apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Hey ptoo, did you every try that shirt folding trick from ready made that Maxwell linked to here
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/main/archives/002302.html ?

I tried it after seeing the video on another site first but could not get it to work.

Ooooh, I'm glad the topic is cleaning! I've been wanting to ask this question for a while. Can you guys post your "cleaning schedules" here? Such as how often you mop, dust, take down your curtains and wash them, etc. I know it sounds weird but I'd like to devise some sort of regular routine. When I used to see neat and tidy homes in magazines and on TV, I aways thought it didn't look "lived in." Getting rid of clutter and cleaning on a regular basis (or doing anthing on a regular basis, actually) is not part of my default programming.

I used to subscribe to Flylady's emails (flylady.net) and that worked for a while, but her methods are more geared for homeowners and SAHMs, rather than apartment dwellers and DINKs. The one thing I really like is what she calls doing a "house blessing" - we call it Apartment Blessing - which is set the timer for one hour and just clean the stuff you don't do on a regularly scheduled basis. But you have to stop when the timer goes off. There's a few things on the Apartment Blessing list, like cleaning all mirrors in the place, for example. Anyway, it seems that so many of you are super organized and live in modern minimalist pads, so I wonder when, what, and how you clean. I see so many neat apartments in the AT contests, I have to know!!

:) Thanks...

Ok, wait a minute, I just went back to the home page for NYC and there are three threads for today? Did I post in the right place? Darn, I was just getting used to navigating the old site's design...

Ooh, Diane, I've also done FlyLady! I found it difficult to get past all the homemaker-y stuff at first too, but I guess the nice thing about being an apartment-dweller is that I've learned to be adaptable and creative. Heh. I like the "You can do anything for 15 minutes" rule, where you set the timer for 15 minutes, go like mad at cleaning or decluttering, and then stop when the timer goes off. I'm amazed at how much decluttering I got done this way - just a little bit at a time, but done regularly. I've been working that 15 minute system for almost two years now, and my place is totally different from the cluttery hamster cage it used to be! ;)

I don't do a regular cleaning schedule, although the Roomba is set up to vaccuum at 3pm every day and I also take out the trash every day. Instead, I have little habits that help me out. I try and clean/declutter when I'm just moving around the house. If I'm working at home, I take little breaks and put things away or in the trash during them. I put away dirty clothes while I'm waiting for my bathtub to fill or brushing my teeth. I make the bed as soon as I get out of it. I try to do the dishes before I go to bed or work. I go through the mail while I walk up the stairs and toss the junk into the recycling right when I walk in. I do have to really pick up every other week, but without a whole lot of effort, I still manage to keep the place pretty clean. If you "clean" for a minute fifteen times, you've cleaned for fifteen minutes without feeling like you've done a lot of work.

Hi Dorianne,
Flylady is great. When I was doing her method, I had devised a schedule for cleaning, organizing, etc. But it meant that every night of the week, and a lot of the weekend, I'd be doing housework! And my husband helps, it's not like he leaves it all do me. We both work Mon-Fri and I wasn't getting home til about 7pm at the time, so this ticked me off. Now I get home earlier but he's in school and has to study at night, so it's just up to me most of the week. When do people find the time to keep your place clean, organize your home, workout, and socialize when you work a FT job? If you can't afford to hire someone to clean for you? That is the mystery I've yet to figure out.

Diane, one of the best things I ever did was to get a cordless phone with a headset. I spend probably an hour or so on the phone in the evening, talking with different people, i.e., friends, family. So now I just clip the phone onto my belt, wear the headset, and clean away while I chat! Of course, this doesn't work for vacuuming, but I do a lot of other cleaning and decluttering (and sometimes cooking) with a phone attached to my ear - I end up doing about a half hour or so of something every evening. Everybody's used to me now. My closest friend and I are usually both cleaning or decluttering while we talk! (I learned the phone/cleaning trick from her - she is a single mom with two teen daughters and four foster teens...she'd never get anything done if she just sat down to chat.)

I have a rule not to do any housework (except cleaning up after myself, like washing dishes or putting away things I've used) on the weekend. I work in a not-for-profit, and I need the time to unwind (or decorate!), so I try to get things done after work during the week and all the while think about my peaceful weekend ahead. (I also have my take-out-the-trash/recycling routine every morning when I leave the apartment.) When Friday's workday is done, I'm done housework, too. The most I'll do is go through the apartment on Sunday night putting miscellaneous things back into place (or at the very least, into the room they belong in) and getting stuff ready for my workweek. I'm not saying I'm great at keeping everything clean and tidy! But I can keep the dirt down to a minimum this way.

I don't have any tips for dealing with partners and schedules. Homekeeping has always been a challenge for me when I'm partnered, but I'm not partnered at the moment, and that works for me! I would think, though, that even a person who is working and studying could manage 15 minutes worth of chores every day, if they are committed to sharing the load...? The amount of work you each do might not work out evenly all the time, but your partner would have to do some kind of housekeeping if he were living alone, so what's the difference? To my feminist eyes, anyway...division of labour between men and women is always a tough one because there is so much behind it beyond just the home and the relationship. :)

Sorry this is so long!

The key has been (for me) having the cleaning stuff EASILY accessible. Because any effort to "get out" the vacuum/glass cleaner/etc. means there's a chance I'll postpone it. Even in my small apartment, that means having a glass cleaner stashed in the bathroom and one in the kitchen. It also means that most times, there is a Swiffer hanging out on the kitchen counter... not so sexy, but it keeps the dreaded dust-magnet combination of glass and halogen light as dust free as I can get it...

I also love the above rule about setting a timer. It really works, and need not be an hour. Once your space is in relatively good shape, you'd be amazed what 15 minutes can do.

Also, I am soooo not a morning person, so I've found that right when I get up is a great time to do things like prep recycling, empty dishwasher, etc... since I am half asleep, by the time I fully wake up, some of this mundane stuff is done. It's like having elves!

Of course, having said all that, there is a stack of unfolded t-shirts awaiting me at home... the elves took a day or two off this week, apparently. :)

Hi again, Dorianne ~
Oh dear, I'm afraid it sounds like my hubby does nothing and that's not the case. If I cook, he washes dishes, and visa-versa. He is a neatnik and picks up after himself all the time. He usually puts away the laundry when it comes back from the laundromat. And when we're doing a big cleaning on the weekend, he usually does the kitchen and I do the bathroom. What was really funny recently was, after he got back from a three-day course he attended out-of-town, I told him that although I missed him I enjoyed being able to relax without having to put anything away. I basically had piles of stuff everywhere, the bed unmade, clothes in piles, and I waited til just before he got home to tidy up. he started laughing when I told him that because while he was away he was enjoying having his stuff all lined up in a row in his hotel bathroom, and everything in its proper place. haha!

I've gotten better at the little daily things, too, but still not great. I usually suffer from CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome, for those unfamiliar with Flylady) and have to do a big cleaning before guests come over. I guess I really wanted feedback from folks on the bigger cleaning projects, how to manage, etc. Like, how often do people wash their floors? I need a plan of attack that doesn't make me feel like all spare time is spent cleaning. Maybe I should go back to Flylady or to organizedhome.com again.

PS - the headset idea is interesting but I don't like to spend much time on the phone, either. I'd rather blast some music while cleaning.

Ptoo, I so-o-o understand about accessibility. I hate dragging out the vaccuum cleaner, it's so cumbersome! We keep the bucket and mop in the bathtub (behind closed shower doors).

Everyone can feel better after they read this.

I hate mopping floors. I'm waiting for the Roomba floor mopper to come out. I haven't washed the kitchen floor since I moved in here, over a year. The floor has a great tile that looks like stone
(or maybe is stone, but whatever), so it always looks fine. Sure, I'll clean up spills and vacuum or sweep. Guess I should put this on my clean up list for this month.

The bathroom floor, on the other hand, is white tile and always looks dirty. Often, when I change the cat litter, I'll wash it with paper towels (it's small.)

Just goes to show you, if you're on the slobby side, pick the right materials.

> Like, how often do people wash their floors?

About a week after they start looking really bad? I don't keep myself on a schedule like that, plus I don't know if you have lots of other people running through the house, pets who go outside a lot, white tile, etc... If you wanted to figure out yours, I'd write down when you're doing it now on a calendar. If you find two months from now that on average you end up cleaning it every fortnight, pencil it in for next time.

You know what's funny about floor-mopping...I once timed myself - yes I did! - and it took me exactly twelve minutes to sweep and mop my entrance hall/kitchen/dining nook floor. Including filling the mop bucket. Hee!

I had old, crappy, 40-year old lino tile floors that were impossible to keep clean, but recently, with family help, I installed peel and stick vinyl tiles and they stay pretty tidy - and I have two black-haired cats. I swear by my swiffer sweeper and swiffer wet jet (I actually threw out my other mop), and I find if I do a quick sweep twice a week (all that cat hair), do a wet jet mop once a week, and wipe up spills right away, it stays really neat-looking. (I also swear by my ostrich feather duster for everything else.) It hardly takes any time at all. It takes me less time to do the sweep than it's taking me to write this post!

I have a disability (fibromyalgia) which has made managing the bigger chores difficult. Laundry is my special burden in this life, because there's no laundry access in my building and I have to use a laundromat. Still figuring that one out. (If anyone has tips, let me know!) But fibro has also made me address my perfectionism, and I like what FlyLady has to say that. I used to think, "Oh why bother, if I can't do it perfectly," and so I wouldn't do anything. I used to think you had to move all the furniture every time you mopped, and that you had to get into all the corners every single time you vacuumed. Poo on that! Now I find that just doing a little bit every day keeps it together, and then you have energy to, oh, vacuum the corners properly every few months. Having fibro, I can't let the jobs get big, because it's actually painful to do things like crisis cleaning. So keeping up on it in tiny doses and not worrying about getting it "perfect" really does work for me.

Oh yeah, and I'm totally with Patrick on keeping cleaners where you use them. I keep two of whatever I need, in the kitchen and in the bathroom, and that makes a huge difference. Mostly I use Windex and bleach (environmentalists, don't give out to me, please!), so I keep bottles of each under both sinks. And I do use j-cloths (throw them out when they get yucky), paper towels, and swiffer cloths/pads) to clean with, which I know is also not very enviro-friendly, but with two cats and crappy laundry access, it's also reality.

I try to sweep the floor twice a week; I mop every other week. I'd love to do it more frequently, but.

I mop with a little ammonia and a lot of water.

Please, please no one judge me for this, but I'm gonna say it: I have someone come for about 3.5 hours once every two weeks. I pay her more per hour than I usually earn myself, and it is SO worth it. We took a hiatus from it for the summer and the place has really suffered.
This is not to say that I do nothing on my own behalf. Basically I dust the big things and run the vaccuum a couple of times in between professional visits, clean the kitchen every day (including the floor every 4-6 days), do the laundry, wipe down the bathroom counter, change sheets, make the bed, change the cat litter. What I don't do myself anymore is full-on dusting of everything, mopping the floor or cleaning the bathroom.
I think having help twice a month has been a key component in keeping my marriage in tact for six-plus years.
There, I said it!

Sharon, I think that's really great! That's something we will definitely do when our budget permits (we'll have paid off our CC debt in about a year - yay!). I don't think it's something to be self-conscious about -- tons of people I've known (even blue collar workers and waitresses, not just rich people), have hired cleaning ladies (or guys) for whatever frequency they can afford. It's a very sensible thing to do. When this debt is paid off... aaahh!

Dorianne, my laundromat (Bessie's on the UES) picks up and drops off. Maybe there's one in your neighborhood that does, too.

Diane, that's a good idea! Thanks, I'm going to look into it!

Sharon, ain't nothin' wrong with that! Before I got into the highly underpaid work of the not-for-profit sector, I paid an independent cleaning woman to come in 5 hours a month, split into 2 visits. It was totally worth it. AND it paid a decent wage to a single mom (not to mention flexible hours).

I have to admit, my oven has not been the same since.

Hey Sharon
Don't feel so bad. I came out and said a similar thing the last time we had a cleaning thread
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/main/archives/002741.html

Except when re-reading it now, mine sounds so much more negative than your's.

We still have our cleaner and she also comes every other week. She also does the ironing which she agreed up front to do. My wife and I clean up a lot after meal time with the toddlers but where she and I differ is in the use of paper towels vs. cloth and the tremendous amounts of windex she sprays. I'm a bit more frugal when it comes to that and I can't stand the thought of wasting all that paper but all the face cloths we had from various towel sets over the years that I started using for cleaning up have been thrown in the trash as my wife was so used to throwing out the paper towels (so she threw them out without realizing at the time). Out of about 20 face cloths we are down to the last one so the paper towel usage is way up.

Patrick (the other one) ~
Did you happen to catch "Martha" earlier in the week? She'll teach ya how to take care of those t-shirts. She was folding with David Spade and Susan Lucci (ugh!), both on different days. At Maxwell's advice, I checked out the show and Martha is positively radiant these days...

Jamie Pup and P(too) ~
Couldn't get over the environmental guilt of using Swiffers, so I actually wash my Swiffer dusters and dustmop pads (hot water, air dry)when I do a small load of rags every few weeks. (Our house has a huge basement laundry area, so I don't have to watch them pile up.) May not be practical for you apartment dwellers, though.

Diane ~
I say make up your own rules about when you need to do certain chores. Start with the FlyLady's schedule and modify it so you can keep your sanity. Me, personally? I've found I don't really want to be thinking about house cleaning that constantly, though she does say that once it becomes habit, it becomes automatic and, I assume, doesn't require any thought. You have to admire her use of behavior modification and re-framing techniques as techniques for cleaning house, though.

Abbe

Abbe--
re: folded tees
Knowing how and actually DOING are two different things. I have a pretty good system, which involves a GAP-like folding board that is actually a cutting board. You may or may not actually see it (and the end results) on Small Space Big Style.

Sharon--
Funny and sad that there is the need to apologize or feel weird about having a cleaning person. No shame in that at ALL.

I've done the shirt folding trick from the japanese video. I didn't catch on to the trick at first, but then figured it out. Great party trick. I never use it for actual folding though.

I just wanted to say that I've never understood the Swiffer love. Either I am an idiot, or my floors are disgraceful, because it seems to push around as much dust/dirt as it picks up. Of course, I could be an idiot with disgraceful floors, too.