Dana K. White

A SLOB COMES CLEAN

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Daily Checklists, Weekly Tasks, and . . . Dusting Tropical Fruit

By | 4 Comments

The first week of our Return to Routine is complete.  Over the course of the week, I have done most many of the items on my Daily Checklist every most days.
I have, however, done my Weekly Tasks each day.  And now that the week is over, my house looks nice, feels nice, and overall makes me happy.  It may not be modern and impeccably stylish, but when it’s clean . . . it’s a beautiful home.
Today, Friday, was dusting and vacuuming.  Since dusting had been my 4yo’s job all summer, I took the time to be quite thorough today.
Y’know, even dusting the tropical fruit.
I bought that fruit when I lived in Thailand.  I dreamed of using it as a quirky decoration in my future perfectly-clean-all-the-time home.  My future perfectly-behaved-and-interested-in-their-mother’s-past children would play with it, and listen to all of my fascinating stories . . . again and again.
But the fruit lived in my closet for at least 8 years, until I unearthed it recently.  The reality is that as a slob, things that are just-for-lookin’-pretty don’t really happen.  If there’s a flat surface available for a “tableau” it’s likely to also be available for random stuff-stacking.  The pretty things get lost in the crowd.  In my years of housekeeping despair, I gave up on displaying anything.  It wasn’t until I started making progress last year that I started to see the point in trying to decorate.
This fruit makes me happy.  It’s not a designer touch, just something I enjoy looking at.  And when it’s sitting on a surface all alone, I don’t mind dusting it.
If you’ve read from the beginning, you know that I didn’t even attempt Weekly Tasks until I was months into this journey.  They overwhelmed me.  It wasn’t until the house was more under control due to consistency in my Daily Tasks that I started trying to be consistent with the big stuff.
But being consistent with BOTH the big stuff and the little stuff has helped me see how they work together.  If I don’t do the little stuff (the daily checklist tasks), big things like mopping become an all morning job.  If I haven’t been sweeping the floor everyday, then there’s a very good chance that I’ll have to do more than just sweep before I can mop.  I’ll probably have to move last Sunday’s pile of newspaper to the recycling basket and pick up and distribute toys and other junk.  In the end, I begin to view mopping as a huge job and let myself make excuses to not do it in the future.
But, even though I’ve known for a while that the daily tasks make the weekly ones possible, it hit me today how much the weekly ones help me on the daily ones.
Confusing enough?
If there isn’t an abundance of junk covering every surface, it’s easier to dust.  But it’s when I dust that my Selective Vision clears up, and I see the things that have somehow escaped my field of vision during the daily 5-minute-pickup-times.  For example:

These were sitting on top of our TV.  The video is one of many that end up piled there.  At least the video has an actual reason to be in that spot.

But the lint brush?  Really?

And the worst part is that I’m pretty sure that lint brush had been there for . . . several months.

Several months when hubby and I have been watching the DVDs of 24.

Nightly.

And we’re on Season 3, which means that we’ve watched seasons one and two already . . . making that 48 episodes that we’ve watched on that TV, and somehow I never noticed the lint brush.

I have issues.

My point is that it all works together.  Even when I’m making a point to straighten, pick-up, etc. . . I still miss what should be obvious.  But by having a Weekly Routine in place, one which makes me do more detailed cleaning tasks, I am able to compensate for my Selective Vision.

Make sense?

Comments

  1. Amanda says

    totally makes sense. i recently cleared off the bathroom counters, and have kept them cleared for 2 weeks now. its made cleaning the bathroom go a lot faster and easier!

    right now i'm still working on conquering my daily list. hoping to get to weekly chores soon. just got to tell myself one step at a time or i'll overload.

    Reply

  2. Bonnie says

    I get the point. I totally think getting the "routine"in order helps with the mentality of it all as well. If I don't empty the dishwasher in the morning it backs up alot all day long.

    Reply

  3. Tammy says

    Since being married I have had to learn how to clean. I use to live on a farm, when I was younger in litterly a shack of a house, and after my brother left to live with his girl friend my father started calling on me to help him drive tractors, steer vehicles while he pulled them from one place to another do he could cut grass, plant in the garden and various other tasks that you do t normally see teenage girls doing. My mother never asked me to help her around the house because I helped my father. But my father would get mad at me because I never did anything in the house, that he saw.

    After me and my husband got our first apartment I struggled with keeping the tiny place clean. It boggled him. But most of the time I felt it was rather clean. It was small and we had a lot of STUFF so most of the time I was just tidying the stuff and making it look neat.

    Now we have a HOUSE, and a seven month old, along with my corgi daughter. And I have been doing better with keeping up on the cleaning, though my husband could beg to differ. Many times arguments start over the house being clean. I try to do my best in a days time, sometimes I hardly get anything done with trying to take care of little Sarah.

    During the argument my husband is “cleaning” because I just don’t do it the way he thinks it should be done. It usually ends with a bigger mess for me to clean but he throws a tantrum like a six year old and actually makes a mess. He always apologizes after an argument though.

    Today I did some vacuuming and dusting. What does he do, he tracks in particals from the track he ran on at work with his men. At least this time the mess wasn’t a result from a tantrum lol.

    Reply

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