How to motivate myself to KEEP my house clean once clean?

Do you enjoy racing the clock or other self-competition? I get probably 80% of my cleaning done via games like "how much of the living room can I pick up during this commercial/credit sequence/interminable time it takes the Xbox to load Netflix?" I also have a game of never walking from one room to the next without taking something with me that needs to go. Walking from bedroom to kitchen? Scoop up some/all the glasses my husband and I leave in the back of the house, or cans for the recycling. Living room to bathroom? I've assuredly left out some nail polish or lotion or something that needs to go back where it belongs. Longer tasks (where longer is > 2 minutes) are when I squeeze in some podcast or audiobook listening. I have found, in time, that I will go do a thing - like wash dishes - just for the time it gives me to listen to my book or show.

I use what I call the buddy system. While I'm waiting for the Keurig to warm up, I'll empty or load the dishwasher. While I'm waiting for the coffee to dispense, I'll wipe down the sink and the kitchen counters (and the faster the better, because unintentionally cold coffee is the pits). Just before I fold laundry straight out of the dryer, I'll spray cleaner on the toilet, dump in some bowl cleaner, and then squirt some Works Tub and Shower into the tub. You can't let that stuff sit forever, so I have to get the laundry at least folded and put on the bathroom counter, so I can clean up all the cleaner. Then the next load goes in (...this is usually the load that sits there and gets wrinkled, btw...) and I finish cleaning the bathroom (wipe, scrub, flush, rinse, done). I try not to have dead time while I'm doing tasks that I Absolutely Must Do. I have to have my coffee, and I have to have clean clothes. Good luck!

Is it primarily tidying (putting things away), or cleaning (dusting/sweeping/mopping)? I think it's important to keep those ideas separate. It's much easier to keep a place clean if it's already tidy, but it's a lot of work to tidy up a dirty house. Marie Kondo's http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1607747308/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ is currently changing my life. It builds on something I've been noticing recently: I really don't need very much stuff, and most of the stuff I keep around my house just takes up space. Kondo wants you to systematically sort through everything you own and discard everything that doesn't bring you joy when you touch it. I know how impossibly naive that sounds, but she's a former Shinto nun, so she can say things like that. The other main idea seems to be finding mental strategies for discarding things. It's quirky but I was really ready to hear a lot of it, so I thought you might like it, too.

Check out sportbucket's recommendation above. I noticed that several Mefites have recommended Marie Kondo's Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up so I bought it yesterday and am now reading through it. I'm only halfway through but am already stoked to try out her approach: Attack by category (clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous items, photographs and sentimental items) not by location. In one category such as clothes, dump all the items on the floor...everything, all the clothes you have regardless of which room, box, closet or attic you crammed them into. Go through them one by one asking in each case whether the item gives you joy. If yes, keep. If not, thank it for its previous service and discard. Stuff all the discards in trash bags, toss. Ditto for the books, etc. She says her approach eliminates "rebound" (everything getting messy again) because normal tidying just hides away a bunch of stuff you don't really want anymore whereas, with her method, wherever your eye rests you see something you truly use and value. I've done something similar in the past with old papers and documents, and it was a very liberating feeling.

Whenever you walk past something that shouldn't be there, pick it up and move it to its rightful place, if the rightful place is where you're headed. Just notice when things are out of order, make it part of your awareness. If you pace around like I do, this is enough to keep things roughly surface tidy. Dust + sweep or vacuum a couple of times a week - maybe time that so you're doing laundry at the same time, or do it on garbage day. Dishes: I try not to let a meal go by without doing the last set. I always regret ignoring this. (Hopefully, you can think of those rules as positive or maybe treat them like games, because I don't know, I don't really feel like cleaning can be super-fun except maybe under those high-octane emergency conditions you're talking about, if you're a masochist. Not that you're a masochist, sorry! I just personally don't love it.)

You need http://www.flylady.net/

Yeah was going to say, invite a rotating cast of friends over as frequently as possible for coffee or snakes & ladders or whatever. You'll have to clean. Do you have a physical exercise regimen you follow? Maybe try carrying over the amped-up feeling of physical exertion into 5-10 minutes of cleaning every day.

I used to be like that, before all those retail jobs that required constant cleaning/organizing/sanitizing as part of the job. I think that is where I developed the mindfulness of how to clean efficiently as I go about my day that others have described above. Now, when I work from home, I work for 45 minutes and take a break for 10. Those 10 minute breaks are when I do some dishes, flip the laundry, take out the recycling et cetera. I also clean the kitchen while waiting for water to boil or heating something in the microwave. On weekends, I go out for a run and come back already sweaty and grimy, so that's when I'll do some sort of grubby chore like scrubbing the sink. Man, the shower afterwards feels amazing.

Yup, guests every week.