Cleaning Up

 

Well, not exactly like that....snipped a lot out because its just not needed. I was gaslit three years ago and fell into a depression. Cleaned just enough on my worst days to keep the worst of the dirt away. Mostly just disorganized and needed dusting more often.

Massive house clean once or twice a week all day long. House mostly sort of clean. Then I stumbled across a cleaning list on one of the mast cell groups. It was a simple list, but I've taken it and tweaked it. It works! I've been cleaning from the list and after two weeks the house is immaculate. I am having minor disability issues. When the rubber of weeks of asthma hits the road we'll see, but considering how customizable it is to your day I'm predicting that it will likely work.

Okay, the daily - all things I have found I can do on the worst days. I've always made my bed in the morning so this hasn't been difficult on no balance days. Back to the Daily List.

  1. Make bed
  2. Unload, load and run dishwasher
  3. Pick up bedroom and/or living room
  4. Run Roomba
  5. Wipe down kitchen
  6. Check laundry, run machine when full 

Simple list. If you hit something that is too much you modify and more on guilt free. If it's a bad day I put the pots and pans into a dishpan under the sink to wash later if they don't fit in the dishwasher, but most everything fits.

The list also assigned a day to do laundry. I don't stick hard and fast with that because with us going in and out of the pool, and the extra showering that involves the laundry piles up. What I do is wash/dry the laundry as it piles up, and then fold the weeks worth on Friday morning. Except for the sheets for my bed. I don't even fold them any longer, I put them in a wicker basket and put the basket on top of my wooden cabinet. I am obsessional about having clean sheets and clean thick towels! That's the beauty of this list, and I'm not a lists person. It's fully customizable to your lifestyle.

Original list has tasks only on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Not quite enough for the size of my house. 

Here's my version with customization in place. If you run into being sick you do the first thing only, the daily. Not quite right - you do #1 and 2. This list allows you to do or not do, switch things around. My goal is 90 minutes or less a day.

Monday 

  1. Do daily list
  2. Swiffer kitchen floor
  3. Wipe down fridge, appliances and cabinets.
  4. Pick up and organize.  

Tuesday

  1. Do daily list        
  2. Clean bathrooms - quick scrub
  3. Clean bathrooms - deep scrub
  4. Pick up and organize.
  5. Swiffer floors 

 Three bathrooms in this house so that's plenty to do! Also you're going to want as much automated help as possible. I have a Roomba, rechargeable power scrubber brush, several Swiffers and every cleaning gadget one can imagine. It helps so much! The right tool helps so much! In the laundry room I have copious laundry baskets for holding clean laundry to be folded along with organized supplies for every level of laundry problem.

Wednesday

  1. Do daily list 
  2. Dust bedrooms
  3. Change linens
  4. Pick up
  5. Swiffer floors

Thursday

  1. Do daily list 
  2. Swiffer living room
  3. Dust living room
  4. Check dust filters/dehumidifer/humidifer filters. (Obviously you're not using them all at the same time! I usually have one or two going at the same time)
  5. Pick up and straighten
  6. Water plants

Friday

  1. Do daily list 
  2. Fold laundry

Saturday

  1. Do daily list 

Enjoy the rest of the weekend! 

This is a small enough list that it takes little time at all and how you arrange it depends only on you. For example, I did not dust the living room or bedroom this week because I have been very slightly wheezing, so that's tentatively on my list for today. If the wheezing is still there, I'll dust on Saturday wearing a mask. I do have N95 masks for cleaning. Instead of the dusting I cleaned the bathroom windows in the master bath, and the master bedroom windows. It's all good. I fit the bigger cleaning items around the daily. 

The original schedule that fell into my hands that I've modified says this:

*** The schedule should bend for you, not the other way around *** 

There's no guilt or should have attached to this. For me it was a way forward with the mast cell and the balance issues post stroke.  No shitty opinions of ignorant others that aren't disabled, no guilt!

 

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