Stick with me here, I'll make my point eventually....
We all have to do the various stages of keeping our home clean:
There's the quickie 15 minute pick up, hide things in rooms, close the door , put the dishes in the oven, spray some fabreeze, and run the vacuum in the rooms people are going to see. This is handy when someone calls and says they're stopping in unexpectedly. If you're really good, you can brush your teeth, toss on some clean clothes, and slap on a quick coat of mascara. As long as you're not all sweaty and breathing heavy when they ring the door bell, you may just pull it off that this is how your house ALWAYS looks.
Then there's the light cleaning. This is where you run the vacuum, dust a little, maybe wipe off any gross stuff off the toilet. Straighten up and put things away, maybe wipe the counters down and do the dishes. Not a full cleaning, but when you're done the house looks tidy. These are the days you really want to take a nap and get a pedicure...so you do a little housework to rid your mind of the guilt of taking some time for yourself.
Then there's the regular cleaning, maybe every two weeks or so. This is where you scrub the bathroom down good, clean the mirrors, dust everything, change the sheets, vacuum & mop, vacuum under the cushions of the sofa. When you finish and turn around the house looks and smells clean, and you feel like you accomplished something. These are the days when you get annoyed that your husband didn't notice all your hard work, and you get really pissed when the kids leave peanut butter on the counter and don't wipe it up.
Then there's the stuff you only do a few times a year. Wipe down the doors, clean all the trim and window sills, vacuum under the furniture, dust the blinds, straightening out your closet and drawers, clean the inside of the fridge, clean the oven, maybe wipe out some cabinets or the pantry. This is extra and only done when you are having company in from out of town, or if it REALLY needs to be done. (this is also the list I turn to when I'm mad at the kids and want to punish them for pissing me off. They hate these jobs as much as I do, so might as well kill two birds with one stone: 1 - discipline 2 - I don't have to do it)
Then there's the once a year stuff. Cleaning up the mess from winter, raking (sometimes this is twice a year) trimming the bushes, making sure the front of your house looks clean and tidy (this is the side seen from the street, gotta keep up appearances), cleaning out the garage & dusting the ceiling fans. Which reminds me mine need to be done. These are sometimes a full day job, and you usually get really dirty. These jobs are best done with a 6 pack or more of your favorite alcoholic beverage, Diasy dukes, a bandana in yer hair, and loud music.
Then there's the stuff you put off forever, and don't really want to do, but have to do every couple years or so. Cleaning out the gutters, powerwashing the siding, any painting that needs to be done, aerating the yard, staining outdoor stuff that looks like crap. These are the big jobs that you would really rather hire someone to do, and you have to weigh the cost with the effort.
Onward towards my point...I already did the front of my house with magic erasers, windex, squeegies and scrub brushes. It looks like a brand new model home. I did this last year too. It takes about 12 hours to get it all sparklie clean. (I must give proper credit, Steve helped me for about 3 hours too).
The back and sides of my house are a totally different deal all together. We live along the tree line, have no neighbors behind us, and I've never seen my side neighbors in their back yards in the 18+ months we've lived here. So, what is my motivation for cleaning this as good as the front of the house? No one other than us is going to see it. The gutters are in dire need of a good scrubbing, & the windows have never been washed. I don't think the previous owners ever did anything back there either. So that's about 5 years of yuck. I can put it off no longer.
I figured I'd start with the rest of the 1st floor windows. I can reach them easily and there's only 12 of them left to do. (getting closer to what I'm trying to say)
My mother had a certain system for washing windows. It was terribly time consuming, very specific, and if you didn't do it exactly that way, it was wrong. Here it is:
1- remove screens and scrub both sides with a brush & soap, rinse and dry.
2 - vacuum and wipe out sills
3 - scrub entire window and trim. inside and out, with soapy water and a scrubbie
4 - wipe down window & trim with a wet rag
5 - windex and wipe with a dry cloth
6 - buff dry with a paper towel
every spec of fly poop better have been removed as well.
Ok there is no doubt that this will result in a beautifully clean and streak free window. It also takes at LEAST half an hour per window. My house has 29 windows. There is no freaking way I'm spending 15+ hours washing windows. The first time it rains, guess what...they're filthy again anyway.
I discovered today that the spray on window washing stuff you use with your hose actually works, at a cost of a whopping $7.50. Here's the process:
1 - rinse for 20 seconds
2 - spray with soap for 20 seconds
3 - let sit for a minute or so
4 - rinse till suds are gone
5 - let air dry
2 minutes tops, and I was doing 3 windows at a time. You still have to wipe out the inside sills and stuff, but that's easily added to a day of light cleaning some other time.
so I did all 12 of the remaining downstairs windows in less than half an hour. Damned if I can't tell the difference between the front windows and the back windows.
So here's my point. I still feel like they are not clean enough, that I didn't do them good enough, and that I took the easy lazy way out. I have been programed that unless a job is hard, and time consuming then it's not done right. God forbid there are easier and just as effective ways of doing things. I need a RE-programming.
This whole point also applies to mopping floors. There's no way a mop could possibly clean the floors as good as doing it on your hands and knees, right? That's what our mothers and grandmothers told us, so it must be true. When I was a kid we had to vacuum, then dust mop, then mop on our hands and knees. These days I usually vacuum, spray some mop and clean, go over it with a mop, and call it good. But, there's always this nagging voice in my head "you know they're not as clean as if you had done them on your hands and knees you lazy slacker."
Last week I decided I would do a full kitchen cleaning. It needed it. I wiped down and oiled all the cabinets, got into the corners of the floor with a brush, washed the walls, and mopped on my hands and knees. In total about 8 hours of cleaning. Wanna know what I discovered? There was hardly any gunk in the cracks of the trim, and the mop water in the bucket was hardly dirty. The damned floors were already clean from the mop! Still, I felt like it was "better" because it took me 4 times as long and hurt my back and knees.
Am I the only one who struggles with this impossible to achieve ideal? Does housework have to be physically demanding, and take forever for it to count? Brushing the cookie crumbs onto the floor should be just as good as getting a rag and wiping them up, right? The floor's going to get vacuumed within a few days anyway, and more than likely the dogs will enjoy the extra morsels.
I think that as long as the end goal is reached, it shouldn't matter how you got there. I'm not saying we should do a crappy job, but damn, if there's a quicker easier way to get it done right, I say GO FOR IT!! Life is too short to spend it slaving over your house the old fashioned way. Get it done, use the modern cleaning stuff that's out there, make your kids help, hire someone if you can for the really shitty jobs, and enjoy the extra time you gain! I'm going to, with no guilt what so ever.
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