Saturday, January 25, 2014

On Cleaning

Girls, let's get real.

This is not going to happen. (If it works for you, you're awesome and had better parents than me, because everything really comes back to parenting):


I love her colors, it looked great on my fridge, and her calendar is really thoughtful and includes a lot of areas.

It's just not going to happen. Consider this post an anti-cleaning post. Dusting every single week is just madness to me. I will dust when my display shelves are looking dusty.

I am embracing a new philosophy - one that I have been waiting for someone else to put into words for me.

"It is time to discard the marketing message that has been programmed into us since the days of the 1950s stay-at-home housewife. Back then, advertising for cleaning products became so prevalent that the cheap dramas that stitched together the advertisements were called “Soap Operas”. To complete the circle, the grocery stores started stocking magazines about the soap operas and related celebrities, to sell to the people who were there buying the soap.
It is also time to open up a watchful eye against the “germophobe” compulsion that creeps into highly sterilized societies like our own. You do not need to wipe the handle of your grocery cart with a “sanitizing wipe”, and you do need to pick up your food if you accidentally drop it on the floor, and continue to eat it. Instead of being afraid of germs, I like to imagine myself gleefully plowing through a sea of them every day, getting a daily workout for my immune system."
Our family's "new" (really, what we've always done) cleaning schedule is basically this:
1. Get the dishes done every day - table cleared, dishwasher emptied, loaded, and run.
2. Wipe the counters every day... maybe. 
3. Sweep the floor when there's food all over it.
4. Clean the bathrooms when they look dirty (AND company is coming over).
5. Tidy, declutter, organize as needed. (More on my organization methods coming soon).
6. Vacuum when the carpets have stuff on them. (I'm actually trying to up this to multiple times per week because they are always dirty).
7. Clean everything else as needed, including laundry - this usually gives me a good week or more off laundry if I do a whole bunch of loads all at once.

Read the whole post by my favorite financial advisor, Mr. Money Mustache, for some fantastic explanations.