My Aunt’s “Columns” Trick Is a Brilliant Cleaning Tip to Follow

I come from a family of professional housekeepers. My most cherished time with my mom and aunt was spent shadowing them at work: rising before the sun to tag along during deep cleans of apartment complex clubhouses so I could “play” on the gym equipment, staying up past my bedtime to stow into banks and doctors’ offices after hours, or getting unofficial tours of client homes that were elaborate beyond my comprehension. 

While they worked meticulously from cubicle to cubicle, room to room, I “helped” by completing menial assignments of dusting or collecting paper shreds from tiny trash cans. That took about 10 minutes. I spent the rest of the time sneaking treats from the nearest candy jar and waiting for their breaks, when we would retreat to the car to rest our (their) tired feet and snack on canned ham salad with crackers (a true delicacy). What I’m saying is, between ham salad feasts I had a lot of downtime to marvel at their cleaning strategy — something I have come to know as a true art perfected.

Anyone who’s set out to deep-clean anything has experienced the initial stab of panic and overwhelm — feelings my aunt and mom had to conquer daily. It wasn’t until I became an adult with my own home to maintain that I started mentally retracing their steps. So much ground to cover in so little time, and so many different environments. How did they do it and do it well?

I asked my aunt, and the answer is ridiculously simple but also extremely effective. Clean in columns, she said: top to bottom, left to right. It works because it requires you to look up while cleaning (something many forget to do) and keeps you on track by forcing you to resist bouncing around and sporadically scrubbing spots. No cobweb-covered recessed light or dusty baseboard goes unnoticed. And let’s just say that the first time I followed suit was the first time I realized my bathroom ceiling vent existed. Big yikes.

What makes this basic, thorough tip so great is that it can be applied to virtually any cleaning task or method: vacuuming (corner to corner to corner to corner, my aunt recommends), wall washing, dusting, sink scrubbing, and counter buffing. Tackling whatever surface you’re working on one square-inch at a time and putting blinders on against the rest is a strategy that may seem overly simple, but is proven to work. 

Now that I am responsible for a lot more than the occasional dust or trash removal, I know for a fact I can do a mean deep-clean — and I have my mom and aunt to thank for it.