What is a five minute reset?

What if your living room could look like this every time you woke up in the morning?

Mine does. And I don’t say this to brag, I say it to show you that it can be done. I have five kids, a cat, foster puppies, a husband (yes, other adults in the house contribute to mess!), and now a business. But every morning, my living room starts like this after a 5 minute reset (and now usually less). That means it can also look like this in less than 5 minutes if company shows up unexpectedly or I had a really crazy day and just need to turn down the volume on my brain’s background noise. So what is the five minute reset, and how can you make it work for you?

The basics

A five minute reset is exactly what it sounds like: five minutes in which you are able to put your room back to its baseline level of neatness. What the five minute reset is: a quick tidy. What the five minute reset is not: cleaning, that is different. What the five minute reset is not: decluttering or organizing – those need to be done separately before you can achieve the five minute reset. What the five minute reset is not: a universal aesthetic that applies to everyone.

First, notice the definition of a reset is putting your space back to its baseline. If the baseline of your room is still an untrained space that has too much stuff for its containers and no systems for maintaining that stuff, then the reset won’t get the results you want. It is also important to understand what baseline means for you and your family. My living room didn’t always look like this. When we were homeschooling, there were several bookshelves full of curriculum in this room.

There was a LOT more stuff. However, that stuff all still had a home and we could reset it in 5 minutes. So the amount of things in your room is a personal preference and a season of life, but you can regain the state of your space in less than five minutes with the right training.

What space do I reset?

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could reset the entire house in 5 minutes a day? Eventually, this might actually be true of you if you do the work of decluttering and organizing. This will take time, though, so don’t get discouraged. Start in the spaces that you see the most. If you can only pick one, my vote is for the living room. (The kitchen is also important but is its own beast with its own usage and rules.) These are the rooms most families spend the most time in and that guests see when they visit. If these spaces are under control, your house just feels more under control. Once you train those spaces to reset easily, you can move outward to other public spaces (and then even bedrooms!). For now, though, focus on the spaces that make the most visual impact both to you and those who visit your home.

Forward to fantastic

So what are some things that you can do to find the baseline that works for your family and maintain it?

Declutter, declutter, declutter

Most of us have too much stuff. It might even be safe to say that all of us have too much stuff. That is not a judgment or a comment on character, it is a fact of life. We have stuff that we don’t have space for. We have stuff that we don’t even use. We have stuff we don’t even like. All that stuff is making our brains tired and costing us time and money. Deciding which of that stuff is most important to us, actually serves a purpose in our life right now, and we have room for is the first step. That can feel daunting and even overwhelming. The good news is you don’t have to do it all at once. Using the Dana K White no-mess method you can make your space better without making it worse first. But you can’t do a five minute reset with an hour’s worth of stuff in your space. The decluttering has to be done before the reset can work.

Organize

Getting rid of things will make a huge improvement in your space, but a little organization also goes a long way. Some of my favorite living room options include dual use furniture. Notice the coffee tables in the two pictures above. They both store the same things. The old coffee table, in the second picture, had things stored on top. The new coffee table has a shelf underneath to keep things more hidden. If you are finding visual clutter to be mentally taxing, dual use furniture with storage options can make a huge difference. The ottomans that match the couch serve the same purpose. One decorative throw blanket – cute and cozy. Seven fleece throws for long winter nights in a big family – hidden in an ottoman during the five minute reset.

Maintain

You have whittled your things down to a manageable inventory (and manageable will differ for everyone). You have storage solutions that work for your things. Now it’s time to maintain. This is where the five minute reset comes in. The key is consistency. Do it. Every. Day.

Maybe that means you do it at the same time consistently. At night after the little ones are in bed and you have some peace to tidy where it won’t be undone might be your jam. Maybe you have teenagers who are up later than you and seem to leave a trail of possessions in their wake. Right after they leave for school might be your reset so you can enjoy the calm space until they return. Maybe you want the whole family to participate so you can multiply your reset by a factor of 3, or 4, (or even 7 in my house!). Then grab whatever 5 minutes you can when the most people are around.

Even very small children can help with tidying tasks for 5 minutes, and even the most grumbly teenager can usually be convinced to pitch in for only 5 minutes. And that’s where the rules comes in.

Rules

1) Only five minutes, no matter what. You can break this rule, of course, but most people are more successful if they keep it. If you can’t reset your space in five minutes, you probably still have too many things, or maybe you need some more buy-in from your family to help with their stuff. But limiting it to five minutes encourages consistency, prevents burnout, and guarantees daily progress.