by Chris McGinty
My core concept of having a clean house is to focus solely on the detail work when you set aside time to clean house. My reasoning is that when you make a mad dash to clean up twenty minutes before you have company, it’s pretty clear that you just decluttered the area, but what they’re really going to notice is the grease on the stovetop, the dirt on the floorboards, and the grime in your sinks. If you mostly detail clean then everything else can work itself out.
At least once a day when you’re going from one room to another, look around and see if anything needs to go with you. One of the biggest problems people have with keeping a clean house is that they don’t grab dishes when going to the kitchen or trash when they’re going anywhere near a trashcan. As an extention of this, if you have a party, game night, or other large get together, every hour or so pass around a small trash bag and ask everyone to put their empty containers in.
At least once a day, set a timer or put on a short YouTube video and do as much cleaning as you can during that short period of time. It’s basically doing the quick cleanup that you would do when you have company on the way, except you do it when you don’t have company on the way. This is the way I do most of my housework.
If you have a cluttered area, move everything from that area to another area while removing any trash among the clutter. When you’re dealing with clutter that isn’t trash, the size of the mess will never reduce the way that it would if it could be thrown away. By moving it to another area, you create a situation where the clutter that should have been there in the first place will make it back, and the rest will find its way to where it was supposed to be.
Chris McGinty is a hoarder… oops, I mean a blogger, who you would never know by how messy he is that he actually likes cleaning.