I’ve just swept and mopped. Once the floor dries, I could easily go sweep again and turn up more dust and dirt. If I were to mop again, I’m almost certain the water in my bucket would be filthy. It feels like it’s never actually clean.
Beyond that, there’s dusting, cleaning windows, sinks, countertops, bathrooms, and probably things I don’t even consider. How do you all stay on top of these things?
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You’re never going to be sterile; good enough is good enough.
Keep an abundance of cleaning supplies. Soaps and rags in the kitchen and the bathroom. Think about investing in a vacuum and a carpet cleaning machine. Edit = Also get more trash bins. One for the kitchen, one for the desk, one by the coffee table, one for the bathroom.
Some people find it easier to do one big push where they clean the whole house in one session; other folks like to do a little bit every day. Figure out which type you are.Also, check and see what cleaners charge in your area. It might be worth it to have a pro come in and do the work for you. Figure out what your leisure time is worth to you and then compare.
I’m the little bit everyday person. I’ll clean the bathrooms one day, then vacuum the floors the next. Wash clothes later in the week, something I need to do today.
I feel like doing a bit a day helps keep things cleaner than if I did it all at once. Things can appear overwhelming pretty quickly, at which point I won’t want to do it at all.
I’m a combination. If something looks bad I’ll get to it right away, and try to do a blitz once a week.
This is the way. I use Trello and have automated task creation on days and use its Kanban. Also a great habit to get into is if you walk into a room do one cleaning thing while you’re in it. Walk into a room and forget what you’re looking for. Take a moment to do some quick cleaning or organization. The little bit adds up and does not become overwhelming
I’m an all at once person and I also think that’s less clean. It’s easier for me to think about it like shaving: you’re more likely to have a grown out patch of hair if you do a big shave once a week vs a daily trim.
We got a service. We’ve two cats, a dog, and a toddler, and no family closeby to help with child care. We did the math and decided we needed the help. It’s fantastic.
I can’t believe no one has said this… Don’t wear shoes inside the house.
This will dramatically reduce the griminess of your floors.
Its a big commitment. You’ll prioritise shoes you can just slide your feet into, or at least out of. I still have nice boots and stuff but wear them less often.
My floors are clean and warm enough for me to walk barefoot. I can’t imagine not taking of my shoes at home. I treat shoes as a necessary evil. Not even barefoot shoes give you the same comfort as just a bare foot. Can’t imagine not having the feeling in my life. Also, the airflow around my feet - wouldn’t want to spend more time than necessary in a closed shoe. I even wear slippers at work for this reason.
Yeah I can even feel dust on the floors with my bare feet, tells me when it’s time to vacuum.
If you’re sweeping, it’s possible you’re kicking a lot of dust up in the air, so that by the time you’re done mopping, it has resettled back down on the floor. You could mitigate this by vacuuming instead, or opening your windows and using fans to blow air out of your house. But also, you’ll never get all of the dust anyway.
Keeping your house clean is a good thing to do. But it’s easy to stray into obsession territory. There lies madness.
Remember we all have far more visitor microbes in our bodies than our own host cells. Life is dirty. Life is germy. Embrace this.
You don’t need to live in a hoarder hell hole, but the sooner you accept that living is a messy business the more time you’ll have to enjoy actually living. Cleaning tasks should be quick and efficient, not sterilization.
I’m a little late to the party but keep in mind that people who stay on top of cleaning and have sparkling houses are doing just that and nothing else because it is so time consuming. You don’t want to invest all your free time (or all your time) into cleaning that will never end. Good enough is good enough.
Not true, it takes me a moment to put away my things into drawers and tidy up after myself.
Not sure why you got downvoted as cleaning efficiently and maintaining things as you go (rinsing off stuff as you cook for example) makes the whole process so much faster.
For example imagine you’re going through your clothes looking for an outfit to wear for the night. You can either dump all your clothes into a pile while trying things on or try them on and hang them up as you go. That way when you’re done, you don’t have a pile of clothes to deal with.
That’s not what I mean, I’m not talking about tidying up, I’m talking about proper cleaning, as in wiping the dust everywhere and keeping every imaginable surface clean, including walls, ceilings, cupboards etc.
I think wiping walls and stuff are only things people do quarterly, every 6 months, etc and not something people do weekly as that is insane.
My mom does and yes, it is insane, and she spends all her time doing it. What I mean to say is there’s no limit to cleaning unless you set it up for yourself. For the sake of sanity it’s better to accept the fact that there will always be some dust around.
You’ll never be able to get things clean - all you will be able to manage is “cleaner than it was before.” It becomes easier if you accept that.
And unless you’re trying to save money on buying dishes by eating on the floor, it shouldn’t really matter if they have a bit of dirt on them.
Roomba twice a day. A dishwasher run every day. A biweekly cleaning by a professional, and a tolerance for some degree of chaos. We live in the world, not in some clean lab. There will be dirt, dust, clutter. Just don’t let it get too much.
I have a yard of weeds, and a flower garden and a vegetable garden, some trees. It will never be a weed free environment in my gardens, I just try to advantage the plants I want, and keep the weeds under control not gone. Same with the house, don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.
Yeah can’t stop the weeds. Nature is gonna grow and you can’t stop it. Better to plant native plants and let them bunch up, less to maintain once established
Yep. I actually love the “lawn” we have, the mowed weeds are lush and green. I just also want vegetables. The flower garden looks fine with the weeds and as you say, the native plants are filling in nicely. And I put the veg in raised beds, dug out first so it’s not too bad. But with any real world situation it’s not going to be perfect and pristine.
i don’t.
Set a weekly cleaning day and stick to it. On weeks when you can’t clean on that day, move it to a different day. Don’t skip.
And no shoes inside, ever. Tracks in lots of filth, even when you think you have clean shoes.
The best advice I have is one I found on the internet: Whenever you walk through a room pick something up and dispose of it, or put it back in its place.
Don’t Walk Past It. That is the name of the rule. It’s a great rule.
Vacuum. It sucks up the dirt and traps it.
Brooms & mops were from the ancient days before electricity existed, and as you’ve experienced, the dirt just keeps circulating and never goes away. Endless filth & frustration.
We have a robot vacuum that runs automatically every day. And yea, it picks up a load of dust every day. Leaves me to do other stuff.
Routine.
Part of my routine is to do a more deep clean on one thing/section each week.
Smaller houses tend to be better for this, generally. Cut down on all the stupid useless crap you own that you only use like once every 3 years, it’s not worth it to keep it sitting around. Buy and sell everything on craigslist, and rent the rest of what you might need. Maybe look into a storage shed or something, or dedicate a portion of your house to this, a room, something like this. Most people have a garage, I think. Pawn stuff off on everyone around you, call them when you need it, and then that’s a good opportunity to socialize. The same goes for “makerspaces” or whatever. Get out of your house more.
Work from the top down, start in an area with your fans, cobwebs, whatever, then work down to the pictures and higher shelves, the windows, lower shelves, tables, then hit your walls and baseboards, and then, after all that’s done, do the floors.
Remove clutter and little aesthetic baubles on shelves where dust and hair and crap might accumulate, unless you’re actively using the things in that space, or frequently moving stuff around in that area. It also pays to be conscious of how airflow moves throughout your house and how dust settles. It always tends to be the corners, but then corners also tend to be the deadzones where people put things anyways. If you can turn this on it’s head, and keep things away from the walls and corners more, that’s probably a decent idea, and could also help you open up your house more. If you can’t do that, you could look into like, these triangular dust guards they make for the corners of things, especially stairs, though those are mostly for sweeping, and I think dust might end up sticking to them regardless. The best solution for most people is probably just to go in the complete opposite direction, and get some big sealed corner cabinets with actual doors, instead of just having a bunch of open shelves everywhere.
Make sure you always remove your shoes when you come in from outside, and if you’re especially dirty, your outerwear. It’s easier to clean this all in one location by the door. Cats and dogs and all your other pets also shed a ton which can suck really bad and get on everything. I really like having pets, but god damn it can get pretty nasty. I would probably not do it all over again if I had the choice. Maybe look for breeds that don’t shed as much. Or just brush your pets maybe more than daily, that might also help.
Also, invest in a good stick vacuum, don’t get one of those huge corded garbage vacuums, or those ones that roll around and have the tube, those also suck and are awful. Also a good spray mop with the bottom that sticks to the cloth pad, and not like a normal stupid mop with a bucket or whatever, because those suck.
Yeah. Do all that, revolve your life around just cleaning and maintaining the shit that you own, and then you can probably get away with like an hour maybe once or twice a week for your whole house. How fulfilling!
Robots do vacuuming and mopping at least once a week, some areas more often. I do basic cleaning of the kitchen regularly and more in depth cleaning occasionally. Bathrooms are about the same but less frequent. I find getting stoned really helpful for staying on top of cleaning, it’s a much more enjoyable experience.
