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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…read more
published Feb 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, following Go Clean‘s tiny dashes, or watching Signed, Blake go on one of her cleaning sprees. I always feel inspired 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.