There are various levels of tidy I try to maintain in my house. It isn’t a large place, and I just need the clutter to be out of my sight as much as possible. Hence tidy.
This is not the same as clean. There are always dust-bunnies in corners. There are always crumbs on the kitchen floor, and road sand at the top of our stairs near the entrance. Did I mention our ever-shedding dog? Yeah. By the end of the winter, I could collect enough dog hair to make a whole new dog, I swear.
We have one bathroom for our family to share, and though I wish it was a bit larger in space, it just… isn’t. (There are far worse things in the world.) But some mornings when I look in the bathroom mirror, I can’t really see who’s looking back at me.
I’m not being cryptic – sometimes the mirror is so freaking filthy, I seriously wonder if someone spitting right onto the glass. I mean, really.
I’ll inject here that the small people in this house often leave something to be desired when it comes to liquids, moisture, and precision. For reals.
So after bending over to wipe stray spots of drying pee-pee off the floor with a tissue, I go to wash my hands and notice the sink, faucet and mirror are all rather spotty indeed.
I like things that sparkle, yo.
Enter My Favourite Thing – the microfiber cloth.
Do you have one of these things? If you don’t, you really should get one. In fact, get a few. You can polish just about everything with them! And not only can you find them everywhere (including dollar stores) but they’re machine washable, which means they’re less wasteful. And greener is better, right?
I know this thing isn’t exactly a new idea, but I was mentioning to a friend recently how I almost never use Windex on my bathroom mirror anymore, and she said she’d never cleaned with one of these cloths before.
MADNESS!!
I keep one under my bathroom counter (behind the stacks of fluffy white hand towels and things) and just pull it out for wiping water spots off the chrome when it needs it. And then I use the damp cloth to wipe down the spittle-covered mirror. It takes about 40 seconds.
Shiny once more? Sanity has been restored.
As for the rest of the bathroom? I just draw the shower curtain closed and wipe the toothpaste out of the sink. I already wiped up the pee-pee… I don’t want any junk on my counter top, so anything left out goes back under the sink or in a drawer. If the hand towel looks dingy, I pull out a fresh one, and I get any stray laundry to the hamper. That’s enough, I reckon.
For me, when it comes to cleaning, I realise that no one effort lasts for very long, so I go for the highest impact with the least amount of work. Because I’m all lazy like that.
There will always be dust bunnies – even the day after vacuuming (which is another reason why I hate to do it.) As long as the chrome is gleaming, things appear to be clean, and that’s all I really want.
Which makes me wonder about what everyone else does – do you prefer to spot-clean, or do the whole shebang on one day?
Cat, I’d never heard of Fly Lady before… looks like she’s got all the right methods there – and I agree that doing anything that makes you smile afterwards is the best motivator – at least, that works for me. That’s why I like my drawers so neat – makes me smile EVERY time I open them. (Maybe pics one day…) Thanks for posting that link!!
I’m with you on the zone, Anny. It’s the ONLY way you don’t get sticky stuff like yogurt on televisions and stuff. Oliver looked at me like I had two heads recently, after I said he could eat his cookies in the tv room for a change. Training in baby steps.
I can’t even imagine how my house would be if we could employ a cleaner… I’ll bet the floors would gleam (I hate doing floors) and maybe my patio crack would get done too. *snickers* Hee!!
Tidy. Word!
I find it easier to do bits and pieces… and afterwards, I seldom feel like breaking out the velvet ropes either – I think the children prefer that too. Heh.
I hear you, Erin, poor darling – but your house isn’t a dump – and your kids are soooo small still! I think I cried a lot when my efforts came undone… so I stopped doing “things that don’t show” such as, I don’t stress about the dishes in the sink overnight – there are MORE in the morning, every damned day. No matter how clean it is one minute, the next, it’s a disaster again. So, I polish the chrome instead. It sparkles for a few days, and it takes nothing to make it look like that again. Mopping floors or whatever? Forget it. Vacuum? Um, no. i figure if I make the beds (sometimes) and do the laundry? That’s kind of enough.
I’ll be by when I get my broom out of the shop…
I think that’s a great way to go, Amreen – I’m constantly trying to remind myself that this little task only takes 2 minutes, or yes, you can get that done during the commercials… I am sooooo lazy… but I WANT it to LOOK clean, dammit. Where are the cleaning faeries, hmmm? Uch. I wish these kids would grow already, so they can become my minions, as I planned…
You have THREE kids, and your house is big too – we live on one floor, and you can get a glimpse into every room, so I feel pressured to have it all tidied up. It’s mostly just a visual thing. You should never, ever look at our basement though. At least, not yet. That would make you cry, Amanda – I swear. Just spot-clean the rooms that bug you the most. The rest is mind over matter… if you don’t mind, then it don’t matter. (Like my basement.)
I like the fresh scent too – I stash some Method wipes in Eucalyptus under the counter too – when I wipe around the bowl *ahem* that tends to make it smell like I’ve been “cleaning.” But I swear, it’s the shiny chrome and clean towel that makes it all “look” clean.
And yes, praise is EVERYTHING!!
Dude, remember my house is a big fat effing dump. Because I’ve given up. Still, I do spot clean.
Need. Cleaning. Person.
I’m going to buy that microfiber thing tomorrow. I clean in spurts. I actually hate to clean. I once read that it’s much more palatable if you do it in little bits, like during commercials. so i’ve adopted that – 5 minutes here and there. con – it never sparkles. but maybe it will now with my new cleaning tool!
I tend to let things go too long and then have to do a full clean, but I’m trying more and more to tidy as I go. It has started to become a habit in some rooms, but others still escape me.
I’m now the only stay at home mom in the neighbourhood. Everyone else is done having babies it seems and made the big jump back to work in the past year or so so it’s just me. I don’t envy them. I can only imagine how crazy their houses must be since they have to cram a day full of house chores in the precious few hours they are home before bed. But on Wednesday afternoons when I see their merry maids show up. I am green with envy. “I almost come to orgasm just coming home on wednesday nights” my neighbour once told me “she even cleans the patio door crack!” Imagine? Le sigh. At my house, tidy is king. I’ve managed to enforce ‘zones’ so that nothing ever gets to leave the room it belongs in: snacks and drinks in the kitchen ONLY. Toys in the basement playroom ONLY. Legos in the boys room ONLY. Which makes a huge diff in my ability to keep up with clutter. But the cleaning? The cleaning lady cleaning? Well let’s just say that in 7 years of living in this house, my patio crack was never cleaned!
T, Have you checked out http://www.flylady.net? It’s amazing! Well, when I actually apply myself to using the method, it is. But that’s. Another. Story.
I have the same spot clean style when it comes to the bathroom, but I need some fresh scent. My husband and the kids will not notice that I have cleaned unless they walk in the house and their nostrils are assaulted with lemony freshness (and I need to the cleaning to be noticed and acknowledged or I’m not doing it next time!)
I can honestly say I prefer neither;)….but I kind of do the whole shebang. I like your idea of spot cleaning!