Barbara Costello2026Brunch with Babs
Tips and Tricks for Making a House a Home
A home is kept in small pieces, not big weekends. Fifteen minutes in the morning, fifteen at night, and everyone who lives there pitches in.
The core idea
Barbara Costello is Babs of Brunch with Babs, a former preschool teacher who became known for the recipes and household tips she began posting online with her youngest daughter. This book, from Clarkson Potter, is a practical guide to setting up, cleaning, organizing and keeping up a home, whether you rent or own. Its argument is that homemaking is about how a home makes the people in it feel, and that a happy home matters more than a perfect one. The backbone is her short daily routine, Clean in 15: fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen at night, with daily, weekly and monthly reminders on top. Around it sit seasonal cleaning and organizing checklists, home maintenance and saving for repairs, natural cleaning recipes and simmer pots, and ways to get the whole household involved. It draws on her decades of running a family home, with photos of her husband and grandchildren pitching in.
The book is a working manual, meant to be used rather than displayed. Its centre is a rhythm, not a list. Clean in 15, which Babs also calls her method, starts with an easy win such as making the bed. When time is short, she puts the dishes first: load at night, unload in the morning, so the sink never fills.
Around that daily rhythm sit the longer cycles a home needs, from weekly and monthly reminders to seasonal checklists and money set aside for repairs. And none of it is meant to fall on one person. This page gives you the shape of the approach and a planner for your own two fifteens. The checklists, hacks and recipes are in the book.
The chores serve the feeling. A happy home beats a perfect one.
Card 1
Trying to overhaul every room at once ends in burnout. A few minutes kept up every day does more than one heroic weekend.
Card 2
Kids, partners and roommates each get jobs. A chore chart and a few tasks to start, then more as they stick.
Card 3
Homes online are not your home. Choose what works for the people who live in yours.
Interactive · the two-fifteens planner
Pick the slot, then tap tasks to add them. The bar fills toward fifteen minutes and tells you when a list has grown too long. Give each task to someone at home, then run the timer or copy the card for the fridge.
Babs marks the tasks Babs has named as part of her own morning and evening routine when talking about the book. The other tasks and every minute estimate are HourLife's.
HourLife's planner, built on the book's Clean in 15 idea. It is not the book's checklist. Your lists stay in this browser and nothing is sent anywhere.
Concept anatomy
The daily fifteens carry the weight, and the longer cycles stand on them. Upkeep and saving for repairs keep the roof on, and the whole household is the foundation.
Babs described this decluttering method on Good Morning America while launching the book. Everything in a room goes into one of five bins before anything is put away.
The book includes its own recipes for natural cleaners, pest deterrents and seasonal simmer pots. HourLife does not reprint them. One rule of our own: never mix cleaning products, homemade or bought, and label every bottle you fill.
Community insights
Nº 01HourLife takeaway
Babs separates homemaking from housekeeping. Housekeeping is the tidying and scrubbing. Homemaking is the larger aim of a place where the people who live there feel cared for, and the chores serve that aim rather than the other way round.
Nº 02HourLife takeaway
Her Clean in 15 routine, which she also calls the Babs Method, splits upkeep into two short sessions a day. Steady small habits keep the house from sliding, so the big catch-up days stop being needed.
Nº 03HourLife takeaway
Her rhythm is to load the dishwasher from the sink at night and empty it in the morning. An empty dishwasher means the day's dishes have somewhere to go, and a clear sink keeps the kitchen from piling up. She pairs it with an easy morning win, making the bed.
Nº 04HourLife takeaway
Babs warns that a big burst of effort tends to end in burnout. Start small, keep it going, and let consistency do the work that one heroic weekend cannot.
Nº 05HourLife takeaway
When she launched the book, Babs described decluttering with five labelled bins: trash, recycle, donate, relocate and resell. Things that belong elsewhere go in the relocate bin instead of drifting room to room, and the trash and donations leave the house the same day.
Nº 06HourLife takeaway
Kids, partners and roommates all get a share, which Babs sees as a source of pride and belonging, not only a way to split the work. She suggests a chore chart and starting children with a few tasks, and has older children teach younger ones.
Nº 07HourLife takeaway
Comparing your rooms with homes on the internet or in magazines sets you up to fall short. Every household is different, and the right choices are the ones that suit the people living in yours.
Nº 08HourLife takeaway
Babs was a teacher and started her own preschool before she was known online, and the habit of breaking work into short pieces suits that background. She has said she once kept a detailed index-card system for chores and dropped it when it became overwhelming.
Nº 09HourLife takeaway
Beyond daily cleaning, the book covers home maintenance: seasonal checklists room by room, planning for repairs and setting money aside in a maintenance fund. Upkeep you expect is a job on the calendar instead of a crisis.
Action steps
Pick the few tasks that would make the biggest difference each morning and each evening, and keep each list to about 15 minutes. Use the planner on this page and stick the card where you will see it.
Label five bins or bags: trash, recycle, donate, relocate, resell. Choose one room, sort it completely, and finish it before you touch another. Take the trash out and put the donations in the car that day.
Make a simple chore chart with a name on every task. Start each person, children included, with one or two jobs they can do on their own, and add more once those stick.
HourLife's tip: open a separate savings pot just for the house and set up a small automatic transfer on payday. Write down the repairs you already know are coming so the fund has a purpose.
HourLife's tip: add a reminder at the start of each season to walk through every room with a checklist. Note what needs a deep clean, a fix or a sort, and spread it over the following weeks.
Start each morning with the five-minute win of a made bed. It is the first item on your morning 15, and it makes the rest of the list feel lighter.
Before bed, move everything from the sink into the dishwasher and run it. In the morning, empty it so the day's dishes go straight in.
If your washer has a delay timer, load it at night so it finishes by morning. Moving it to the dryer becomes part of your morning 15.
HourLife's tip: once a week, ask everyone at home for one thing that would make the house nicer to live in. Do the easiest one before the week is out.
Fifteen minutes at each end of the day, shared by everyone, is how a house starts to feel like home.HourLife note after Barbara Costello
Pick setup actions and daily habits from Homemaking with Babs: Tips and Tricks for Making a House a Home, choose a start date, and download a printable checklist with real calendar pages.
Barbara Costello is Babs of Brunch with Babs, a former preschool teacher who became known for the recipes and household tips she began posting online with her youngest daughter. This book, from Clarkson Potter, is a practical guide to setting up, cleaning, organizing and keeping up a home, whether you rent or own. Its argument is that homemaking is about how a home makes the people in it feel, and that a happy...
HourLife’s key takeaways include: Homemaking is about how a house makes people feel; keeping it clean is only one part of that. Fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen at night beat a weekend cleaning marathon. If you only have time for one thing, do the dishes, so the sink never becomes a catch-all.
It's a strong pick for readers exploring Building Lasting Habits and Home & Minimalism. HourLife distills its core idea into key insights and practical actions worth trying.
Write your two 15-minute lists — Pick the few tasks that would make the biggest difference each morning and each evening, and keep each list to about 15 minutes. Use the planner on this page and stick the card where you will see it.
About five minutes. The HourLife summary distills Homemaking with Babs: Tips and Tricks for Making a House a Home into its core idea, 9 community insights, and 9 practical actions you can apply right away.
One idea from one book and one small habit from another, every week or once a month, on the day and around the hour you pick, where you are. Nothing else, and one link stops it.
Print it, pin it, post it. Ways to take Homemaking with Babs: Tips and Tricks for Making a House a Home off the screen and into the world.
The core idea, key takeaways, and how to apply Homemaking with Babs: Tips and Tricks for Making a House a Home, as one clean, readable page.
Read summaryEvery action from this page as a printable to-do list, with a 7-day tracker.
Download PDFA shareable card with the book and its top-voted insight, for saving or posting.
The summary card and every quote card in six sizes: Instagram feed, Story, Pinterest, YouTube thumbnail, phone wallpaper, and link preview.
Save the insights that land, build the habits that stick, and keep what you learn from Homemaking with Babs: Tips and Tricks for Making a House a Home working long after you close the page — inside HourLife.
