Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - What’s your House Cleaning Style? | Clutterbug Podcast # 21

Episode Date: July 7, 2017

Everyone cleans differently, so what works for someone else may not work for you!  Would you rather batch clean, zone clean, one day a week clean or do a power hour cleaning a few times a week? No matter which one you choose, writing down your routine and making a schedule will keep you on track and motivated! For more clenaing tips and motivation, visit my website at www.clutterbug.me Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey you guys and welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today I wanted to talk about a little bit of not only cleaning motivation, but cleaning styles. Because just like I think people organize differently, I think people tend to really clean differently too or have systems that work the best for them. And just because something works for one person doesn't mean that is the system that you should follow. So let's talk about some of the different cleaning styles that there are. And I'll start with the one that I do. And I am like, I have ADD or I just I lose attention. So for me, I can't spend like a big chunk, like a three-hour time on a Wednesday afternoon cleaning the house. That does not work for me for a couple of reasons. One is I get distracted too easily. And the other thing is I don't like waiting until at one time

a week to clean because I don't like seeing the crumbs or the mess, the dust in the meantime. So I clean in batch cleaning. It's like a little bit at a time type. type of a cleaning system. And what mine looks like is 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes at night, and probably 15 to a half an hour throughout the day doing like a light dust or, you know, if I see something that's messy, I'll spend a little bit of time cleaning it then. But my morning routine and my evening routines are really what keep me on top of things. So things never get out of control and never need that deep down clean. So I actually clean, quickly clean, just give a quick wipe to the bathrooms and the kitchen twice a day, which I know. Some people think that's crazy

overkill, but every morning and every night before bed, I give a quick clean. No, I'm not cleaning it the first thing when I wake up. I'm waiting until after breakfast to give it a quick wipe and a quick spot mop, but that's a two times a day type thing. And then at night, I also do the quick tidy up each and every night I run around and just put things back in their homes and pick up kids' toys and clothes off the floor and all the mess that they make. So, That's how I clean. That's my styles, like batch, batch cleaning or, you know, like 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there, 15 minutes there throughout the day every single day. But that does not work for everybody. So another thing that really works for people is called a power hour clean. And I'm sure

you've heard of this. This is when you set your timer for one hour and you just clean as much as you possibly can. You vacuum, you dust, you put away laundry, you scrub the bathrooms. You get as much as you possibly can do in one hour. And people tend to do this either once a day, one big power hour a day, or every other day. And that really works for so many people and that's really effective for them. Another system is zone cleaning. And so this would mean Monday would perhaps be vacuuming or the living room and Tuesday would be bathrooms or maybe the bedrooms. And you're giving a really deep down clean to each of those areas, a different area or a different cleaning project like mopping one day or vacuuming another day. That's called zone cleaning. And again, that's really effective for a lot of people. So you have to

think about all the different styles and what you tend to naturally do and go with that one. I am not a zone cleaner. So trying to force myself to have a zone cleaning schedule just isn't going to work. That's not my style. That's not the type of cleaning that I do. So when I tried when I first, you know, was trying to become a better homemaker and do housework better, that is the, you know, that's what I thought you did. Mondays you did the sheets and Tuesday you dusted the whole house and Wednesdays you vacuum the whole house. And when I tried to do that type of cleaning, I was failing. It wasn't working for me. It just, I don't know why, but it just, I was not successful. So I felt like a failure and I felt like, my gosh my house is a disaster and then when I tried to go with other people's cleaning

styles like they cleaned every Saturday they dedicated Saturday to you know their home their families and everybody just works really hard for a couple of hours in the morning to clean that didn't really work for me either it just wasn't my style so I had to do a little bit every day and write down the things that need to be done make myself a checklist and go from there and I think the checklist and you know the routine is important for everyone no matter what your cleaning style is but first deciding what you want that checklist to look like or do you want to try zone cleaning do you want to do you know the power hour every other day do you want to just have wednesdays where you clean the house what is your

cleaning schedule going to look like for you and your family and then design it and then give it a try and if you've tried one and it doesn't work don't be afraid to try another system to try another another way to go. I would love to know what your cleaning system is and what you have chosen. I know there's probably some of you out there listening to that don't have any type of cleaning schedule or cleaning style. And I've been there. And I used to tell myself, you know what, oh, I have better things to do than clean the house or, you know, I'm living my life instead of spending it all day cleaning. And I think those are things I really told myself to make myself feel better about the fact that my house was messy and it was dirty and I didn't

really know how to keep on top of things and I didn't know where to start and so I sort of made fun of those people out there who cleaned all the time I guess or looked at them as like oh my gosh well I've got better things to do as a way of making myself feel better but the truth is nobody likes a dirty house nobody likes having a messy dirty house and without a really routine without something that's written down and that, you know, everybody's on board in the family that this is what we do. It's really impossible to have that. It's impossible to have a clean house without a routine. And maybe you've tried routines in the past and you haven't been able to stick with it or it hasn't worked for you. So you've just sort of given up that that's not your

personality. But you know what? Try a different routine. Try a different cleaning method than the one you've tried and if you failed in the past because for me the zone cleaning and the one a day and the power hours those aren't really effective for me those aren't the ones that that i find work for me and my ADD personality i'm going to be honest with you i need little tiny batch cleaning so i need to do 15 minutes in the morning 15 minutes at night and maybe 15 minutes to half an hour in the middle of the afternoon and not stick so concrete that it's like you have to clean every day at one o'clock That's not my style. It's just whenever you know I have a free minute or downtime, I'll quickly do, you know, I'll clean the bathroom floor one day or the next day I'll, I don't know, wipe the top, the front of my countertops and wipe down my appliances. And the next day, maybe I clean out the fridge. I mean, it's really random and there isn't really a structured schedule. But I do schedule time every day for one task, if that makes sense. Hopefully that makes sense. And then my morning and evening routines are concrete. like I'm cleaning the kitchen and I'm cleaning the bathrooms no matter what and they never get out of control.

So I hope you find this helpful, maybe even motivating throw on. I find an audiobook is so motivating for me to clean and music helps too, but an audiobook really like it keeps me going. So I'll listen to a couple of songs and I get bored and wander off. but an audiobook keeps me like wanting to know what happens next in the book, so I keep cleaning. So if you struggle to find, you know, the motivation to stop getting distracted or you fall down the rabbit hole and you start like going on your computer and six hours later you're still looking at cat videos or whatever, try an audiobook instead. It can still keep your mind really occupied while you do these mundane mindless tasks, but you can still accomplish so much.

So give it a try today and thanks so much for listening. Again, it's Cass from Clutterbug and I'll see you next time.