Ask a House Cleaner, Organizing vs House Cleaning, Savvy Cleaner

Organizing vs. House Cleaning – What’s the Difference?

Organizing vs House Cleaning – What is the difference?

The House Cleaning Guru, Angela Brown shares some chores of a professional organizer vs. those of a professional house cleaner.

It’s not a matter of organizing vs house cleaning because both are part of a cleaning routine. Together they cut the clutter from your home and keep your place neat and tidy.

Organization is all about an emotional cleansing process. It’s an alignment of your needs, wants and stuff to create harmony in your house.

And when you vacuum, dust, sweep and mop you’re talking more about a cleaning routine.

Should you focus on organizing vs house cleaning? Let’s Ask a House Cleaner.

Today’s show sponsor is https://HouseCleaning360.com

HouseCleaning360 is a business referral network for house cleaners and maids and housekeepers.

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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.

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Question: Organizing vs. House Cleaning – What’s the Difference?

 Today’s question comes from a woman who owns a home. And she’s going to hire a house cleaner or a professional organizer. But she’s not sure the difference between the two.

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Answer: Organizing vs. House Cleaning – What’s the Difference?

Okay, so the difference between the two is this.

They both have things to do with cleaning and tidying up your home but they’re both separate tasks.

House Cleaners

organizing vs. house cleaning - man mops floorA house cleaner will do routine cleaning things like dusting, sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming.

These are things that are routine tasks done on a regular basis.

An Organizer

organizing vs. house cleaning closet full of clothesAn organizer is going to work more with emotional decisions.

For example, “Why do you have clothes that you’ve been hanging onto for 12 years? Are you trying to lose weight to get back into those clothes? Are you waiting for them to come back into style? Is there a shred of a chance you’d want to give them away?”

You know, lots of decisions.

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Grocery Shopping vs. Professional Chef

So it’s the difference between going grocery shopping and having a chef show make you a meal.

They go hand-in-hand but they’re two completely separate tasks.

You go grocery shopping and make decisions to create the meal yourself. The Chef makes a meal as well, but for you.

Decisions in the Grocery Store

Organizing vs. House Cleaning lady in grocery store shopping for dinnerWhen you go grocery shopping there are a lot of emotional decisions made.

Things like “How many people are eating on this menu? Is it one person? Or is at 3 people? Or is it a family of 5?” And so the decisions that you make are going to be different based on how many people are eating that meal.

And then you’re going to make decisions like “Oh, yes let me serve fish for dinner. What wine goes best with that fish? What vegetables go best with that fish?” And in your mind, you’re putting together a menu of what you would like that meal to look like to serve your family.

You might also make decisions like, “Well I know that on Friday I’ve got a full shift. And I’m going to be working late. So I want a meal that I can take to work with me and just heat up in the microwave. That way I can eat it before I come home because it’s going to be late when I get home.”

The Professional Chef

Organizing vs. House Cleaning, Chef puts the finishing touches on a mealAnd so you’re making a lot of decisions based on the information. This is information that the chef doesn’t have.

So when you bring all those ingredients home to the chef they don’t know what your meal is. But they know what they’re doing.

So, when they show up, they see that you have fish and wine and vegetables. They do their thing right and they turn it into an amazing creation.

So the grocery shopper would be the home organizer and the chef would be the house cleaner. If I can draw that analogy between the two.

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Your Presence Is (Or Not) Required

A house cleaner can show up and clean your house when you’re not there. because it’s a bunch of routine stuff. You don’t need to be there when the house cleaner is there.

Now a professional organizer does a bunch of creative things. You may need to be there because you’re talking about your stuff. And they don’t know where your stuff goes they don’t know where you want it. They don’t know how you live.

And so if you have a job where you work 5 days a week and you wear a uniform to work. They need to know that those uniforms need to be front-and-center in your closet.

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The Time Required

The organization process is going to take a whole lot longer than just a routine cleaning of your house.

The home-organizing process is going to be where you split your stuff up into five different piles. And those will be:

1.     Things that belong in another part of the house.

2.     Or things that I can send to Goodwill or the Salvation Army

3.     Or things that I would like to sell on eBay. They still have value and I would like to get some money out of them. I’d like to sell them on eBay or at a consignment store.

4.     Things you could give away. “Hey, I like to just give this to my friend because she’s the same size as me and I know that she would love this.”

5.     And then there’s also discard pile. We all have things we’re holding onto for whatever reason that we don’t need or want any more.

Decisions, Decisions…

organizing vs. house cleaning - messy shelf next to an organized oneA home organizer will help you work through the emotional cleansing process. So you can get rid of the things in your house that are just creating clutter.

Unlike a housecleaner that’s not going to come in your house and make those decisions for you. They’re going to come in and clean around your stuff.

A house cleaner does routine cleaning. An organizer helps with emotional decisions and helps you discard things. They can also help you find baskets that fit. And, you know, different ways to display your stuff so that it’s easy to find. They help you do things like that.

It is Like Weeding a Garden

Angela Brown Pulling Weeds, Ask a House CleanerBut it all comes back to like weeding a garden. When you have a flower garden there will be little weeds that pop up.

And once you organize a closet, for example, there will be little weeds that pop up too. And you can go in and you can pull those weeds out one by one. But if you don’t maintain your organization, it’s like the weeds.

They will overtake the beautiful flower garden. And then you’ve got to hire somebody to come back in and do a whole thing again.

Hire Both!

How Often Should I Clean My House or bathroomSo the house cleaning is different from the home organizing. But if you’re going to hire one or the other, my suggestion is actually that you hire both.

I would hire the home organizer first. Because they can make sure that there is a place for everything and everything is in its place.

Then you hire the house cleaner and they wipe everything down. They dust everything. They sweep, they mop, they vacuum, they polish everything, and they’re out the door.

Now your house looks amazing.

Regular Maintenance

Okay having said that back to weeding the garden. Regular maintenance is necessary for both organizing and house cleaning.

There are daily chores for both organizing and house cleaning.

Organizing vs. Cleaning Chores

woman with a stack of folded laundrySo to keep up with your organizing you would have daily chores.

Things like folding your clothes after you’ve worn them if you’re not going to throw them in the hamper.

And putting them back where they go or hanging them up on a hanger so that you can re-wear them again.

House Cleaning Chores

How Often Should I Clean My House - washing dishesThe daily chores in your house cleaning would be things like washing dishes.

And clearing off the vanity after you’ve put your makeup on in the morning.

Things like that. Doing daily loads of laundry.

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Keep Your Flowers Beautiful!

So, there are daily chores that you can do that’s just like weeding the flower garden.

This will keep your flowers looking beautiful the entire year.

So, it’s just like that for your home.

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I hope this sheds some light on the differences between organizing and house cleaning.

If you have questions, ideas, or suggestions, leave them in the comments section below. And if you found this helpful give us a thumbs up.

Until I meet you again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.

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