This is a hilarious topic for me to write about, but I’m excited about a new tool that I’m using, so here we are. I’m not a tidy person. I’m a scanner personality, so I have a wide-ranging rotation of hobbies and their respective required equipment. Let’s take a moment and acknowledge how hard it must have been for my sister to share a room with me and my junk for upwards of a decade growing up. But I know that there are tidy people in this world and I’ve always wondered: how do you keep your house clean?
Common Systems
In true Katherine Fashion (TM), I’ve spent quite a bit of time googling and trying different systems that people have built. From the exceedingly precise Fly Lady to Unf*ck Your Habitat’s simple 20/10 time blocks. And I’ve seen two common systems that people put together for keeping your house clean.
Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly List
I used this system when my husband and I first moved in together. With two people cleaning, it was hard to keep track of what had already been done. So I put together a list of things that should be done in each of the time frames, covered it with contact paper, and – ahem – acquired a dry erase marker from work. We picked a day to wipe the weekly board clean every week and both cleaned in spare minutes during the week. It worked really well, but we moved away from this system for reasons I’ll get into later.
Daily Zones
This is what Fly Lady has mastered. The idea is that you have specific chores that you do each day. Monday is laundry, Tuesday is vacuuming, etc. When you have less-frequent chores, you write in days of the week to tackle those (usually weekend days). This system is useful because you can be assured that you get to everything over the course of a week, and you do each chore consistently enough that your spaces are still mostly clean when it’s time to clean them again.
Scheduled Time to Clean
Other people find it best to have a chunk of time when they clean furiously. This works especially for people with traditional 9-5 M-F jobs – the weekend is open enough that a chunk of time could be set aside for cleaning.
Common Habits
But even the best cleaning system can be assisted with good tidy habits. This is the part of how to keep your house clean that I’m not good at. If your surfaces are clear in the first place, it’s a helluva lot faster to clean them. And you spend less time moving things back and forth, making cleaning less tiring. Here are four habits to consider incorporating into your cleaning routine.
(Maybe by writing all of this, I’ll get better at it? Hopefully?)
Have a Place for Everything
If it doesn’t have a place to go, how can you put it away? Having ample, properly-sized, easily-accessible storage for all your things makes it less arduous to put them away. Which will hopefully help the putting away happen more often.
I’ve found that the easily-accessible piece is the most important for me. If it’s not easy for me to put away, you can bet I’ll put off doing it. That’s why I have a basket that I toss my shoes in by the door. Does it mean that my shoes get a little more wear than if I kept them in a hanging organizer? You bet. But I actually use the basket – my hanging organizers tend to empty out but mysteriously never fill up again.
Put Things Away When You’re Done With Them
This is the hardest one for me. Because I rotate among my hobbies so often, I like to keep my stuff out and accessible. But that makes for mess. Barbara Sher, who coined the term “scanner personality”, recommends putting together zones where activities live. Everything that you need for it should be gathered in one area, like a desk, rolling cart, or basket. Then, you can pull things out and get started faster. Perhaps more importantly, you can put everything away faster!
Clean as You Go
Anybody who cooks regularly knows that this is the best way to minimize time scrubbing dishes after a meal. But it also applies to being in your living space. And since we’re all spending way more time at home than we thought we would this year, this tip is especially relevant. Anytime you’re going from one room to another, take something with you to put away. Getting a snack? Take that empty mug with you. Heading to the bathroom? Drop off the laundry sitting on your floor on your way. It’s just being efficient, you know?
Evening Power Clean
This one is simple, but it ensures you’re constantly beating back the specter of clutter. Every evening, set a timer for 10-15 minutes and clean FURIOUSLY. Tidy spaces, sweep floors, and get that dishwasher full and running. And every morning, you’ll get to wake up to a clean(er) house!
Katherine’s Take
Ok, so that’s all well and good, but just knowing the methods doesn’t ensure you’ll actually use them. And over time, I’ve developed three of my own tips to keep your house clean.
Be Ok with “Clean Enough”
Hi, my name is Katherine, and I’m a perfectionist. Housework can be overwhelming for me because I don’t want to stop until everything is perfectly clean. Acknowledging and squashing that inclination has been instrumental building a cleaning habit. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing half-assed. If you miss some dirt or dust, you’ll get it next time. Just clean some and move ON.
Figure Out WHY You’re Cleaning
Believe me, guilt over not being good enough because your house isn’t clean won’t help you keep a cleaner house. Try and pinpoint a healthy motivation for keeping a clean house. It could be a gift to your future self to not have to worry about it.
For me, I know that my perfectionist brain spends a lot of time ~*noticing*~ things that I should do. The more things I notice, the more directions I’m pulled when I’m deciding how to spend my time. If I am on top of house cleaning, I can silence that voice in my head tugging me in 12 different directions and preserve my decision-making energy. Every minute I spend cleaning is an investment into future focus on things I enjoy more.
Build a Routine that Works for YOU
Much as I love reading about people’s systems and what works for them, I’ll never be able to copy-paste their techniques into my own life. And the same goes for you. Don’t think you need to keep your house clean just like your mother, brother, or random person on the internet does. Because they’re not you, and they don’t have your home.
Which brings me to the motivation for writing this (longer than expected) post. Like I mentioned before, my husband and I used weekly/monthly/quarterly chore charts when we moved in together. But when we moved to Berlin and I was at home all day, I got stuck in a weird cycle where I wouldn’t want to do a chore on Sunday because we were wiping the slate clean on Monday…
Enter Tody. I think I found this app through a YouTuber’s recommendation, but it’s been AMAZING. You put in all your chores and how often you want to do them. Then, when you’ve done the chore, you check it off, and it disappears from the list until the number of days has passed. Since the new year, I’ve fallen into an awesome rhythm of checking the list daily and doing a handful of tasks. As a result, I don’t need to clean for more than 20-30 minutes on any given day. Gone are the days of procrastination because I know it’ll take me hours! And my home is clean!
Anyway, find what works for you and do it. But don’t be afraid to share what works – you never know if it will work for someone else!
