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The DOC Method for House Cleaning: A 3 Step Plan to Creating A Home That Is Quick and Easy to Clean
Housework can't kill you, but why take the chance? ~ Phyllis Diller
The mission here at housecleaning-tips is to help readers spend less time on house cleaning by using your cleaning time efficiently.
The DOC method stands for Declutter, Organize, and Clean.
To achieve a home that is quick and easy to clean, these steps need to be followed in order.
Trying to clean a home that is cluttered and disorganized is a waste of time. This leads to the feeling of a job that's never done. You either spend to much time cleaning things over and over again. Or you spend to much time cleaning around, under or behind stuff you don't use or love.
If you're at this point and you really want to have that quick and easy to clean home -use the DOC method.
First you need to plan and make time to get this done.
So pull out your house cleaning schedule and block of all the time you can spare each day to Declutter.
This could be any amount of time between 15 minutes to an hour (or more). Please note that this is in addition to your current cleaning tasks. You will want to continue your current cleaning regime while you work the first two steps of the DOC method.
Declutter
First you need to take stock of what you have. Create a list of categories of things you have in your home. For instance, electronics, furniture, clothes, toys, cleaning equipment, etc.
What you're going to do is select the best things from each category, stuff that you actually use and love. Then get rid of everything else. You really don't need to hold on to 50 towels if you and your family can get by easily with 10 or less. Why have that extra sofa if no one likes it or sits on it.
When decluttering, start with big items. Do you have to much furniture. Do you use it, do you love it. If not, give them away (there are charities that will come and pick these big items up) or sell them via garage sale or on Craig's list.
Next, look at your electronics, especially if you have an electronics grave yards. I recently cleared out my grave yard (a tube tv, an old printer and laptop) by carrying them to BestBuy for recycling.
Here's a big one. Your kitchen clutter, do you really need all those pots and pans. Do you really need all those plastic containers.
Do you really need all those kitchen gadgets that sit in the cupboards unused.
I repeat - gather everything together, pick out the few things that you actually use and love and get rid of everything else. This goes for all categories of stuff, clothes, shoes, purses, board games, knick knacks, towels, makeup, toys and on and on.
Follow this procedure for each category until the end of your categories list. Also, consider minimalism, this goes hand in hand with decluttering.
Organize
Once your home is decluttered it's time to organize what you have left. If you did a good job decluttering this will take very little time. Your main job here is to assign a home for everything you have left.
Clean
Now as a result of all your hard work, your home should now be quick and easy to clean.
Less clothes means less laundry, less furniture means that it's easier to vacuum or sweep and mop your floors. Less dishes means no more pileup of dirty dishes in the sink. Okay, you get the point.
Now with your house cleaning schedule, a few checklists, and some house cleaning tips, you can get your house cleaning done faster and without frustration.
WARNING: You must be vigilant.
First, when you use something or find something out of place put it back in its home immediately. The broken windows theory for house cleaning explains why.
Second, monitor your stuff intake.
Before you make that purchase of a lamp, or that Mickey Mouse hat - think.
Do I already have enough of these, do I really need them?
Essentially, you need to guard your home against an invasion of unnecessary stuff that will go unused, that will occupy space and steal your time because you have to find a home for them and clean them.
As you can see the DOC method starts of with a lot of work but eventually you will get to the point of having a home that is quick and easy to clean and you will never want to go back.
