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7 Rules of Keeping A Clean House
by Fayola Gaia
Cleaning Advice
Through my journey of learning how to clean and manage my home, I've come across a few rules, which if broken will definitely lead to disorder and avoidable, additional work...
- If you meet it clean, keep it clean. This reminds me of the Broken Window Theory. It is based on the simple example that one broken window in a building can turned into multiple broken windows if the one window is not fixed quickly.
In the context of house cleaning an example is watching dirty dishes pile up in the sink. It starts with one dirty dish. - Clean as you go. This one takes some getting use to. It's directly related to rule one. I try to apply it when cooking, that way at the end of a meal there is less cleaning to do. I also use this when it comes to the shower.
The combination of hard water and glass shower doors is not my friend. So, drying those doors after taking a shower is a must to avoid limescale build up. - Have a place for everything and everything in it's place. Following this rule says time - and what you don't want is to waste any of it looking for anything.
- Don't put of for tomorrow what you can do today. This is the most effective house cleaning tip ever if put into action. Not putting off for tomorrow - what you can do today. None of this advice is unfamiliar. It's just one of those things.
But how many of us actually do it?
I don't know about you but I'm still a work in progress. But really think about it though. When we put things off what we are really doing is stealing time from our future which is unknown. That is what procrastination really is. Creating time debt that we may never be able to repay.
It is best go about cleaning and placing items in their proper place immediately once used. That means no dirty dish left in the sink to clean later after a pile has built up. No toothpaste left in the sink and no hard water droplets left on shower doors after use.
Yes I know that it's easy to ignore these things and leave them for later or for the someone else to clean up, but in the long run now is all we have. So, to avoid having others around us upset about our untidiness. We can do what we all know to be true put everything back in it's place. - Remember that the things and spaces we clean have a purpose e.g. the kitchen for preparing meals. These purposes can be enjoyable and finish fast if our spaces and consistently clean and organized.
- Know what you're doing and when you're doing it and how to do it properly. Once I moved away from home, one of the things that I quickly became aware of was that I didn't really know how to take care of my new home. Of-course I knew the basics - wash dishes, do the laundry, make the bed.
However, I did not have a plan and was not consistent. Also there were just some things I had absolutely no clue about. Like my embarrassing kitchen sink clogging incident.
Yep - I poured oil down the drain not thinking that it would not go down easily. With that said - what I now know is that it is best to have a cleaning schedule that I stick to and knowledge about what I definitely should not do. - Learn the best cleaning practices for cleaning specific items. For example, learn how to get rid of stains on clothes or hard water stains on shower doors.
On housecleaning-tips.com I share what I've learned and what has helped me to stick to these rules. Although, I think that if you stick to the first one - all else follows.
