It’s Saturday morning. You stumble into the kitchen and pour yourself a cup of coffee. You sit down at the table and push aside some remnants of yesterday so you can sit with your cup of ambition for awhile before the kids get up. You know the house needs to get cleaned up. Monday will come all too soon and there will be no time until next weekend. But, oh baby, you do not want to spend your Saturday cleaning.
I’ve been in this position more times than I can count and I’ve come up with a few tips that might help you out.
First thing you’ve got to do is clean up your attitude.
Yup, that’s what I said. I know, I know, you hate to clean. But for now, put that on a shelf. That thought drains your energy. You can use your mind to much greater effect and use all that “I hate cleaning” energy to get ‘er done. Put on some music you love. It will distract your mind.
Next, simplify.
Move quickly around your home and do a general sort of picking up. Get things off the floor, sofa, table, desk, etc. This is not the time to sort. Sorting is too distracting you will never get the cleaning done. Make a pile of stuff that belongs to each person. Put the mail and various household papers in a pile somewhere and deal with them later. Sort roughly if you must… school papers in one stack, mail in another, but don’t get hung up on organizing. We are aiming for a general unearthing of the surfaces you are going to clean. Don’t take more than 15 minutes or half an hour to do this.
Dust.
Wring every bit of water possible from a dust free cloth. I use these cleaning cloths I get at Home Depot that cost about $.50 a piece and last a long time. (When they are new I use them as kitchen cloths for wiping hands while cooking and covering hot rolls. When they start to get dingy I put them in the rag bag.) With this slightly damp cloth, dust everything you can get to. Remember, you are done sorting and tidying. Just dust what you can.
Still struggling with your “I hate cleaning” attitude?
Focus in on what you are doing. Look at the surfaces you are cleaning. Notice how your hand holds the cloth. Notice how it slides over the table, chair, etc. Notice how the cloth feels in your hand. Notice everything your body is doing. Really look at what you are doing. If you really focus in, you will forget about hating anything. You might even begin to marvel at the sensations in your hands, at the wonder of moving around, in the miracle of another day to live and breathe and love.
Put on some good, upbeat music. The music will lift you up and help distract your mind from its I hate cleaning track.
Think Gratitude. You can’t be grateful and unhappy at the same time. Look around you . What have you to be grateful for? A roof over your head? Your family? See how many things you can think of and notice what happens to your mood.
Now to the bathroom.
When everything is wiped dusted, move to the bathroom. Spray a little window cleaner or a little Comet into the toilet bowl and brush it out. Spray window cleaner on the rim, the outside of the toilet, tank, base and surrounding floor and wipe it down with paper towels. Paper towels remove all those bits of hair and dust that stick like glue to porcelain. Spray some window cleaner in the sink and wipe off the sink and faucet with a fresh lint free rag. Spray down the shower and wipe it clean. If it needs a thorough cleaning, make a note of that and the need to get some turbo bathroom cleaner later. Your objective here is to not get bogged down. Your objective is to get the house reasonably clean in as little time as possible.
You can wait and mop the bathroom floor later when you mop other floors, but i find it easiest and most effective to simply wipe the bathroom floor down with window cleaner and a rag. I find it is too hard to get into all the nooks and crannies of a bathroom with a mop.
Now move to the kitchen. Do the dishes. Wipe down the counters. Wipe off the stove. Wipe out the microwave.
With all this done, you are ready to vacuum, sweep, and mop the floors. Vacuum or sweep for hard floor surfaces, take your pick. Vacuum all the carpets and scatter rugs. Now mop the floors. Voila ! You are finished! And that wasn’t so bad, was it?
Now if the kids get up in the middle of all of this and they are too young to help, provide them with what will hold them over for a bit and keep on your task. A fresh diaper, a piece of toast or a bowl of cereal might be just fine for now. If they are old enough, see if you can enlist their help. If that’s just not going to work, get them in front of a movie, perhaps, for just a bit while you finish up.
There are probably things you have not addressed in this once over cleaning, but look around you. Things are considerably brightened up and you can make notes on more thorough cleaning that needs to be done and set aside a time for that.
Drop me a line and tell me if this helps, what you would like more information on, what problems you run into, whatever is on your mind…