Self Help

A great way cut down cleaning time by changing organizational patterns is to plan not to let things get dirty. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cleaning up. Thus, you can put rugs both inside and outside the entrance doors so that dirt and trash will get caught there before being dragged into the house. You can put foil on the bottom of the oven so that if anything spills, all you need to do is change the foil rather than clean the oven. You can use cook-in bags for things that might splatter. If you don’t have a cook-in bag, at least use a pot with very high sides.

One of the hardest problems for me to deal with was soap scum in the bathroom from the hand soap. It melts into the soap dish and foams over the side, hardening into semi-cement. I hate it. Luckily, just at the time I was ready to do something about it, soft soap became popular. That was my solution. The only problem is that it is quickly used up by my teenagers. So when it is time for a refill I fill the container with dishwashing liquid. Sometimes I put slivers of bar soap in it together with a few drops of perfume. It works fine, making a perfumed creamy soap. This way, too, I can get rid of those pieces of soap that are too little to use but which I am too frugal to throw away.

Another method to speed up cleaning is to spot chronic problem areas and look for a solution. I had a trash can for throwing away food in my kitchen. It had no top because I thought it would be too much of a problem to remove the top each time, and it would be too difficult to do with scraps in my hand. The can was not very satisfactory because it was unsightly and the food kept splattering onto the white wall behind it, requiring frequent wiping with bleach and soap.

When I finally awoke to the fact that this was a chronic problem which needed a solution, I was tuned in to solving it though I didn’t have any idea how I would do it. Soon afterward I was wandering through a discount store and saw a garbage can with a lid and a foot pedal that opened the lid. This kept the food scraps covered and when the top lifted back it protected the white wall from streaks and spots of garbage entering the can. I had seen these cans frequently but, until I had identified my specific cleaning problem, I had not really noticed them. If you identify a problem with a view to solving it, often the solution soon comes knocking at your door.

Another way to organize for order is to put things away. This is a very hard habit to get into, but it is a top priority. I learned a little about this on the day after Thanksgiving. The shopping center was really crowded. The shoe store salesmen were bustling around. Shoe boxes and shoes were everywhere, some piled by the customer and some where the customer had been before. When I asked him how he kept all these boxes and shoes straight, he gave me these tips which can also give you ideas for your home:

1. Don’t let too much time go by between straightening up. Keep things up.
2. Each salesman has his own area of the store for his responsibility so the manager has an idea who is falling down on the cleaning job when he sees what area is messy.
3. Every time a salesman goes in the back to get another shoe, he takes something with him whether it is his or not.
4. The fourth thing he did not tell me - I saw it. It was that he had his standard and he personally saw that the system worked.