Gremlin and I were discussing the art of housecleaning, which Gremlin admits never explicitly learning. I (being A Girl) was explicitly taught, but later in life I learned that a lot of the things I was taught were inefficient or just plain wrong. So I had to unlearn and relearn how to clean my house.
Gremlin, meanwhile, was...surprised? to learn that I schedule one block of time to clean my house per week. "Oh, so that's what you meant when you said the house was going to be a mess this week," he said. Yep. I clean on Saturday mornings, but this week we were not home Saturday morning because of Gremlin's mom's memorial (RIP). So my house is kinda gross (by my standards). Catsitter said nothing.
Anyway, here's what I know about keeping my house clean despite having ADHD and living alone and not really enjoying the whole "cleaning" thing.
"How to organize your house" is a separate topic from "how to clean." Maybe I'll write about it later. Maybe not!
This bare minimum, "have a place everything goes," has to come first, though. It is a necessary prerequisite for Step One. Its important bits are:
The place should also fit how you actually use stuff. If you only ever use paper clips at the kitchen table, but they "live" in a small box in a cupboard under the stairs at the other end of the house, you're never going to put paper clips away. You're also going to resist getting them out when you do need them. Keep that box in the kitchen somewhere.
Bonus: For stuff that lives on counters, keep it in some kind of box or basket. This way, you can pick up the whole box/basket with one hand, wipe down the counter with the other, replace, go on with your day. THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK CHANGED MY LIFE AND ALSO THE AVERAGE CLEANLINESS LEVEL OF MY BATHROOM AND KITCHEN.
Onward to the ACTUAL CLEANING. This method works if you're cleaning one surface (like a coffee table), one room (like your living room), or you've decided to do the entire house at once.
Go over the Space You Are Cleaning. Pick up anything that is not In Its Place. Put the things In Their Place.
I call this "floating," and I often do it when I have trouble getting myself to commit to cleaning. I just float through my house, picking up things that aren't in their place and putting them in their place. Often, I'll "chain" items: I see a bill on the coffee table that belongs in the Bill Folder on my desk, so I carry it to my desk. At my desk I see a used glass that belongs in the dishwasher, so I take it to the dishwasher. My sneakers are in the kitchen, so I carry those to the closet. And so on.
By the time I'm done, I have usually seen enough dirt to convince me to move to Step Two.
Confession: I often start laundry before I begin putting things In Their Places. The machine can run while I do other things. Likewise, when I clean the kitchen, the first thing I do is put all the dirty dishes In Their Place in the dishwasher and start it. (The only appliance this doesn't work for is a robot vacuum: you'll need to get things off the floor before you start it.)
Avoid the urge to do this as a distraction from cleaning something else! You don't actually NEED to do the laundry to clean the kitchen (probably). I focus on this step most often when I'm trying to clean the whole house.
Your cleaning supplies should be in the place Where Cleaning Supplies Go. No, they were not an exception to Step One.
The things I use most often, in order, are:
On a normal cleaning day, I only get out the first four. The rest are for when I see a mess the first four items can't deal with alone. If all your supplies live in the same spot, you can easily just grab what you need when you need it.
Whether you're cleaning a surface, a room, or the whole house: Start in the top left corner. Work left to right, top to bottom.
For entire rooms: KNOCK ALL THE DIRT ON THE FLOOR. Just smack it right down there. You're going to sweep and/or vacuum, so it doesn't matter. (If you're only cleaning one surface, this gets kinda gross; don't do it.)
[Aside: This is one of the cleaning rules my mom insisted on that I later learned was dead wrong. Even if I also had to clean the floor, she insisted I sweep all crumbs, etc. off surfaces into my hand and carry them to the trash. Mom insisted this was "efficient," a word she used the way other people use "sacred." In college, I had a friend who cleaned hotel rooms for a living. "What?" she said when she heard this. "That's nuts. It's a waste of time. You're vacuuming anyway, just throw it on the floor." Since she was paid by the room, I trust her to know what saved her the most time.]
This part goes quickly IF you put everything back Where It Goes before you started. If not, you're going to stop every thirty seconds to move things.
This part will also be wildly inefficient if your surfaces are cluttered with knickknacks. This is a moment of reckoning. If the knickknacks matter to you, if they are Part of the Family, you won't mind dusting them and might even enjoy it (hello, small friends!). If, however, you just stuck them on surfaces to put them somewhere, you might find yourself resenting them. Trust your instincts as to whether you REALLY need an entire Billy bookcase full of Funko Pops staring at you with their cold, dead plastic eyes while you eat leftover pad thai straight from the carton and watch Survivor in your underwear.
Is it time to switch the laundry? It might be. Go look.
Once you're done dusting and sweeping/vacuuming, take the trash out. PUT YOUR SHOES BACK WHERE THEY GO. (This is a lot easier to remember when you just cleaned the floor.)
When you clean just one surface or one lightly-used room, you can sometimes do it in one go. But when you're cleaning an entire house, you need to take breaks. I usually do it in stages:
A note for cat owners: Changing the sheets on the average bed takes five minutes plus five minutes per cat. Add ten minutes per cat if cats are under age four or are Siamese. If cat is a Siamese under age four, add 15 minutes.
This is how I handle the average weekly cleaning. Seasonal deep cleanings, featuring things like "washing windows" and "laundering rugs," are done room by room, once or twice per year, and as needed.
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