Hi, friends!
Just realized the pest control company is coming over tomorrow for their quarterly treatment and as long as I mask up or wait outside (either is fine with me), they’ll treat the inside of my house, too.
Which is great, except the house is a mess.
Bringing me to tonight’s prompt —
What kind of frantic cleaner are you?
Shove all the crap in a closet?
Focus on one room and hope it says “I tried” to any visitors?
Actually dedicate a lot of time to legit cleaning?
Take out the trash and say fuck it to the rest?
Etc, etc
The list…make a list of tasks, assign them days and times, play awesome music, and perhaps have a cocktail or two. At this point the horror of being dirt shamed is greater than the effort to clean.
Same as @Elliecoo. I have a cleaning schedule, use to do lists, listen to music and podcasts. It’s how I maintain an illusion of control in my life.
Once I realized that a good cleaning of our house will require more complicated logistics than fucking D-Day, I say fuck it. Just get the high traffic zones done.. Two months later, repeat.
For big cleanings my goal is just deal with the biggest, most obvious stuff first and worry about the details some other time. Vacuum the 20 square foot rug, don’t obsess over cleaning with a toothbrush the six square inches of a picture frame. Get all of the reycling into bins and out of the house, forget about clipping those two articles from three weeks ago. Sweep the porch and hose off the outside furniture, worry about sorting out the garden clippers and trowels in a bin under the porch swing some other time.
Frantic cleaning is shove everything into bedrooms or garage and then don’t let anybody see them.
Normal cleaning is when I hit an OCD threshold trigger, and then shit must be clean. My wife dreads these spells, because I am literally on my knees scrubbing the grout between the tiles, and none may gainsay me. Power tools are frequently involved (and if you don’t have a Drill Brush you are missing out, my friends).
Usually it’s focused on a defined area, like the master bathroom, or the kitchen, because I can’t sustain my cleaning frenzy (my wife’s term for it) over an entire house. So it’s like a very specific cleaning whirlwind. But when I’m done shit gleams.
Should’ve linked to this before: https://drillbrush.com/
Get that shit, use your cordless drill. TRUST ME.
We got a set of those & so far have mixed feelings about them. I wanted to love them but found it a mixed bag in results.
Our water has a lot of lime in it (’cause Florida is made out of limestone) and you get heavy buildup on surfaces that get wet — showers, sinks, etc. DrillBrush saved my sanity and my arms. I’ve got about 12 different heads for various jobs.
I’m in that picture and I don’t like it.
In general, I would say our house is always full of clutter (that’s the stuff I scramble to shove away before company comes), but relatively clean. I distinguish strongly between messy and dirty. I mostly try to just keep things clean as I go (kitchen counters get wiped down after use, bathroom sink gets wiped down every day or two, etc). No carpets makes keeping floors clean easier. I don’t really dust… Like ever?
I’ll start with my wife used to call me messy Marvin, you have to be of a certain age to get that reference. I am a sanitation freak but ok with clutter to a point. My wife can’t handle shit laying around while I’m okay with that to a point. My kitchen & bathroom though have to be very clean & germ free. My office on the other hand has random camera accessories & computer parts laying around I haven’t used in years…but I might. Today is a 2x a month joyous day in our house as our Ukrainian housekeeper came & did the deep cleaning we don’t have time for. She is amazing but speaks almost no English. I learned lots from her husband though about politics, “Ukraine good, Putin bad, Obama good!”
Find out if there is a Ukranian grocery they like nearby, because those are awesome. There is one I get to every once in a blue moon where the labels are all incomprehensible and you have to guess based on pictures, but most of what you get is great.
That would be a challenging conversation. I tried using Google translate once & got laughed at. I use their granddaughter if I really need to get more than a few words in.
Maybe ask the granddaughter sometime, then.
If there is a good Ukranian (or Polish or Russian) grocery within reasonable distance, go for it. Grab stuff that looks good, Google the labels when you get home, it’s worth it.
The closest analogy I can think of is 6 Haoles going to a Korean restaurant and pointing to 8 different things at random off the menu. One thing will be a bomb, everything else will range from “huh, interesting” to “I will kill you for the last bite of this.”
We have a Ukrainian mega church down the road from us so we must have stores around. They have given us some Ukrainian candy things we didn’t care for but I’ll try to check it out after your great description.
i give everyone 24 hours notice
tomorow im cleaning….tidy up everything you want to keep…coz im black bagging everything i find and binning it
its remarkably effective…usually i just have to hoover and dust
It depends on the level of messiness. I prefer to always have things clean and everything in their right place but I often get too pressed for time. When I get really far behind and have time to get everything done, I get in cleaning mode and find it best to keep busy doing little things that need to be done until I get into a groove and the structure eventually comes to me. I find that works better than being overwhelmed when I don’t even know where to begin.
I tolerate clutter and dog fur to a certain, oft-fluctuating point, and then it becomes a “take off work a couple hours early, crank the music, crate the dogs, open a bottle of wine, and pick up, dust, and vacuum”. Once or twice a year we will do a deep clean, shampoo carpets and furniture. We also get our HVAC ducts vacuumed out annually (we both have some level of sinus stuff).