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copyright ©1999-2003 |
cleaning
house
by
Jill S. Barrett | 1
2 3 And the final item: laundry.
Three loads a week, as working for a steel mill pretty much
ensures a change of clothes once I get home.
Factor in fresh sheets on my bed once a week, changing the sheets
on the spare bed after each visit from a guest, along with all the
towels I go through, and that’s a lot of laundry to handle. The kitchen represented the
biggest portion of my cleaning duties, so I assigned it two days, Monday
and Thursday. The theory
went that I’d clean up after the weekend on Monday, then clean before
the weekend on Thursday. Cleaning,
like life, revolves around the weekends. The bathroom was assigned to
Wednesday, and Tuesday was vacuum and dust day. I left Friday open, as
frequently I would either be leaving to go out straight after work or I
would be greeting guests that day, which meant I’d be too busy for
anything other than a brief straighten. Regardless of which day of the
week it is or what room I’m concentrating on, I do all my cleaning
straight after arriving home from work.
It takes me just over a half-hour (to an hour, depending) to
cover the things I do once a week.
Easy and relatively painless, sticking to the routine means the
house is never much more than a quick tidy away from looking respectable
for guests. When I had a surprise visitor one Wednesday night, I just
gave my apartment the once over. I had a little surge of pride that I
wasn’t picking dirty socks off the couch as I let in my guest, as was
my usual habit. My routines are based around
the little things I can get done while I’m doing something else. The
biggest thing to remember is that your apartment didn’t get like this
overnight (okay, sometimes it can) so it’s not going to get clean
overnight. Do the little
things every day, every week, and it all adds up. On Monday, I survey the
kitchen and repair the damage to countertops and floor.
It doesn’t take very long to Wet Swiffer a kitchen floor (if
you’re so inclined) and even less time to get all the grunge off the
stovetops. My biggest
Monday job is to clean out the fridge. Everything more than a week old
goes into the trash can and I wipe down the shelves with a damp sponge.
The trash goes out that evening. Tuesday, I roam the house with
a Swiffer in one hand, dusting every horizontal surface and all the
lamps. I don’t dust my knickknacks; there’s just too darn many of
them. After I dust, I vacuum all the floors in all the rooms. Then I
water the houseplants. On Wednesday mornings, as
I’m brushing my teeth or drying my hair (both of which can be done
one-handedly), I grab a pre-moistened cleaning cloth from the package
under the sink and I clean the mirror, the faucet, the countertop, and
finally the sink. If your
toilet is used by anyone who pees standing up, drop the cleaning cloth
on the floor, step on it, and swish it over the floor on either side of
the toilet. Trust me. If you
do this frequently, the icky sticky bits don¹t have a chance. I do the toilet and shower when I get home from work, and the
shower is made much easier by an after-shower spray I apply religiously.
Thursday, I spend in the
kitchen again. I clean out
the inside of the microwave, hit the top of the stove and counters
again, and then take the trash out.
Most weeks, if that takes me less than a half-hour, I spray down
the front of my oven, refrigerator, and dishwasher and rub them down. skedaddle on this way for more! ---------------------------> lounge . nourish . host . laze . home. |
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