My mom didn’t teach me much, because she was a pretty bad housekeeper. Pretty bad cook, too, for that matter. I’m self-taught in both areas.
Here’s my tip: after years of scrubbing away at rust-colored rings and drips in toilets, I found that the only thing that takes care of them is a pumice stone. You can buy a cleaning pumice stone anywhere plumbing or porcelain-cleaning supplies are found. Put on some heavy-duty rubber gloves, and scrub away at that stuff with the stone and off it comes. In the area I live now, the water has enough crud and minerals in it that I have to do this about once a year.
The husband thinks that the crud on the toilet bowl is dirt and poop and thinks that with enough elbow grease and cleanser it should come off - and therefore, I’m not using enough elbow grease. He keeps thinking this despite the fact that he has tried his hand scrubbing it himself and it doesn’t budge.
I had to be disabused of that notion by a friend when I was in my 20s.
This theory, OTOH, I’m sticking with, with regard to my shower. After all, everything going down the drain is coated in soap. ::inserts fingers in ears, la-la-la-ing away
I noticed my washing machine was pretty soap-scummy recently! I’m going to go do this right now. Oh, and I’ve memorized BiblioCat’s laundry recipe, too, for future use.
As for washing the tub/shower, if you use that daily shower spray stuff (I can’t think of what it’s called now), the shower will keep fairly clean for a long time. As for other housecleaning tips: I have none. I am a very slipshod housekeeper.
The one thing my mother never taught me, in regards to keeping house, is more on the cooking side of things. I have no clue how to cut up a chicken. I have seen it done umpteen times, but nobody ever stopped to show me how. I am doomed to forever pay for the cut up kind, and it you give me a whole bird, please be prepared to have it served whole back to you. Cooked, yes, but whole.
My mother was always one of the ‘martyr’ breed of housekeepers who’d let things get messy and then spend the entire day cleaning and grumbling and making cleaning look like a horrible chore. When I’d be sent to “clean my room” it was (at least!) an all-day affair. It wasn’t 'till I was living on my own that I realized that my house was a lot easier to keep clean if I spent a few minutes on all the various respective parts every day.
The other important lesson: The less stuff you have, the easier things are to clean! Whenever the cleaning starts to overwhelm me, I know it’s time for a big decluttering session, wherein I drag out as much stuff as I possibly can that I can reasonably live without and either donate it or chuck it. We don’t buy a whole lot of stuff, really, so it always stuns me when I can dig up several garbage bags worth of things that can be thrown out. Where does all this stuff come from?! (Our local thrift store loves us.)
Of course, I’m still a pretty lax housekeeper (I’ve almost never cleaned under the refrigerator, for example) but my place is clean enough to impress my boyfriend’s family, and I think that’s about where I want to be.
I loved the occasional conversations I would have with my roommate freshmate year in college (2 males), that would go something like this:
Roommate: Hey Mike, how often are you supposed to change the sheets?
Me: I don’t know. I haven’t changed mine yet. (this is maybe 6 months in)
R: Yeah me neither. But my mom used to change 'em all the time.
M: Yeah mine too. Well do they stink?
(he sniffs)
R: Nah they smell alright.
M: Yeah you’re fine then.
R: Alright.
I guess if you only have to do it once a year, either you have a higher tolerance for rust stains than I do, or you gots yerself what we call “soft water.”
I used to pumice the toilet once a month. Then I discovered Kaboom! Thick Toilet Cleaner.
Godsend.
I dose the toilet with it every other week or so. Rust stains are a thing of the past. No more scrubbing the toilet by hand.
This wisdom was actually imparted to me by a girlfriend, but I never seem to remember it until I find myself doing extra work because I forgot it again. (Like when I sweep and wash the floors and then wash the countertops and cupboard doors.)
I never knew until a year or so ago that you’re supposed to clean your walls, ceilings, and windows during annual spring cleaning.
Windows I already knew. But walls? Ceilings? OK, I can see taking a long-handled duster and tackling an errant dust bunny. But actually clean them? With soap and water?
My MIL almost dropped dead upon seeing my expression when she mentioned this. But then again, she’s Martha Stewart’s older sister.
Oh, and I never knew about cleaning out the dryer vent either until I read it here I’m scrupulous about cleaning the lint trap after every load. though.
I’m what I like to call a Half-Assed Housekeeper, and I have come to terms with that. One of my tricks is to keep cleaning supplies wherever I need them - if I have to go get them, chances are I’ll get sidetracked along the way. Other than that, keep the garbages emptied, keep the dishes, kitchen, and bathroom relatively clean, and the rest is negotiable.
Lissa, I think my response to my husband asking me the last time I cleaned the ceiling fan would be something like, “Around the same time YOU cleaned it.” Housework is not sex-linked.
If any effort was ever made to impress any sort of importance to this “cleaning” thing you all are talking about, I must’ve missed it. Things have to be pretty far gone for me to even start THINKING “Hmmm, 'bout time to clean that up a little…” Ferinstance, I just changed the sheets on the futon a few days ago because they were starting to stick to me. :eek:
Couple that with my high level of packratism and a very tolerant and similarly-housekeeping-disinclined spouse, and you’ve got a good time of cleaning on your hands. When we moved last year I was finding newspapers from 1997 in various places.
:smack:
On the bright side, I’m virtually certain that no matter what I need, it’s SOMEPLACE. No worrying about “Did I throw that out? Damnit, I needed that!” Just gotta find it. Usually with a shovel.
It’s not sex-linked in our household, either. If I wanted to get a job that would replace his income, he would happily stay home and keep the place clean (and most likely do a better job at it )
The job I chose is fulfilling, but its salary is mostly a symbolic gesture, and my hours are only part-time. It’s not exactly fair for me to ask him to work forty hours a week to support our family if I don’t, so I make up the rest of the time by keeping our house neat. Not that he doesn’t help-- many a time I’ve come home and found he’s cleaned the whole house for me and cooked dinner.
My mum was quite neurotic when it came to keeping the house clean, so like every new generation, I rebelled against her obsessive regime.
Some things she never taught me but that I’ve picked up over the years:
1: If you clean down cobwebs (spiderwebs) they just return the following week. Either leave them as a natural insect trapper, or spray them with gold or fluoroescent paint and tell everyone they are the latest in domestic nouveau-art.
2: Leave the vacuum-cleaner assembled in the main living area. To visiting guests, it looks like you were just about to tackle the mess on the floor.
3: Dusting is a waste of energy. Just make sure you move things around a lot, or like Quentin Crisp (of Naked Civil Servant fame) noted, after five years it doesn’t get any worse.
4: Clean the shower when you are IN it, otherwise you get really wet and your clothes get slopped with chemicals. Bleach is a bastard on new jeans.
5: If you want your teenage sons to sleep between clean sheets occasionally, you have to threaten that YOU will change their sheets for them. This ensures a prompt response.
6: If you are expecting visitors and the house is a complete pigstye, slosh some bleach around the bathroom and burn some incense in the living room. At least it will *smell * clean.
Re. cleaning under and behind refrigerators – I don’t think it’s necessary to move the fridge, unless things are really bad back there. Get yourself a 'fridge-coil brush (it’s a long wand of a brush, with stiff bristles) to clean those areas and pull the dustbunnies off the coils.
Once in a while, clean the scummy buildup from the inside of the clotheswasher. In a toploader, it’s the areas where water splashes up. In a frontloader, clean the rubber gasket/seal housing part around the door, or some nasty scummy mold could grow there.
You know what a lot of people neglect? Their front door (and doorbell, mailbox, porchlight, etc.)!
I’ve said it before, I’ll no doubt say it again. If they sell it in your neck of the woods, Viakal is the solution to all your mineral encrustation problems. I never want to find out what’s in it, in case it’s so environmentally unfriendly I won’t eb able to use it anymore. But it really does the business.
In my case, the big learning experience was with the oven. Moving out of our student apartment after a year, and checking everything was in A-OK condition so we would get our deposit money back. “Hey, what’s all this stuff in the cooker?”
We tried scraping all the carbonized goop off, but in the end resported to investing in a spray-can of oven cleaner (how can you not love aerosol Sodium Hydroxide?). After emptying the whole can and leaving it to brew with the door closed for two hours, that ended up as one clean oven.
Things I’ve had to teach my husband- the reason his mother’s toilet is sparkling white and the toilet in the flat he shared with a friend was brown, is because his mother puts bleach down her loo.
I’ve also had to tell him that if I have just put bleach down the toilet last thing at night, and he uses it, he needs to either remember not to flush, or to put more bleach down it. It is that mistake which makes me confused in a “why is this still disgusting? I bleached it last night” way, on average at least twice a month.
Also have to tell him to clean the bath before he gets in it or while he’s taking a shower, there is no point in having a bath and then getting yourself sweaty and covered in chemical bathroom cleaner 5 minutes after you get out.
The inside of a fridge needs cleaning every week or two, with boiling water and soap, otherwise things grow there. Raw meat goes on the bottom shelf, not beside the cheese, and not where it can leak onto the salad.
Things he has taught me: computers are dusty inside- taking the side of the case off and giving it a vacuum every now and then is a good idea. likewise, computer mice work better if you clean the gunk out from taround the tracking ball thing every so often.
I’m scrupulous about cleaning the lint trap after every load. though.