How To Use The Pareto Principle To Simplify Home Life

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is the idea that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes. While not a hard-and-fast rule, the Pareto Principle is a common phenomenon found in everything from economics and business to health and relationships. Why does it matter? Because if you focus your effort on the 20%, you will have a far greater impact. This is true in nearly any area of life, and the home and family is no exclusion.

The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 Rule — *Credit: Asana*

Using the Pareto Principle At Home

As a relatively young mom and homemaker, I often find myself relying upon the “textbook” way of doing things. Sometimes this is fine, but oftentimes the “textbook” way takes a lot of time and energy. It’s always refreshing when someone with more experience comes along to offer a “hack”—a way of accomplishing the same goal by cutting corners. Usually, a “hack” is a way of attacking the 20% root cause in order to achieve 80% of the desired outcome. It’s the Pareto Principle at work.

Here is another way to think about it: it’s okay to do things unevenly. It’s okay to only clean 20% of the house. It’s okay to only pick up 20% of the toys. It’s okay to only do 20% of your to-do list today. The key is to pick the right 20%—the 20% that is causing most of the problems. So what are those areas across the home?

Cleaning

Remember, you don’t have to clean evenly. Your family lives in your house unevenly, so you can clean it unevenly.

Sometimes when I tell people that I vacuum everyday, they look at me like I’m crazy. Then I realize they think I mean the whole house. No way. I vacuum just the mainly-used spaces everyday. Then there are other spaces I only get to monthly. This still facilitates floors that are mostly clean.

Here are some other examples of what this could look like:

Dusting: Skip it. Or just do it when you see it and it bugs you.
Floors: Vacuum entryways, kitchen, and underneath where the kids eat way more often than everywhere else. Same with mopping. Wash the entryway rugs every once in awhile.
Bathrooms: Skip the least-commonly used toilet or shower every rotation or so.
Mirrors & windows: Just wipe off visible dirt or fingerprints.
Kitchen: Purge the fridge often, because this is where you have the most frequent turnover of food. Wipe down the part of the counter that you use to cook, but not the whole thing.
Dishes: Use foil or parchment paper to avoid baked-on food. Just wash the inside of the dishes, because that’s the part that matters.
Baseboards: Just wipe the dust off of the baseboards in the bathroom, and/or in front of spaces that people often sit (toilet, couch, kitchen table).
Appliances: Deep clean the items that get the dirtiest and do the most cleaning—the dishwasher and the washing machine.
Laundry: It’s the folding that takes up 80% of the time, right? So stop folding what you can—washcloths, rags, pajamas, baby clothes—anything where it doesn’t actually matter if it’s wrinkly.

Unfolded clothes — I recently stopped folding my pajamas.

Cooking

I’m no expert in the kitchen, but there are plenty of way that you could think about this…

You don’t have to meal plan evenly. Just plan in advance a few meals for the week (ex. maybe 2 dinners and 1 fun breakfast on the weekend), and eat leftovers and/or whatever you can scavenge in your kitchen the rest of the days.
Some ingredients matter more than others. If you have a recipe that you love, try to identify the key ingredients that make it so delicious. Can you cut out others? You might not need every single topping or seasoning. Maybe the recipe calls for a vegetable medley, but just one single vegetable will do.
Some tools matter more than others. If you find yourself always grabbing the same pan or the same spatula, can you rearrange your kitchen to make these more easily accessible? Maybe most of your pots & pans are stored in one location, but your everyday pan is stored somewhere closer to the stove—or maybe it even just stays out on the stove all of the time. Similarly, if you keep rarely-used items out on the counter, consider rearranging. The counter-top is too valuable of real estate for occasional tools & appliances.

Tidying

You don’t have to tidy up your entire house any time you decide to tidy. In fact, the more often you can keep up with the big-impact areas, the easier it is to take care of the rest when the time comes.

So which areas have the biggest impact? It’s my opinion that the kitchen, main living/family room, and entryways/mud room are the “20%” of tidying. If your family is on the go a lot, the entryway/mud room might need some extra attention. Think: incoming items, backpacks & sports bags that need to be unpacked and repacked often, etc. If your family cooks a lot, then maybe it’s the kitchen.

It then follows that the lower-priority areas do not need to be tidied as often: bedrooms, closets, bathrooms, basements, play rooms, offices, garage, guest spaces, and so on. If you’re someone who spends a lot of time in the bedroom or in the office, then you can reconsider your own priorities. But I often find that those areas aren’t as impactful as you would think for running the everyday life of a family. Maybe it’s okay for your rooms to be messy, as long as the main area where you live life is looking pretty good.

Organizing

What matters most to get organized? This one is difficult to answer in a general sense, but it should be easy to answer for each individual person: whatever is problematic for you right now.

If you no longer feel like you can easily find a outfit that you want to wear, then it might be time to declutter and organize your closet. If you are struggling to find a place to store the toys that your kid just got, then it might be time to declutter and organize the toys.

Seeing a picture of a beautifully-organized space of someone else’s should not be the main driving factor for you to get organized. Focus on function: what is a little bit dysfunctional in your home? What have you lost? What have your purchased too much of because you didn’t know you already had it? Organizing that category will have a greater impact on your home than a project that just yields a pretty picture.

Parenting

Parenting is the world’s hardest job. I’m no expert myself, and I certainly can’t advise on everything. But I do know that the Pareto Principle rings true for me in parenting just as much as it does in organizing my home. Here’s why & how…

This day in age, we have the benefit of parenting with social media. This means that we have a wealth of information available to us to help us make wise parenting decisions. This also means that we are pulled in a million different directions as a parent. The internet encourages to spend more time outside, rotate their toys, implement a chore chart, read books to them, cook with them, facilitate crafts, play intentional games, let them have free play, feed them a variety of healthy food, take them to swim lessons, and so on. The list never ends.

I think it’s more imperative than ever that we consider the 20% with our kids. What matter most for them right now in this season? You know your kid and their environment best. You know what they need. So just pick one thing. If you can, try to be strategic by picking one thing that addresses their gaps. Pick the one thing that you think will have the most impact. Then you can lean into that, and let the rest go.

Applying The Pareto Principle In Your Life

I encourage you to think for yourself—what areas of your life could benefit from the Pareto Principle? Which root causes are causing you the most strife? And how can you focus more energy on the things that matter, and less energy on the things that don’t?

My list is just meant to be a starting point, so I’d love to hear from you. Let me know in the comments what you plan to focus on!