about it.” The one-minute rule puts this vision into practice. Less than a minute is nothing; we do the task and forget. Those who apply this rule for a long time, for example a year, observe that the impact is notable. When it’s time to clean, all those little things that accumulate disappear. On a daily basis, the house looks much neater.
The key is simple: with each new task, the question is, “Can we clean it or put it away in less than a minute?” If the answer is yes, it is carried out. Many would be surprised how many things can be fixed in less than sixty seconds and the positive impact on mental well-being and the appearance of the home.
