If You Want to Live in a Clean House
you have to clean your house
Setting aside the fact that I once had a seedling growing out of my sink drain, I am hoping that you will allow me to teach you some things about cleaning and organizing your home.
Also, I can’t remember ever cleaning a toilet in any apartment that I lived in before age 28, even though I worked for some of that time as a house cleaner, cleaning toilets for other people.
And, on the several occasions in which I encountered mice in my kitchen, I would leave them freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on the counter, which they would attempt to drag into the oven through the gaps in the top burners of the stove. I found this cute.
Please be reassured that I am now 53 and have had many years to gain experience and learn valuable lessons - lessons from which you too can benefit!
Significantly, what has not changed is the fact that I am not particularly bothered by disorganized, slovenly surroundings. Being an artist, I have a talent for looking beyond the dirt and past the great piles of accumulated nonsense. As long as the dirt hasn’t progressed to actual filth, or hoarder-level accumulation, I can make myself comfortable in such places.
Some people are tidy because they are unhappy and uncomfortable otherwise. If they see a congealing splat of gravy on the kitchen counter, they find it a bit repulsive, and reflexively grab for the sponge to make it go away. These people have an advantage, in that they naturally tend toward tidiness. Not I.
To say that I am comfortable in slovenly surroundings does not mean that I prefer them. This is important. Given the choice, I would prefer for my home to look a bit like a Scandinavian design magazine, and smell like a proper spa where they whip you with birch branches and scent the air with natural eucalyptus. I would prefer things to be dust-free, uncluttered, organized and just generally nice. But, for me, making my home look, smell and be like this involves a deliberate choice and a conscious effort.
It took being married, owning a home with dogs and children and tenants, for me to start to feel the discomfort of impinging clutter in all its forms: accumulating out-of-date jams and salsas in the refrigerator; dregs of pasta and breakfast cereals in the pantry; old clothes - unworn for years - building up in the bureau; bills and other mail pieces, set aside to be dealt with 6, 8, 12 months later; little sentimental objects, gathering dust and grime on shelves and windowsills; books, books, piles of books on shelves and surfaces and floors; and the gathering boxes, multiplying year by year in the attic and the basement - all of that might have been manageable up to that point, but cover it in pet dander, cheerios and small action figures and even a slob like me will realize that she has a problem.
The first step was Marie Kondō’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, a small book which walks you through the process of saying goodbye to the objects that you no longer need. It is particularly useful, because you can start with a smaller challenge, such as clothing, experience the satisfaction of getting that category under control, then proceed to the next. Certain things, such as letters, photos and other sentimental items, may take more time (maybe even years) to edit - but as long as progress is occurring, you are moving in the right direction.
I think, speaking from my own experience, once you learn her approach, you are unlikely ever to accumulate objects in the same way again, because you have learned how and when to get rid of them. Kondō’s method takes care of the under-clutter: all the things that stuff the closets and drawers and shelves, making proper organization awkward, unpleasant, and eventually impossible.
This brought me to the point where I could have a cyclically clean and orderly home: every several weeks I would put away all the papers and clothing and objects that had accumulated about the house, give it a good wipe and vacuum, and enjoy a lovely clean home for a day or two. Several weeks later, the cycle would repeat. A weekly cleaning seemed too onerous - there were so many other things that would simply take priority (because I wasn’t too bothered by the clutter) - after all, two or three hours of cleaning could be better spent enjoying a visit to the park!
It took me another ten years or so to understand the importance of maintenance, and to figure out how to structure a system that I could actually maintain.
There are two - no, three - essential parts to my system.
Number 1) Homes within your home: every object needs a place to live, little neighborhoods where similar objects can dwell together, where they can be easily put away and easily located.
Number 2) The Five-Minute Room: every room in your home should be able to be generally cleaned and tidied within five minutes.
Number 3) Clean for a half-hour every morning.
Actually there are four parts:
Number 4) Clean something disgusting at least four times a week.
I will post in more detail about all of the above. Number one is a system of organizing, number two is organizing/cleaning, and three and four are specifically cleaning. Everything works together.
For me, this is what I can easily manage, which allows me to maintain a clean and orderly house every day. The daily half-hour is an acceptable amount of cleaning time, one that is over before I fully realize what I am doing, and that inspires little bursts of tidiness at other moments (a little load of laundry here, a wipe of the counter there). And now it is much easier, for example, to tell a child to put away their shoes when I am not pointing to a big pile of shoes (mostly mine) on the entryway floor. When I can just point to one pair of sneakers, there can be no confusion and no argument.
Cleaning becomes much easier once your house is clean.
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