Some of us love cleaning (weirdos), some of us hate cleaning, but a subset of us haters really hate, with hating passion and consuming disgust of all things to do with cleaning. I fall into that group. You too? I’m also a green freak and a cheap freak and a health freak. Kind of makes keeping house a tad tough. I also hold a great stubborn gene, so I have managed to maintain my standards and clean my house, Here is my three-day plan to makeover your approach to cleaning:.
Day one—Stockpile
Time to toss the chemical, don’t-breathe-while-cleaning supplies. I mean time to toss right this very second—stop reading, start tossing. After you’ve taken a detox shower, head out to the closest store to pick up your new, green, cheap cleaning supplies. Your shopping list: baking soda, vinegar, lemons, limes, and oranges, a bottle of vodka, some sea salt and a couple of scrubbing brushes. No, we’re not baking while drinking; we’re collecting the needed, safe and effective tools of the cleaning trade. Vodka is a great disinfectant that doesn’t leave streaks. Sea salt replaces your abrasive scrubs. Vinegar can clean just about anything and if you add some baking soda, you’ll have a great big bubbling scrubbing mix. Drop in the juice from the fruit and everything smells natural, healthy and clean.
Day two—Make your list, check it twice
First you need a list. I use a little yellow sticky stuck to my computer screen that reads like this: Monday-bathrooms, Tuesday-bedrooms, Wednesday laundry ... and so on. You get the idea. Now that I think of it, making Monday bathroom day was a huge mistake, who wants to start the week off with toilets? Anyway, make your list. Stick it somewhere handy. Be sure to include dusty, musty things like bookshelves and annoying things like floors. I have dedicated Thursdays just to floors: they rate their own entire day.
Day three—Got two minutes?
Unless your home is really, really, really tiny, it will be simply impossible to clean it (well) in two minutes. But anyone can clean part of it in two minutes, take a rest and then come back. Here’s how I do it. Let’s take Monday. I get my cleaning supply kit and head to the bathroom. Grunt and sigh. Toss everything that is not nailed down into a “clean box” (did I mention you need an empty box to toss things into?). I pick up my mix of vinegar and lemon/lime spray (from a repurposed chemical spray bottle), and spray every single thing in sight like a whirling dervish. Now, I let it sit. Letting the spray sit is the magic secret to cleaning. The spray has to meet the dirt, have small talk, infiltrate and destroy. It takes time. The picking up and spraying should have taken under two minutes, so you are officially done. Leave the room and go rest.
Day three—Part two
After a little rest, some lemonade and a quick phone call or two, head back to the soaked bathroom and with reusable towel and brushes in hand, start scrubbing like Cinderella. You have two minutes, make them count. When done, rest and repeat. Except this time start drying and buffing for two minutes. Rest. Repeat with putting back all the goodies. Add a little charm to each room you’ve cleaned and reward yourself by tossing in a small bouquet of fresh flowers or better yet, flowers mixed with some of your home grown backyard herbs, like sage and rosemary. Get seed packs for under a dollar, and you’ll have a free and never ending supply of room refreshers that are green in every way.
Repeat this two minute rule for every room, on every day. By breaking up your home into days of cleaning, you’ll stress less. By using chemical-free cleaning supplies, you’ll feel better and save money while saving the planet. It’s good, it’s smart and it’s cheap.
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