How Important is House Cleaning? Do you have other priorities that make it impossible to keep the house clean? Before you get stressed, check this out…
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Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.
How Important is House Cleaning?
How important to you is house cleaning. Do you lie awake at night and you’re all stressed out about it and wondering when you’re going to clean your house, or is it something that you never think about? Somebody wrote in to the show and I want to read you their email so that we don’t miss any points.
They said, “Angela, would you have any routine tips for when you have certain days where you cannot clean at all? Due to work and family commitments, weekends and Mondays are out for me, and sadly, the place looks like a bomb hit it. And the rest of the week, I’m trying to catch up. I’ve given up on a Friday big clean, as the place is super messy in three days again. No cleaners in my area at the moment, and currently getting a lot of ad hoc work and family requests coming in constantly from out of the blue. So what would be the best way to organize my big clean and daily cleaning routine if it’s only myself and times available constantly change?” All right. That is a great series of questions. I’m going to hit each one of those individually. But before I do, I want to ask this question. On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is house cleaning to you?
Everything We Do In Life is a Choice
The reason I ask is that for everything we say yes to, we have to say no to something else. It’s a choice. Everything we do in life, there’s a choice. You say yes to this, you have to say no to something else. So everything that crosses your desk, everything that comes through your schedule, every request you get from family or friends or whatever, you have to rate on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is this to you?
Now, if it’s a seven, eight, nine, or ten, I recommend that you drop what you’re doing and you figure out a way to work it into your life. If it’s a one through a six, are you the best person for this, or is this something that can be outsourced to someone else?
And I ask this question because there are a lot of things in life that are not important to us at all. We don’t want to lose sleep over it. We don’t want to force ourselves to do the dumb, stupid things that are not important to us when someone else could do it better.
House Cleaning Isn’t Very Important to Most People
So the house has cleaned for most people, check this out, most people fall on a scale from three to six. It is not important to most people. Yes, they want it done. Yes, they want to live in a clean house, and they want the benefits of living in a clean house.
But for them to drop what they’re doing and clean the house themselves, it’s not a good use of their time, it’s not a good use of their resources, it’s not a good use of their creativity. And most people, quite frankly, just not a fan of house cleaning.
So this might be one of those times where you pick up your house cleaning, and you say, “I’m going to outsource this to someone else. I’m going to have someone else come in and do the house cleaning on a regular basis, and then you never think about it again, except when you write the check or you hit that one-click credit card processing.”
Don’t Do it If It’s Not Important to You
So that is it. If you’re not going to do it and you’re not able to do it and you can’t find time to do it and it’s not important to you, don’t do it. Outsource it to someone else.
Now the next part of that, you said you have requests coming in out of the blue. That also needs to go on a scale of 1 to 10. What happens when someone calls and demands your time? “I need a favor from you. I need something from you.”
What you may say is, “I can help you on Thursdays. Thursdays are the day that I have reserved where I can help you.” All of your other requests must wait for that day of the week.
A Lot of People are Exaggerating Their Problems
We did that in our own family, and what we found was all of the family emergencies that were, “Life is falling apart.” I call it Chicken Little. “The sky is falling. Come help. Help, help.” We said only on Thursdays can we help you?
And miraculously, check this out, miraculously, the sky stopped falling except on Thursdays, at which point we were available to help. So if you put a cap on it and you say, “I’m only able to help you on a particular day of the week,” it’s amazing how people will rearrange their lives to accommodate you and yours.
So on a scale of one to 10, how important are the requests? How important is the house cleaning?
I Don’t Believe in the Big Clean
And then you mentioned the big clean. I want to address that as well. I don’t believe in the big clean for this reason. The big clean is really overwhelming to a lot of people. So what happens when you think of this big clean you’re going to do one day a week?
Lots of times procrastination will get in the way. We have other seven, eight, nine, and ten projects that come to us, and we say, “Oh, that’s super important. I have a deadline. I’ve got to do this for my boss. I’ve got to do this...”
And it’s urgent. It’s important. So the big clean, which is a three, four, five, or six, we’ve made it important because we believe in it and we want to get it done. But it gets pushed out of the way because these more important items took precedence.
Clean as You Go, Don’t Have a Big Clean
So my suggestion would be, don’t ever have a big clean. Clean as you go. Now, clean as you go is this concept, if I’m at the top of the stairs and something goes downstairs, I’m going to put it at the top of the stairs. The next time I go down the stairs, I’m going to take it with me.
I’m going to take it as I go. I’m not going to build up a whole big pile of things and then make time on my schedule to carry them downstairs. Just every time you go down, you take the stuff down. Every time you come up, you bring stuff that has to come back up the stairs.
If you finish your meal, you take your dishes, you wash them, you rinse them, you put them in the drainer or you put them in the dishwasher. You don’t wait until there’s a big pile of dishes, and then, “Oh, I got this big pile of dishes that I have to clean. Whenever am I going to find the time?” No, just clean it as you go.
Cleaning as You Go Creates a Routine
And if you clean as you go, it just becomes part of your daily routine. It’s like when you are headed out the door, you grab your wallet and your keys and whatever.
It’s not that, “Oh, I’m getting ready to leave. There’s this big thing I’ve got to take with me. It’s not a big thing.” It’s just you have a series of five or six things. When you take them with you, there you go. When you come back, you bring them in the house, the keys go inside the drawer or the box or the hanger, the coat goes up on the coat rack.
You put stuff away as you go. It’s not that stuff’s always turning into a mess, it’s just that you pick it up and you tidy it up and you make it a routine as you go.
Using the One Touch Method
And that way with the one-touch method is that I’m only going to touch this something once. So if it’s the car keys coming in the house, we’re not going to put them here, and then an hour later we’re going to move them over here, and then two hours later we’re going to hang them up on the hook.
You walk in, you hang it up on the hook, boom, you’re done. You touched it once. With the coat. You take the coat off. What do you do with it? You hang it up on the hook. Done. You don’t hang it up over the chair, and then two hours later, you take it and hang it up.
If you do it as you go, it never gets overwhelming and it never gets big, and the house doesn’t look like a torpedo hit it. So do it as you go.
So my question to you is how important is house cleaning, and if it’s important to you, do it as you go so that it never builds up because this is a very simple task.
Resources
Master Your Emotions: A Practical Guide to Overcome Negativity – https://amzn.to/3oZP8mh
Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day – https://amzn.to/2LWDB8g
Get Stuff Done: How To Focus, Be More Productive, Overcome Procrastination – https://amzn.to/38LL7fh
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits – https://amzn.to/2LzGFYk
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity – https://amzn.to/3qALmQH
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