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I Made a Before & After Time Lapse to Motivate Me to Clean My Bedroom (and Here’s How it Went)

Shifrah Combiths
Shifrah Combiths
With five children, Shifrah is learning a thing or two about how to keep a fairly organized and pretty clean house with a grateful heart in a way that leaves plenty of time for the people who matter most. Shifrah grew up in San Francisco, but has come to appreciate smaller town life in Tallahassee, Florida, which she now calls home. She's been writing professionally for twenty years and she loves lifestyle photography, memory keeping, gardening, reading, and going to the beach with her husband and children.
 publishedFeb 25, 2022
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Credit:Cathy Pyle

What is it about cleaning and organizing before & afters that’s so addictive? I can easily lose hours clicking on Instagram’s “Tap to Clean” posts, followingGo Clean微小的破折号,或看Signed, Blake继续她的一个清洁的疯狂。我总是觉得spired to clean my own spaces after my online binge sessions — which is why I decided to create a time lapse of cleaning my bedroom. The theory was that viewing my own space in a time-warp finger-swipe of not-clean-to-perfect might help motivate me to buckle up for some intensive cleaning time at home.

Here’s how it went:

Our bedroom was a mess and I wanted to re-set it, so I decided to use it for my time lapse video. I propped my phone on my husband’s dresser to get a good view of as much of the room as possible, hit record, and got to work. At the end, I had a time lapse video and a pristine bedroom to enjoy.

So, did the experiment work? Yes, but in a different way than I expected. While watching the video was fun, the real power came from the process of recording.Because the camera was rolling, I stayed on task and finished the room in record time.I didn’t wander off looking for a cup of tea or get distracted between making the bed and vacuuming the floor. I didn’t give myself a break and scroll through my phone, while lying on the bed. I focused and got ‘er done, without procrastinating or dragging anything out, and within the relatively short amount of time the task should actually take.

Ultimately, making a time lapse brought out my best cleaning self for the “audience,” even if that was just me and my kids.

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