Domestic Difficulties
Perhaps you have experienced one or more of the following:
your home (house/apartment/trailer/etc.) seems large enough, but you still can’t find space for all the things you want to do
it is clean and organized part of the time, and dirty and cluttered part of the time
it is dirty and cluttered all of the time
you are often banging into furniture or tripping on things
the kitchen is dysfunctional
the bathroom is always a mess
you have kids and their stuff is all over the place
your entryway storage is the floor
you find yourself sweeping and vacuuming around objects that aren’t furniture
you are surrounded by ugly storage containers
you have pets and experience chronic asthma/stuffy nose/allergies
you have piles of things everywhere
your house is neat but your drawers and closets have become overstuffed chaos zones
you have an entire room that functions as an overstuffed chaos zone, and it has been that way for over a month
you don’t like to clean because your home is too dirty to touch
your housework feels like a burden
you feel like all your time is spent cleaning/putting things away/cooking/caring for pets/kids, etc.
you just can’t find a good place to read/enjoy a cup of coffee/put your feet up and rest/get cozy on a winter’s evening/play a board game/ host a dinner party/sit in the garden/etc.
I have experienced each of these phenomena at various times, and while it is always important to simply be grateful to have a place to shelter yourself/pets/family/prized collection of bottle tops/etc., when your home is causing you frustration and demanding unreasonable amounts of your energy, it is time to implement better systems.
Because without good systems, various scenarios can emerge:
The Shit House: while it hasn’t quite gotten to the point that your living space consists of narrow paths between floor-to-ceiling piles and boxes of objects (not an exaggeration - I have heard two first-hand accounts of this), you are what I might call a subclinical hoarder. There are piles everywhere. These piles don’t consist of objects that you compulsively buy or gather (as a hoarder would) - rather, they are simply the things you own and use, plus the things you haven’t bothered to throw away. Some things are placed in drawers or closets, but not consistently. The layers of accumulation, and the difficulty of maintaining order, make the mere thought of cleaning exhausting. You might clean and organize a room or two, occasionally, but tidiness never lasts for long. You seldom host guests.
The Clutter Hut: this home is cleaned and organized on a regular basis - but “regular” might mean anything from monthly to twice a year. While you have a high tolerance for disorganization, dust and grime, you also have a limit. When that limit is reached, the home is cleaned and organized, and the cycle begins anew. Things are constantly going missing.
The Mostly Fresh: this home is cleaned and tidied on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Every Saturday or Sunday, two or three hours are set aside for you, and perhaps roommates or family members, to “clean the house”. No one particularly likes it, but it keeps things more or less in order. Alternately, this service can be contracted out to a hired cleaner, in which case it is more likely performed on a weekday. This home will typically still have a few piles of uncategorized objects here and there, but off-to-the-side spaces are dedicated to accommodating these piles, where they may lie undisturbed for years at a time.
The Hideaway: this home is typically clean and tidy, but it’s tidiness relies on the use of what my Scottish husband refers to as “fuggidins”. These are containers (baskets, bags, cabinets, drawers, closets, guest rooms, garages, attics, basements - you get the idea) into which you shove or toss all categories of objects, willy-nilly, just to get them “out of the way”. Once all the fuggidins are jam-packed past the point of accommodating more stuff, one or two of them are emptied out and dealt with.
The Barracks: this home is consistently neat and clean, by virtue of a rigorous system of order and maintenance. While tidy, it doesn’t offer much in the way of coziness, inviting nooks or home cooked meals.
The “Alice”: as in the Brady Bunch housekeeper. The home flows and functions perfectly, but one person has a more or less full time job cleaning, fluffing pillows, baking delicious meatloaf and fresh cookies and attending to the needs of children and/or pets. While this person may even enjoy all of these activities, they would like to have more time to do other things.
What would be nice would be to live in a home that is so easy to clean and maintain, that the inhabitant(s) would be free to dedicate time to doing other things. Write a book, read a book, bake a cake, invite some people over for a hot-wings eating contest to see who starts retching first - I don’t know, whatever you’re into.
The point would be to create a home that - on balance - supports its inhabitants, rather than a home that requires its inhabitant’s support. A “least effort” home.
To create such a place requires research, troubleshooting, and a systematic approach, but once the systems are oiled up and running, maintenance becomes intuitive. More on that next week.