What strikes me in this thread is how little TIME people in the US have for house cleaning.
You people have insanely long commutes and , in my European eyes, equally insane long work hours, even if not all of those hours are spent actually working. It is not strange, then, that if both partners work, no-one has time for cooking, tidying, cleaning, or anything else in the way of true home making. Home making is a job, and like everything else, it needs productive hours, not being squeezed in evenings when people are tired or on weekends when they have other stuff to do or on sick days.
Messy homes are a flaw of American work culture, not an individual flaw, IMHO. In the Netherlands, everyone is home by six o clock and most mothers work part time.
Seriously, my sister and her husband both work long hours at their jobs, and have two children at home. Her house is usually immaculate, and on the worst of days is only “reasonably tidy”. And she doesn’t have a house cleaner, either. It’s just the way they are.
I, on the other hand, am home many hours most days, and still struggle to keep up with everything.
I wish I could use my commute as an excuse, but it consists of only a set of stairs, and I still don’t much care about whether my house is messy. I have plenty of time available, but there are much more interesting things to do than clean.
I doubt if I had more leisure time, I’d be filling it with housechores.
I would indulge in activities that I would want to do. Cleaning a toilet wouldn’t be one of them.
I think this is one of the downsides of living alone. Growing up, my mother used to make us kids to clean the house. She’d leave a list for us to work on when we’d come home from school. Vacuum this, dust that. Then on the weekends, we’d do the stuff requiring Lysol and sponges. She only had to mop the kitchen floor and clean her room.
I hated it, but pleasing my mother was a motivator. Surprisingly, I always got the kudos for my work ethic. you with the face was the slacker.
So now everything is clean. I feel like I’ve contributed a ton to the local land fill in the form of wipes and dirty sponges and dust bunnies, as well as bags upon bags of Stuff I Used to Use But Have Long Forgotten About. But I do feel some pride that I managed to do it and still work on my crafts at the same time. Maybe I can have it all. A good job. A good hobby. And a clean apartment!
Congrats on getting the joint cleaned up! For maintenance I have a little system I call,
Two Things Before Work, Two Things Before Bed.
A “thing” is any cleaning task large or small. I don’t really judge the magnitude of my “things” or force myself onto any form of schedule – as long as I do two Things before work, and two Things before bed, I consider it all good. So somedays I might do small Things, like picking up soda cans off the coffee table and dropping them in the recycling bin, or I might do bigger Thing, like cleaning the cat litter. Under the Two Things approach, everything “counts.” The key point is over the course of a week the Two Things System accounts for 28 minor cleaning tasks.
Since this system tends to help fight clutter and promote general tidyness, on the weekend I just spend like an hour or so cleaning the bathroom and kitchen and the place looks pretty alright (I tend to stick to the requirements of hygiene - dusting? really?).
I am good with habits and rituals so this system works better for me than the more flexible ad hoc “5 minutes where you find it” timer system.
Believe me, when you live in Chicago, dusting *is *a requirement of hygiene. We get this sticky, greasy black “dust” on every horizontal surface. It’s disgusting, and it even happens if the windows are closed. I don’t know WTF it is; dust in the 'burbs wasn’t like this!
Also, there’s very little grass for the pollen to get settled down in, so it floats around until it finds my coffee tables. Seriously, I’ve dusted some days to find a yellow rag in my hand when I’m done, the indoor pollen count can be so high! In a household with a former micropreemie with “delicate lungs” and a COPDer, getting rid of pollen is almost medical care.
What was it, two, three days ago when I posted that I dusted? There’s grimy black stuff starting to gather already, and the windows to that room have been closed until this morning. I’ll probably dust again today, just because your post reminded me of it, but left to my normal routine, I wouldn’t notice it for another week, and then I’d stall for two more before cleaning it again.
I’d also consider too much dust to be a health problem. Myself, if I get a faceful of dust, I’m sneezy and have awful nose trouble for the rest of the day (this is an inconvenient allergy for a librarian to have, btw :p).
These days a lot of us have weather-tight houses that don’t get enough fresh air. Wall-to-wall carpeting and not enough fresh air (aka drafts) contribute to mold, dust, and dust mite problems that frequently worsen asthma or allergies.
Well, I guess by dusting I was envisioning frisking over tchotchkes with a feather duster, as opposed to (apparently) scrubbing diesel particulates off your counter.
Anyway I’m sure it’s a health issue for some people, but it isn’t for me. I live in NYC but we do not find ourselves caked in greasy airborne grime on a daily basis. We have hardwood throughout and no serious allergies. I might wipe down decorative items once, or twice a year at most.
Ew, is that what it is? sigh Probably. We’re pretty close to the highway, a block away from the electric company’s fleet management, and while big semi’s don’t come down my street, lots and lots of delivery trucks and city trucks do.
I don’t need to “scrub”, exactly, but I do need to use a wet cloth (baby wipes work very well, except that my preferred brand changed their wipes, and now they shed. grr.) to get the gunk off. Dry dusting is a childhood memory for me.
