Switching to clean-as-you-go
Dr B. and I live in a medium-sized two-bedroom flat. And we never clean.
I like keeping it tidy, but do not like cleaning. He likes it being tidy, and does not like cleaning. But that might be stating the obvious, as who on earth likes cleaning?
Every so often I decide it is time to get a cleaner, and start decluttering so that the cleaner can clean easily. Then I realise that it would not take long to clean ourselves, do a good clean myself and I forget about it for another week, or two, or - ahem - five.
Last Saturday it was a case of one of those impromptu 'All back to ours' things. And the flat was absolutely filthy. On this particular occasion I did not mind too much because we were all coming from a memorial service for a friend who recently died, and we were all in need of companionship, a drink and some general silliness. So frankly I could not care less.
But then on Sunday, along with twenty-odd glasses, and wiping my PC from what looked like a poured vodka-cranberry (no harm done), I cleaned the whole flat in about seventy minutes. Alright, I timed it. And then I thought well, what if I cleaned 10 minutes a day every day? The flat would always be acceptably clean, instead of getting more and more filthy as weeks go by, and the task of cleaning it more and more daunting.
I did a bit of research and of course, plenty of other people had come to the same conclusion, among which my zen and simplicity guru:
Simple Systems: Clean Your House as You Go (with an added burst)
So on Monday night I cleaned the kitchen again (not much to do), last night I dusted everywhere and tonight I re-cleaned the bathroom. Very easy tasks, considering they had recently been cleaned, but each was performed in under 10 minutes.
Tomorrow night I'll clean and dust our desks, on Friday I'll mop the kitchen and bathroom floors and on Saturday I'll hoover. I'll put things away every day (but I'm used to do that anyway so no change there).
We'll see how this one goes. I'd do anything not to pay a stranger to rummage through my things.
Thursday 20 September 2007 at 4:14 am
I really, really don't like cleaning. So I don't do it. We've lived in this flat for three years, and I think we've cleaned the laminate floors maybe five time, six at most. But that's partly because it takes ages. You say "on Friday I'll mop the kitchen and bathroom floors" but that'll take you hours, surely? Or is that just me? Every time I start mopping the floors, I get distracted so it takes all day. It's time to face it, we need a cleaner, but the flat's too filthy to let anyone in.
Thursday 20 September 2007 at 5:45 am
The key to all this (in theory because I've just started) is that if you have cleaned the kitchen on say Wednesday (and that includes picking up stray breadcrumbs from the floor) and the bathroom on for instance Friday (and that includes skirting board in that room), and you've hoovered on Thursday, come Friday all you need to do is fill bucket, dip mop, squeeze mop, clean floor, rinse mop, repeat as necessary.
We shall see next week if it does work out. There might be a flaw. I'll give you an update.
Wednesday 26 September 2007 at 7:17 pm
[...] week I wrote about planning to clean a bit every day. Ten minutes every day, to be [...]