One area of my life I’d like to optimize is my cleaning. What I have is habits I picked up from others, what I want is knowledge of which tasks have which effects, so I can focus on what makes sense and leave out steps that are just a waste of time.
Anybody have a good source for that?
I’m aware that a good solution would be to hand everything over to a cleaning person. But if I do that, I’d still want to know what exactly I want to pay for.
A (perhaps obvious) tactic that has worked for me:
Clean one thing per day—Dust an end table, wipe off the TV screen, vaccuum the hallway. Tasks that take 30 seconds to 5 minutes to complete help curb the temptation to procrastinate. Plus, cleaning can be infectous—dusting one end table can turn into two; vacuuming a hallway can lead to vacuuming a whole floor of your home, etc. (Note: I’ve found the ” Just One Thing A Day Method” to be helpful in cleaning my house, changing my diet to be more healthy, getting rid of clutter over time, adding productive habits at work, etc.)
The effect I’ve observed is that my house stays clean—my roommate even says I’m “too clean”—but I feel as if I’m devoting very little time to “house cleaning”.
One thing worth considering in your search is how different peoples’ definition of “clean” is. Their is a wide spectrum in preferences, and I’d imagine that matters a great deal based on what you are after.
Organizing is investment cleaning. It takes a lot more time in the beginning (it will even look WORSE mid-project), but once you have a place for everything it is SO much quicker and easier to put everything in its place. If your area isn’t organized, then you have to think about each think you pick up or clean. Where does this go? Where should I put it? Once you’ve organized, cleaning is a simple process of putting things back where they belong.
Some heuristics: Things you use frequently should be easy to get to, and easy to put away. For example put your most frequent coat on a hook, not hanger. You want to have shelf space and or a canvas box that is currently empty, to use for future miscellaneous items. Don’t be hesitant to just get rid of things.
Re: Picking Up- The number one most important thing to take care of is trash/garbage. Pick it up, put it in a bag, take it out. Do not let it accumulate. This leads to smells and contributes most to a feeling of “grossness”. Kitty litter also falls under this category. Number two thing to pick up is clothes. They go in a hamper. For people on this site, number three is probably books. Clothes and books both have the quality of being large, often strewn about, and easy to pick up.
This is a point to be made more generally for personal hygiene, cooking, actually anything that we all have to do regularly but isn’t regularly taught in books and schools.
Both for personal hygiene and for cooking, the web has excellent scientifically literate resources, so this is really specifically about cleaning apartments.
Really? I never found articles detailing the correct way to cut vegetables in a time-saving manner, how to sharpen knifes that they last longer, how to shower in the quickest yet still clean manner …
One area of my life I’d like to optimize is my cleaning. What I have is habits I picked up from others, what I want is knowledge of which tasks have which effects, so I can focus on what makes sense and leave out steps that are just a waste of time.
Anybody have a good source for that?
I’m aware that a good solution would be to hand everything over to a cleaning person. But if I do that, I’d still want to know what exactly I want to pay for.
A (perhaps obvious) tactic that has worked for me:
Clean one thing per day—Dust an end table, wipe off the TV screen, vaccuum the hallway. Tasks that take 30 seconds to 5 minutes to complete help curb the temptation to procrastinate. Plus, cleaning can be infectous—dusting one end table can turn into two; vacuuming a hallway can lead to vacuuming a whole floor of your home, etc. (Note: I’ve found the ” Just One Thing A Day Method” to be helpful in cleaning my house, changing my diet to be more healthy, getting rid of clutter over time, adding productive habits at work, etc.)
The effect I’ve observed is that my house stays clean—my roommate even says I’m “too clean”—but I feel as if I’m devoting very little time to “house cleaning”.
One thing worth considering in your search is how different peoples’ definition of “clean” is. Their is a wide spectrum in preferences, and I’d imagine that matters a great deal based on what you are after.
Organizing is investment cleaning. It takes a lot more time in the beginning (it will even look WORSE mid-project), but once you have a place for everything it is SO much quicker and easier to put everything in its place. If your area isn’t organized, then you have to think about each think you pick up or clean. Where does this go? Where should I put it? Once you’ve organized, cleaning is a simple process of putting things back where they belong.
Some heuristics: Things you use frequently should be easy to get to, and easy to put away. For example put your most frequent coat on a hook, not hanger. You want to have shelf space and or a canvas box that is currently empty, to use for future miscellaneous items. Don’t be hesitant to just get rid of things.
Re: Picking Up- The number one most important thing to take care of is trash/garbage. Pick it up, put it in a bag, take it out. Do not let it accumulate. This leads to smells and contributes most to a feeling of “grossness”. Kitty litter also falls under this category. Number two thing to pick up is clothes. They go in a hamper. For people on this site, number three is probably books. Clothes and books both have the quality of being large, often strewn about, and easy to pick up.
This is a point to be made more generally for personal hygiene, cooking, actually anything that we all have to do regularly but isn’t regularly taught in books and schools.
Both for personal hygiene and for cooking, the web has excellent scientifically literate resources, so this is really specifically about cleaning apartments.
Really? I never found articles detailing the correct way to cut vegetables in a time-saving manner, how to sharpen knifes that they last longer, how to shower in the quickest yet still clean manner …