Tuesday, April 15, 2008

In which Chorus Cleans

*Not actually Chorus

So I'm taking a new approach to cleaning this week while WH is away. WH and I do a really good job of keeping our house "clean" in the sense that our floors are swept or vacuumed regularly, the bathroom gets cleaned often (WH does this, bless him). we're relatively clutter free in most rooms, etc. But we have a hard time finding the time and the energy to tackle the cleaning projects that are more involved (eg. involve moving furniture) or that need doing less often, like vaccuming behind/under couches. Because so many of our evenings are taken up with rehearsals, we tend to resist the idea of taking up the hour and a half that we're home between work and singing with a cleaning project. We use that time for making dinner and watching TV and catching up on what each other has done that day. And so these projects pile up.

So the new approach, first attempted to great success last night, is not to worry too much about DECIDING to take on one particular project. Instead, I started at one part of the house and looked around and saw something that needed to be put away. So I put it away. Then, I looked around the room where I had put Item #1 away, and saw something that needed to be dusted. So I dusted it. Then I noticed that the baseboards needed vacuuming. So I vacuumed them. And by the time I was done vacuuming, I had moved into another room, where I noticed that a piece of furniture we never use was collecting a lot of dust. So I moved it into our storage room. And while I was in the storage room, I noticed that the litter box needed to be emptied. So I emptied it. And while I was throwing out the litter, I noticed that there was a collection of brooms on the back porch that needed to be brought downstairs with the other cleaning stuff. And while I was looking at the cleaning stuff, I saw some old cleaning tools that could be put in the rummage sale pile. So I took them to the rummage sale pile, which is currently in the spare bedroom. And while I was in the spare bedroom... well, you get the picture.

The result was that in only the 30 mintues that I had to work on house things, I did something impactful in about 4 different rooms of the house. And I didn't worry so much about COMPLETION. I just did stuff.

And felt pretty good about it!

4 comments:

Crimson Rambler said...

THAT'S THE SECRET, all right. And truly...whatever works!

Patrick C said...

Excellent! Sounds most productive!

Diane M. Roth said...

good for you! and my house is not doing so well right now.

Jan said...

I like that idea of 30 minutes and not ALL day!