When the chaos and warmth of Christmas segues into the dark emptiness of January, thoughts often turn to getting our houses in order.

Whether that’s the admin you’ve been putting off for months or sorting out those overflowing cupboards, making our homes a nicer place to be is time well spent. After all, we’re in them a lot more during the winter months.

However, when you’re experiencing chronic pain, housework can really take it out of you. The simplest task can feel like a colossal chore.

That’s why we’ve come up with some nifty ways to make life a little easier.

From cooking tips to laundry hacks, these time and energy-saving ideas should help cleaning with chronic pain feel a bit more achievable.

Bear in mind that as important as it is to move your body every day, you should always work within your limits. Think little and often rather than a whole morning or afternoon’s cleaning. Some days you may feel that you have no will or energy for housework. And that’s ok too.

Knowing your limits and pacing yourself should be part of a good pain management programme which focuses on helping you understand and control your chronic pain.

Now, let’s look at some housework hacks for chronic pain.

Separate your smalls

Fed up with sock-sorting misery after each wash? Buy some colour-coded laundry bags for each member of the family to put their worn socks and underwear into. Shove the bags into the washer, tumble dry and then return each bag to its owner for them to put away.

Give small items a home

Do you have certain items in the house that constantly go missing? Technically, things can’t go missing if they have a dedicated place to store them. Head to Dunelm or Wilcos to grab a selection of ‘danger zone’ caddies to instantly tidy up an area and save you wasting valuable time hunting for things. Think a tray on the coffee table to place remotes, a rattan basket in the kitchen for various USB chargers or a bowl in the hallway for keys and wallets. 

Get everyone involved

Keeping the house clean and in order shouldn’t just fall on one person’s shoulders. Everyone in the household should do their bit. 

Give kids age-appropriate jobs such as emptying the dishwasher, dusting, vacuuming and emptying the bins. Smaller children can get involved with tasks including setting the table, helping with food prep and putting their toys away.

Set up a board in a communal area with everyone’s jobs written down on it, so each person knows what they’re doing and when. 

Do similar tasks together

One way of breaking up housework  when you have chronic pain is to tackle specific tasks at a time rather than rooms. For example, you could clean windows and mirrors one day, floors the next day, toilets another day and sinks the next. This way, you’ll only need one type of cleaning product and the same equipment. You might also feel more motivated focusing on one task alone rather than chopping and changing.

Rethink your laundry rules

Do you wash your clothes after each wear? In reality, only socks, underwear and some sports kit needs to be washed after use. Whereas items of clothing such as skirts, jeans, trousers, jumpers and cardigans don’t. And will look all the better for it.

T-shirts and shirts? Do the sniff test. If they smell fresh, they’ll be good for another wear. Pyjamas can be worn for a few nights too. Encourage family members to hang their towels up to dry after each use and only place them in the washing basket after three uses.

Cut the time (and energy) spent doing laundry by spot cleaning instead of fully washing. Mud stains can be easily dealt with by dabbing gently with soap and water. To remove food spills, lay the garment on a paper towel, stain-side down, and using a clean, damp cloth and soap or stain remover, dab the stain from the other side, starting at the edges and working inwards.

Sort rubbish as you go

Make it as hard as possible for rubbish to be left lying around. Put two bins in each room; one for regular rubbish and another for recycling. This will save you time sorting rubbish and technically, especially if you have kids, it makes it harder for people to not tidy up after themselves.

Keep to-do lists

It isn’t just cleaning that suffers when you have chronic pain. Life admin also has a nasty habit of piling up and leaving us feeling completely overwhelmed.  

Get on top of it by creating a list of what needs doing and when: house insurance, tax returns, fixed-term tariffs and so on. Schedule an action date a few weeks ahead of each deadline. Whether you do this on a traditional calendar or a digital one is up to you. Google and Microsoft calendars enable you to set alerts and also delegate tasks to other household members.

Create a ‘sherpa’ system on your stairs

Place large baskets at the top and bottom of your stairs. As you go about your day, if you see something that belongs on another floor, put it in the basket. Each basket can be transported up or downstairs at the end of the day and the items contained within returned to their rightful place. This will save you from simply ignoring out-of-place items or making countless trips up and down the stairs.

Wage war on paper

Paper can make any space look untidy and cluttered. Register everyone in the house for paper-free bills and statements. Unsubscribe from all catalogues and unwanted magazines. Place a box file in the hallway or kitchen to chuck any post in and then once a week, go through the contents and either deal with, throw away or file if necessary.

Sort washing as you go

Buy a couple of laundry sorting baskets like this one from Amazon so that clothes are already sorted before washing. (You may need to give a quick lesson on this to various family members!) The frame can be wheeled around and each bag easily removed and carried to the washing machine when full.

Have two sets of cleaning supplies

To save yourself from carrying cleaning supplies up and down the stairs, have one set for each floor. If your budget can stretch, a small, cordless vacuum is great to keep upstairs so you don’t have to lug one between floors. When you’re experiencing chronic pain, it might make the difference between getting the housework done and not.

Make a base sauce for a variety of dishes

Banking a bit of kitchen time at the beginning of the week can make subsequent mealtimes a cinch. For instance, a big vat of ragu can be turned into many different dishes: spaghetti bolognese one day; add kidney beans and chipotle paste for chilli con carne the next, cottage pie topped with cheesy mash; or with curry powder, garam masala, turmeric and peas for a quick and tasty keema.

Clear up your email inbox 

If you’re one of those people with 14,000 unread emails, you’ll know that a messy inbox means important things can easily get missed. 

However, if you’ve left it too long, sorting them out yourself might take forever. 

Instead, embrace the power of apps to do the hard work for you. Depending on which you choose, apps like Cleanfox, Unroll.me and Clean will unsubscribe you from unwanted or unused newsletters and subscription lists, delete unwanted emails in bulk and even sort incoming emails into new folders and categories.

Once you’ve streamlined your inbox, set up folders (receipts, insurance, charity donations, etc) to make finding emails even easier and to keep your inbox manageable. 

Moving forward, go through your emails at least once a week and either deal with, delete or file in the relevant folder.

Embrace (the right) gadgets

Gadgets can be split into those that are a waste of time and those that are worth their weight in gold. And certainly there are gadgets that can make cleaning with chronic pain a whole lot easier. Telescopic dusters mean you can clean hard-to-reach places without having to climb up or crouch down. Choose microfibre dusters so that the dust is trapped, rather than moved downwards.  

Other gadgets for chronic pain that might be worth considering are these mattress lifters to help you change bedsheets more easily; extendable grabbers to pick things up with; and electric cleaning brushes to take the hard work out of scrubbing a variety of surfaces.

Use a broom to clean the bath

A long-handled brush with soft bristles makes cleaning the bath a doddle. Simply squirt a bit of bathroom cleaner in the tub and give it a once-over.

We hope you’ve found our housework hacks for chronic pain useful. If you’re experiencing chronic pain and are looking for a treatment plan beyond pain medication then get in touch with Fiona Beard from Harrogate Pain Management. Using her skills, expertise and her own personal experience she can help you find a way out of chronic pain.