8 Steps to Clean Your House (When You're a Disaster)
Recently, my husband and I were expecting company. This was an alarming development, considering that our house looked not unlike an episode of Hoarders: Buried Alive.
"What do they expect of me?" I muttered bitterly as I kicked trash into a bag. "I have a 5-month-old!"
My inner honesty fairy immediately began to shriek at me. In all fairness, I can't blame Poopy. I've been a slob since childhood. Just ask my mom. My bedroom was usually knee-deep in trash and a mix of dirty and clean laundry, despite her gentle reminders. Well, it was two parts gentle reminders, one part enraged insistence. Fair enough, when your daughter is a walking health code violation.
At least I have my husband to balance me out!
Oh, wait.
When I first saw his house, the kitchen and living room were impassable. Like, I literally did not realize he had a kitchen table or couches, because there was a neck-high pile of boxes and assorted stuff everywhere. I have seen him grow what I am fairly certain are new breeds of mold in his kitchen sink. I should call in a moldologist and see if we could get the blue stuff named after us. "Weeniesporium" has a nice ring to it.
It is harder now, though. Especially lately, since Poopy's brain has developed enough that she realizes she and I are separate beings. This is a wonderful and major leap forward, cognition-wise, and she has chosen to celebrate this glorious milestone by screaming herself purple whenever I'm not physically holding her. I've seen her get so worked up that she's choking because I set her down 3 feet from me for sixty seconds. So whatever I'm doing now, I'm mostly doing one-handed. Unless she's sleeping. When she's sleeping, I feel spoiled as I use both hands for things like washing ant-covered dishes, or typing.
Anyway. All of this might make it seem like I'm the last person you should ever look to for advice on cleaning, and that's fair. On the other hand, being so monumentally messy means that I have cleaned up some really gross messes. Like, way grosser than tidy people ever have to deal with. Those tidy slackers. Cleaning up your mess before it's grown its own eco-system is the coward's way out.
So here are my tips for tackling a really big mess with limited energy and time:
1. Coffee.
Self-explanatory. Non-negotiable.
2. Start with the trash can.
Getting the trash can empty and ready to receive new garbage is a crucial first step. Almost nothing can effectively get done when you have an overflowing trash can, and piling more trash on top is just inviting an even bigger mess. So take out the trash. It's a pain in the butt, especially if your cans are located somewhere really inconvenient, but you'll be glad you did. Do not, under any circumstances, wait for your husband/roommate/whatever to do it. This is a tempting excuse to not start at all, and tomorrow you'll be back where you are today, but with one more day's worth of mess.
3. Tackle the dishes.
This is important on two levels: first, because dishes are awful and no one likes doing them, so it's good to get them out of the way right up front. Two, you're going to need the sink for the rest of your cleaning process. Three, it will make a huge difference to the perceived cleanliness of your kitchen, which will be encouraging. Oh look, that was more reasons than I advertised! Even better.
Do your dishes in two stages: first, wash all the dishes in and around the sink. Then gather all the visible dishes from the entire mess and wash those. Progress.
4. Don't take a break.
I fall into this trap nearly every day: I finish the dishes, then reward myself with a little break. Like right now, I am typing this in my post-dish break. But it's a mistake, and I know it's a mistake. Conquering the dishes is your first real bit of steam, and if you stop now, you'll never get going. You'll just rest on your clean-dish laurels and other demands will pop up and cleaning will get pushed to one side. (Of course, that's assuming you're like me and hate cleaning and have very little willpower, but if that's not you, why are you even reading this. Go enjoy your internally-motivated tidy life and leave us failures in peace.)
5. No, really, don't take a break, not even to eat.
Yes, I know you're hungry. No, I don't think a snack would help fuel your cleaning rampage. Hunger will drive you. Food will make you sleepy and begin a chain reaction of mess-making that will end with you on the couch, kid in one hand, burrito in the other, surrounded by crumbs. RESIST.
6. Promise yourself a reward.
Fine, if you're so hungry, you can eat-- at the kitchen table. Yes, that major piece of furniture you can't even see under the dry goods you never put away, the mail you never read, and the laundry you folded and then left like little fabric monuments. Get cracking.
7. Think like a bug.
Do you want bugs in your house? No, of course you don't, unless you're some kind of Entomologist. Even then, you probably want them safely in their little bug cages or whatever, not crawling up your cabinets. Now look at your house. If you were a bug, would this be an inviting habitat for you? Would there be food to eat, clothes and trash to make a home in, plenty of hiding places? If you can look around your house thinking like a bug and not get the full-body wiggins and the urge to break out every cleaning supply known to man, then you and I are very different. Go forth and make your space a hostile work environment for those bugs.
8. Give up halfway through.
This step is inevitable. At some point you will sit down and there will be trash bags around you, a basket of dirty laundry waiting to be moved, and a stack of dishes on the coffee table. Somebody will be crying-- preferably the baby, but possibly you-- or someone will need something proofread or to be driven somewhere or picked up from somewhere, and the cleaning process will be all kinds of disrupted. New mess will come and overlap the tail ends of the old mess, until these layers of mess sediment make a really interestingly striated rock for future geologists to study. Or maybe you will get the house sparkling clean, you will sit back and wipe the sweat from your brown and admire your perfectly mopped kitchen floor, and that will be the moment guests will arrive with muddy shoes and drink orders.
Either way, it doesn't matter. We're not aiming for perfect here. We just need to remind the chaos who's boss, every once in a while.
"What do they expect of me?" I muttered bitterly as I kicked trash into a bag. "I have a 5-month-old!"
My inner honesty fairy immediately began to shriek at me. In all fairness, I can't blame Poopy. I've been a slob since childhood. Just ask my mom. My bedroom was usually knee-deep in trash and a mix of dirty and clean laundry, despite her gentle reminders. Well, it was two parts gentle reminders, one part enraged insistence. Fair enough, when your daughter is a walking health code violation.
At least I have my husband to balance me out!
Oh, wait.
When I first saw his house, the kitchen and living room were impassable. Like, I literally did not realize he had a kitchen table or couches, because there was a neck-high pile of boxes and assorted stuff everywhere. I have seen him grow what I am fairly certain are new breeds of mold in his kitchen sink. I should call in a moldologist and see if we could get the blue stuff named after us. "Weeniesporium" has a nice ring to it.
It is harder now, though. Especially lately, since Poopy's brain has developed enough that she realizes she and I are separate beings. This is a wonderful and major leap forward, cognition-wise, and she has chosen to celebrate this glorious milestone by screaming herself purple whenever I'm not physically holding her. I've seen her get so worked up that she's choking because I set her down 3 feet from me for sixty seconds. So whatever I'm doing now, I'm mostly doing one-handed. Unless she's sleeping. When she's sleeping, I feel spoiled as I use both hands for things like washing ant-covered dishes, or typing.
Anyway. All of this might make it seem like I'm the last person you should ever look to for advice on cleaning, and that's fair. On the other hand, being so monumentally messy means that I have cleaned up some really gross messes. Like, way grosser than tidy people ever have to deal with. Those tidy slackers. Cleaning up your mess before it's grown its own eco-system is the coward's way out.
So here are my tips for tackling a really big mess with limited energy and time:
1. Coffee.
Self-explanatory. Non-negotiable.
2. Start with the trash can.
Getting the trash can empty and ready to receive new garbage is a crucial first step. Almost nothing can effectively get done when you have an overflowing trash can, and piling more trash on top is just inviting an even bigger mess. So take out the trash. It's a pain in the butt, especially if your cans are located somewhere really inconvenient, but you'll be glad you did. Do not, under any circumstances, wait for your husband/roommate/whatever to do it. This is a tempting excuse to not start at all, and tomorrow you'll be back where you are today, but with one more day's worth of mess.
3. Tackle the dishes.
This is important on two levels: first, because dishes are awful and no one likes doing them, so it's good to get them out of the way right up front. Two, you're going to need the sink for the rest of your cleaning process. Three, it will make a huge difference to the perceived cleanliness of your kitchen, which will be encouraging. Oh look, that was more reasons than I advertised! Even better.
Do your dishes in two stages: first, wash all the dishes in and around the sink. Then gather all the visible dishes from the entire mess and wash those. Progress.
4. Don't take a break.
I fall into this trap nearly every day: I finish the dishes, then reward myself with a little break. Like right now, I am typing this in my post-dish break. But it's a mistake, and I know it's a mistake. Conquering the dishes is your first real bit of steam, and if you stop now, you'll never get going. You'll just rest on your clean-dish laurels and other demands will pop up and cleaning will get pushed to one side. (Of course, that's assuming you're like me and hate cleaning and have very little willpower, but if that's not you, why are you even reading this. Go enjoy your internally-motivated tidy life and leave us failures in peace.)
5. No, really, don't take a break, not even to eat.
Yes, I know you're hungry. No, I don't think a snack would help fuel your cleaning rampage. Hunger will drive you. Food will make you sleepy and begin a chain reaction of mess-making that will end with you on the couch, kid in one hand, burrito in the other, surrounded by crumbs. RESIST.
6. Promise yourself a reward.
Fine, if you're so hungry, you can eat-- at the kitchen table. Yes, that major piece of furniture you can't even see under the dry goods you never put away, the mail you never read, and the laundry you folded and then left like little fabric monuments. Get cracking.
7. Think like a bug.
Do you want bugs in your house? No, of course you don't, unless you're some kind of Entomologist. Even then, you probably want them safely in their little bug cages or whatever, not crawling up your cabinets. Now look at your house. If you were a bug, would this be an inviting habitat for you? Would there be food to eat, clothes and trash to make a home in, plenty of hiding places? If you can look around your house thinking like a bug and not get the full-body wiggins and the urge to break out every cleaning supply known to man, then you and I are very different. Go forth and make your space a hostile work environment for those bugs.
8. Give up halfway through.
This step is inevitable. At some point you will sit down and there will be trash bags around you, a basket of dirty laundry waiting to be moved, and a stack of dishes on the coffee table. Somebody will be crying-- preferably the baby, but possibly you-- or someone will need something proofread or to be driven somewhere or picked up from somewhere, and the cleaning process will be all kinds of disrupted. New mess will come and overlap the tail ends of the old mess, until these layers of mess sediment make a really interestingly striated rock for future geologists to study. Or maybe you will get the house sparkling clean, you will sit back and wipe the sweat from your brown and admire your perfectly mopped kitchen floor, and that will be the moment guests will arrive with muddy shoes and drink orders.
Either way, it doesn't matter. We're not aiming for perfect here. We just need to remind the chaos who's boss, every once in a while.
Additional tip: Take on one chore at a time. The mess will overwhelm you if you focus on all different aspects of it, so pick an easy one and just do that. Suddenly, the mess is a little smaller. Pick the next aspect... mess is even smaller. Before you know it, there isn't a huge mess, there's just a little one. One, you could even possibly live with. Always focus on the main things: Dishes, a place to sit, and laundry. The rest is all optional.
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