The Excuse-Proof Way to Vacuum the Spots Most People Skip
I get it. You’re proud of yourself if you manage to even vacuum as many times as it says to on your cleaning schedule. Me too. My personal goal is a quick vacuum with my cordless in the kitchen every night, a thorough vacuuming of common areas twice a week, and vacuuming the bedrooms once a week. But all of this rarely happens. And you know what’s even more impossible to achieve? Vacuuming areas of the floor that the vacuum cleaner can’t get to easily.
When it comes to the tight spaces, say, between the armchairs and the side table in the living room, or the space underneath your bed, I’m embarrassed to say that I couldn’t even tell you how often those spots of carpet get vacuumed.
It’s the physical and therefore mental hurdle that makes it so rare. Once I’ve gone over the usual areas, I have to stop running the vacuum cleaner, put it down, move the piece of furniture, vacuum, then drag the furniture back and hope I haven’t tracked any dirt around as I do it. With all of that mental and physical efforts, well—vacuuming under the furniture just doesn’t happen much!
Or at least, it didn’t. But I’ve recently found a way to trick myself and get it done.
Why I Move the Furniture First
When I’m feeling either ambitious or the house is particularly filthy, I’ll move all the furniture in a room out from the wall or away from the spot of floor it covers first. Then I vacuum those never-cleaned areas all at once. Afterwards, I put the furniture back and vacuum as usual.
By moving all the furniture first, I eliminate the stop-and-start that drains all my energy to even think about. I do the (physical and metaphorical) heavy lifting before I even start vacuuming so the decision-making part is taken out of the equation. Overcoming this mental hurdle is what takes this too-often set-aside task from neglected to finished.
It might be an obvious solution to some of you reading this, but it was a lightbulb moment for me. A small switch in the order that I do things somehow made my vacuuming efforts feel a whole lot more surmountable.