So here I was faced with the bowl from my Rice cooker. It was full of rice from the day before, that had glutenized and was sticking to the bowl. I was estimating 20-30 second of cleaning.
But I had a brain storm. I filled it with water and threw it in the freezer. Today I pulled it from the freezer, and put face down in the sink. Turned on hot water. Voila, a single and complete rice sickle falls out, and I only needed about 3 seconds of wiping to clean and dry. I love efficiency.
Put your dishes outside next to an anthill and let the ants clean them off.
Don’t use dishes. Use paper plates. Paper plates also make good disposable cutting boards.
Minimize the number of dishes you own… the more you own, the more you have to clean. If you’re a bachelor/bachelorette, then you need no more than one of everything: glass, mug, bowl, plate, fork, knife, spoon…
Buy frozen foods that cook in their own containers, like budget gourmet. Or that cook on aluminum foil, like frozen pizzas. For leftovers, use those ziploc storage containers. They’re cheap enough to throw away.
Use a microwave to cook foods in the dish you will serve it in.
If you must cook something in a saucepan (like macaroni and cheese), then just eat it out of the saucepan.
Keep your laundry on the floor. Make sure and cover the floor with your laundry. This keeps dirt and hair, etc., off the floor, and when you wash your laundry, voila you’ve cleaned your floor!
Don’t do laundry. Wear your clothes until they’re dirty and then buy new ones. This works especially well with socks and underwear, since they’re cheap.
When the bathroom gets dirty, move. You’re not getting your security deposit back, anyway, so why bother cleaning??
There’s more, but I gotta run…
Hire someone else to do it all for you. Have them fetch your wallet or checkbook so you don’t have to get up. If paying cash, have them get the bills out and put the wallet back. If paying by check, have them fill out the check for your signature and put the checkbook back.
Now that I don’t have a dog, it’s very obvious that I have a Messy Eater in my house.
I need a new dog! Instead I got a new cat. He’s very nice, but not much in the cleaning-up-spilled-food department.
(The dog also kept the coffee table nice and clean, merely by wagging his tail. Swept all the clutter off with the first pass and all the dust, crumbs, etc. with the second.)
Two words:
Swiffer Wetjet
2 lesbians, 3 cats, a kitten, two pekenes, and medium lab/pit mix and hardwood floors can’t be wrong.
Now THERE’S an interesting ad campaign…
I actually like to have multiples of a given thing, so I don’t have to clean up just to cook. That’s why I have three or four spatulas.
You know how Pippi Longstocking made scrub-brush “skates” to clean the floors?
I’ve done that. T’weren’t my dirt, there was a lot of it, (linoleum shouldn’t have topography) and I didn’t want to get too close to it.
Dishwashers aren’t just for dishes you know. You can put pretty much any dirty old thing in there and it will clean it for you. It may take you a few tries to figure out what things will survive the cycle but you just throw those out. You don’t want them around anyway.
Before you do laundy, lightly wet a couple of pairs of jeans and put one pair under each foot. Turn on your favorite dance music and scoot all over the place to the beat. This is a great, fun way to clean kitchen, bathroom, and any other hard floor in your place. Don’t try it on carpet though because you will land flat on your face (learned that one the hard way). Throw the jeans in the washer, dry them, leave them there until the next day (assuming you use a laundrymat) and you might come back to find that some girl has folded them for you or they have been stolen. Either way, you don’t have to worry about folding them yourself.
If you have hardwood floors, get a Lhasa Apso or a Shi-Tsu and strap a dry mop to his belly. (Credit for that one goes to Norm Macdonald.)
Train him to chase a laser pointer so you can be sure and get the corners.
Put your dirty clothes in with other peoples’ loads. Get them back when they’re in the dryer.
Steal clean clothes from the dryers at the laundromat. Scope out the person you’re stealing from to make sure they’re your size. (Leave them your dirty clothes and maybe you can steal those back next time.)
Put your rugs in the bottom of the tub when you shower. Stomp around a bit while you’re at it.
Not to alarm you, but there’s an ingredient in swiffer wetjet that can be dangerous to animals. It’s late and my brain has pretty much shut down for the evening, so if anyone could find a link for the info or google swiffer+pets or something, I’d really owe you one.
I had to shove my swiffer wetjet into the back of my closet with tear-filled eyes, I tell ya! 
Here, let me fight your ignorance.
Just one molecule away from antifreeze? Aargh! I just drank a glass of water – that’s just one molecule away from hydrochloric acid! And just one molecule away from ricin!! And just one molecule away from sarin gas!!! I’m doomed!!!
Tired of weeding your 2000+ sq foot garden that has become overgrown due to ( but not limited too:
[ul]
[li]No automated tool, only a lonely Hoe.[/li][li]Tendonitis[/li][li]Raising two widdle kids essentially as a single parent.[/li][li]Sheer laziness[/li][li] A neighbor’s 10+ acres of unmowed weeds directly next to my garden. [/li][/ul]
Put a 1150 + sq ft barn over the garden.
No more Weeds!
Don’t buy separate cleaning supplies for every item–It’s a waste of money and storage space. 90% of everything can be cleaned with baking soda, vinegar, and soap or detergent.
Borax is needed for disinfecting, and washing soda for really geasy/dirty jobs. That is it.
Cicada, my friend. You’re overlooking a perfectly good cleaning aid in your cat. I use mine for a couple purposes:
a sleeping cat on a table can be used for dusting. Just slide the sleepy little kitty around on the table and voila! No more dust (or cat hair).
if you’re a smoker (me ‘n’ Mr. Kalhoun both are), rather than getting up and going to the kitchen to dispose of an empty pack, we ball them up and wing 'em into the kitchen. The kitties run in and play “Kitty Foos Ball” for a few minutes. Then one of two things happens; either I get up and sweep up a half-dozen rolled up packs PLUS all the funk and cat hair (killing two birds with one stone), or the little darlings knock it under the stove and I don’t have to think about it anymore.
Eliminate the middleman!
Skip the dustpan entirely; sweep the crumbs from the kitchen floor onto the carpet on vacuuming day.
Marry a compulsively clean person with a Type A personality…
Like I did!
My wife has been known to buy more dishes, utensils, implements, whatever, rather than run the dishwasher and clean the ones we’ve already got, even though there are so many dirty dishes in the kitchen that there’s no clear counter space to prepare food in the new pots and pans she just bought…
Don’t bother raking those leaves in the fall. Just leave them until the last mowing of the season. The lawnmower does a much better job cleaning them up than I ever do with a rake, anyway.