How my Sunday Resets are turning cleaning into an intentional habit.
I'll be honest with you, cleaning has always been a little complicated for me. Not because I'm lazy or genuinely hate it. Actually if my mind and body were cooperating I'd have the most intentional tidy space because I love the way a clean space feels and looks.
The real issue is I never actually learned how to clean growing up. I was sheltered in a way that sounds nice on the surface, my mom just handled everything, unless I was in trouble and told to clean my room, but it didn't prepare me for the real responsibilities of adult life. And now that I deal with depression and anxiety, finding the motivation to clean can genuinely be hard most days.
When I went through the deepest depression of my life around 2020 cleaning wasn't on my radar at all. My days were spent in survival. Fortunately my boyfriend was there to help keep things together.
But eventually I knew I needed something to help pull me out of it. So somewhere between 2020 and 2022 I started journaling, meditating, and something I'd never see myself doing, reading!
A fellow YouTuber creator inspired me to pick up reading and one of the books I choose was The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.
And while the whole book was motivating, the thing that actually changed how I approach cleaning and habit building was his 30-day rule.
The 30-day rule and why it actually works
Elrod breaks habit forming into three phases and honestly this framework helped me more than any productivity tip I'd tried before.
The first ten days are the hardest. Whatever new habit you're trying to build will feel uncomfortable and you may even want to quit. This is normal.
Days eleven through twenty start to feel more like a routine but it still feels like work. You're not hating it as much but you're also not loving it either. But you Keep going anyway.
Days twenty one through thirty is where the magic happens. Something changes. The habit starts to feel natural. Almost automatic. It might even feel off when you don't do it because your so used to it now.
That's when it actually becomes a habit.
When I started with making my bed
I picked the smallest possible habit. Making my bed every morning. That's it.
It sounds a little too simple to matter but that's the point. I needed something achievable enough that I'd actually do it everyday even on the days when I had no energy, no motivation, and no desire to do anything. It was something about starting the day with one simple thing (however small it was) which is what changed the energy of everything moving forward.
That small habit slowly grew into a full Sunday reset routine. It's a day I set aside to clean, declutter, reset my space, and get myself mentally ready for the week ahead. Its Not always perfectly. It's not a super fancy day. It's just intentional.
Why being intentional matters more than perfection
The reset isn't about having a spotless apartment. It's about the feeling of walking into my space and have it feel like where I want to be rather than where I've been stuck. For someone like me who is actively working on building better daily habits and who genuinely struggles with consistency, having one specific day that I clean has made more of a difference than any other daily or weekly routine I've tried.
Your space can affect your mental state more than most people realize. When my space feels all over the place my brain feels frazzled. When I reset my space I reset something in myself too.
Where the habit tracker comes in
If you want to try this for yourself pick one small thing. Not a whole routine. Just one thing you can do every day for thirty days. Track it and watch what happens in the three phases. See how it feels. And don't judge yourself too quick or harshly in the first ten days because those are supposed to be hard.
I made a free 30-day habit tracker you can download below. It's simple, printable, and has space to write your goal, track your days, and gauge how you feel at the beginning and end of your journey. I wish I'd had this when I was first trying to build my habits. I used a regular piece of paper to track my 30 days but now you have access to a cuter version.
