Submitted 7 months ago by parasocialite@lemmy.world to [deleted]
I’ve just swept and mopped. Once the floor dries, I could easily go sweep again and turn up more dust and dirt. If I were to mop again, I’m almost certain the water in my bucket would be filthy. It feels like it’s never actually clean.
Beyond that, there’s dusting, cleaning windows, sinks, countertops, bathrooms, and probably things I don’t even consider. How do you all stay on top of these things?
You’re never going to be sterile; good enough is good enough.
Keep an abundance of cleaning supplies. Soaps and rags in the kitchen and the bathroom. Think about investing in a vacuum and a carpet cleaning machine.
Some people find it easier to do one big push where they clean the whole house in one session; other folks like to do a little bit every day. Figure out which type you are.
Also, check and see what cleaners charge in your area. It might be worth it to have a pro come in and do the work for you. Figure out what your leisure time is worth to you and then compare.
I’m the little bit everyday person. I’ll clean the bathrooms one day, then vacuum the floors the next. Wash clothes later in the week, something I need to do today.
I feel like doing a bit a day helps keep things cleaner than if I did it all at once. Things can appear overwhelming pretty quickly, at which point I won’t want to do it at all.
I’m a combination. If something looks bad I’ll get to it right away, and try to do a blitz once a week.
This is the way. I use Trello and have automated task creation on days and use its Kanban. Also a great habit to get into is if you walk into a room do one cleaning thing while you’re in it. Walk into a room and forget what you’re looking for. Take a moment to do some quick cleaning or organization. The little bit adds up and does not become overwhelming
I’m an all at once person and I also think that’s less clean. It’s easier for me to think about it like shaving: you’re more likely to have a grown out patch of hair if you do a big shave once a week vs a daily trim.
We got a service. We’ve two cats, a dog, and a toddler, and no family closeby to help with child care. We did the math and decided we needed the help. It’s fantastic.
I can’t believe no one has said this… Don’t wear shoes inside the house.
This will dramatically reduce the griminess of your floors.
Its a big commitment. You’ll prioritise shoes you can just slide your feet into, or at least out of. I still have nice boots and stuff but wear them less often.
As a Canadian, I still find it shocking that people don’t take their shoes off inside. That’s just gross.
It’s always the Brits and the yanks
Fuckin barbarians 😅
To be fair, some people just aren’t that flexible and its a bit of a chore tying & untying laces.
My floors are clean and warm enough for me to walk barefoot. I can’t imagine not taking of my shoes at home. I treat shoes as a necessary evil. Not even barefoot shoes give you the same comfort as just a bare foot. Can’t imagine not having the feeling in my life. Also, the airflow around my feet - wouldn’t want to spend more time than necessary in a closed shoe. I even wear slippers at work for this reason.
Yeah I can even feel dust on the floors with my bare feer, tells me when it’s time to vacuum.
If you’re sweeping, it’s possible you’re kicking a lot of dust up in the air, so that by the time you’re done mopping, it has resettled back down on the floor. You could mitigate this by vacuuming instead, or opening your windows and using fans to blow air out of your house. But also, you’ll never get all of the dust anyway.
In newer construction, especially high-rise apartments, there’s a lot less dust. But in older buildings, it’s just an endless torrent, and the solution has been…
Robot vacuums
While they must be maintained, and won’t work well if you’re not diligent about picking up and keeping obstacles off the floor, they make it far easier to keep the whole house clean by reducing the overall volume of interior dust and debris inside the building envelope.
To illustrate (this will be gross) I change the bags about every month and weigh them and it’s usually ~1 kg per bag, so each year they remove roughly 30-40 kg. And every time I’ve cut them open to see what’s causing all the weight (or make sure nothing important was eaten) it appears to be mostly dust and hair.
It’s freaky thinking how all of that would be floating around, settling on surfaces, collecting in corners and crevices, saturating carpets and upholstery, and of course getting breathed in constantly. Instead I don’t have to manually dust and vacuum very often and our indoor AQI is usually better than outside.
So yeah. Robots.
Robots is great, but the privacy implications scare me.
One is just smart enough to set a daily schedule, no WiFi or cameras, but it’s bullet proof and easier to maintain than the others. It’s possible to not sacrifice privacy.
Ate there ones that aren’t loud? I work from home and never leave the house, and if robot vacuums are only ever used when you jagger the house, then they aren’t for me
We use a Neato Botvac Connected (it’s an older model) and the eco mode is quiet enough that we can run it at night. I’m an exceptionally light sleeper and it has worked for me. If we are leaving the house for a while I set it to turbo and that’s loud but cleans even better.
Highly recommend Neato. I think we’ve had ours for 7 or 8 years at this point.
Keeping your house clean is a good thing to do. But it’s easy to stray into obsession territory. There lies madness.
Remember we all have far more visitor microbes in our bodies than our own host cells. Life is dirty. Life is germy. Embrace this.
You don’t need to live in a hoarder hell hole, but the sooner you accept that living is a messy business the more time you’ll have to enjoy actually living. Cleaning tasks should be quick and efficient, not sterilization.
Beyond that, there’s dusting, cleaning windows, sinks, countertops, bathrooms, and probably things I don’t even consider.
Of all the items you’ve listed, I personally rank floors as the most important to clean, followed by bathrooms, countertops, sinks, windows, and finally dusting. These are in order of which are used more frequently and how easily they’d be noticed. A dirty window (on the outside) is rarely dirty enough to outright block the sunlight, but grime on the floor will be tracked into other rooms, worsening the issue. Bathrooms are used daily, so would bother me if they’re not at least reasonably seemly.
For keep floor clean, the zeroth step is to prevent dirt and grime from coming in at the onset. A shoes-off policy in the home is probably the most substantial in this effort. That’s not to say you have to go barefoot – although I do think it’s quite nice – since indoor slippers or shoes are an option. The next step would be to rip out all wall-to-wall carpet. I have a full rant about the drawbacks of carpet, but it will suffice to say that carpet traps dust and dirt whereas hard surfaces like tile or laminate do not.
After that, you may need to identify what exactly is dirtying your floors. If it’s loose particulate (eg food crumbs), that’s going to need a different solution than if it’s loose hairs, which is different than dust or clothes threads. Crumbs or hair might suggest localized sweeping in the kitchen or bathroom will be most effective, while dust or threads suggest you need to adjust your clothes dryer settings, or your central air system needs a new/different filter.
The thing to keep in mind with all this is that grime does not come from nowhere: there is always a source, and the evidence will lead you to what’s most effective to keep your home maintained.
I have a full rant about the drawbacks of carpet, but it will suffice to say that carpet traps dust and dirt whereas hard surfaces like tile or laminate do not.
Also, carpets wear, and generate dust themselves. Think of all the lint you find in a dryer, and compare the area of your clothing to the area of carpet.
I didn’t include it in my original comment because it’s kind of tangential, but carpets also trap rusty staples and – very strangely – rusty finish nails. Over six years, my feet have found dozens of these staples and nails twisted within my house’s carpet, each of a shape which I have never owned.
I honestly don’t know what the previous owners of this place did, but I recently had every shred of carpet ripped out and replaced with wood-look tile. I bought myself some indoor slippers for winter and haven’t looked back since.
I use the concept of “vectors”, but it’s basically what you’re saying. Floors are a primary vector, clean floors will help keep other things clean. Another example, you can think of say e-coli on your kitchen counter and see your cat as a vector for the e-coli to get to the counter. Oh, dirty hands are another huge one.
I have a roomba to get rid of 80% every day. I strive to manually vacuum once a week, because the roomba doesn’t do corners and some hard to reach bits. Nor can it do stairs, obviously. After vacuuming I run a steam mop over the floors, which is amazing and SO much faster than regular mopping, without any cleaning agents.
Since its a combination steam mop/hand thing, I also use it for the windows. That’s not on any schedule, just when I think they’re dirty.
I wetwipe the countertop after I make dinner, and I clean it with soap whenever it looks dirty enough to be worth the effort.
Honestly, things like wooden floors can be hand-scrubbed four or five times before being actually clean, but it feel that anything that’s stuck on there after running the steam mop is probably not coming off during normal use, so it qualifies as clean enough.
What is a steam mop?
Apparently is called a “steam vapor cleaner”
I’d love a roomba but I’m horrified at the privacy nightmare hahaha
I have a rechargeable stick vac I use whenever the cat hair builds up too much.
I have the dumbest, non-mapping I could find. It works basically just as well as the 800 euro hypersmart ones
I pay someone to clean once a month. I hate cleaning and it’s worth the $200 to me.
I keep my sink clear of dishes and take out my own trash, but the rest is just stuff I don’t want to do.
I take a day off work occasionally to clean my apartment. It can be hard to remain motivated doing it on my own time during the weekend, but if it’s Monday during work hours it’s not so bad!
What do they do? I’ve been thinking of getting a cleaning person but I just wonder how much they can do if they come once a week or every other week. Like, I don’t think I have cleaned the windows in the 3.5 years I’ve lived in my previous apartment. And I absolutely do not want to waste money on someone cleaning windows more than once a year. I have to clean the kitchen every day at least once because I cook a lot and it’s a dirty mess and otherwise there is just no room to cook. I need the dishes, so the dishwasher is running once a day. I also have to at least sweep the kitchen floor once a day. The apartment floor is constantly dirty so I sweep here and there all the time too. It’s not very tidy in here, but we have a toddler and even if everything was super tidy it would stay that way for 15 mins max. Also it would take me longer to explain where stuff goes (we do have a lot of stuff) than to put it away myself or just surrender to untidiness. I don’t care if some vase or decoration has dust. I have a lot of laundry and no dryer so I cannot wait for a cleaner to come and do my laundry every other week. So the only thing that is left that I can outsource is maybe the bathroom. But it then seems ridiculous to have a cleaning person come in to just clean the bathroom. (This is actually the room I enjoy cleaning the most, but I rarely get around to doing it.)
The cleaning person seems to take as long as it takes. The first time someone from there came, she was here for like 8 hours. Now that they come monthly it doesn’t need as much work.
I used to use another service but they weren’t great. More expensive, less cleaning, missed appointments, gig work nonsense.
Most organized companies will do a deep cleaning to form a clean baseline, or let you add on extras per session to address when you need. Usually it’s hourly based with a minimum time requirement. If you don’t need them to do something, it might work out to be cheaper if doing it would have put you over the minimum time.
If you find a self employed cleaning person, they are likely to be more flexible and able to handle the odd tasks like tidying up or handling laundry. Maybe even help organize or do other routine tasks that you don’t have the bandwidth for.
Preach. Also
Me eating ass: “don’t put clean dishes on the cat feeding counter, it gets bits on it!”
I have 2 dogs and a cat and have hard floors throughout. The roboVac runs twice per day and is always FULL when I empty it after every run. In addition my roboMop runs 3 days a week. My job at home is no longer cleaning but, roboTending 😂
But yes, taking off your shoes from outdoors is a must. We all keep a pair birks just for use inside.
I invested in a self emptying one. It empties the dustbin and automatically cleans the mop. I just have to dump the waste water every week or so, and fill up the clean.
So wait, you take your shoes off at the door, but your dogs (who invariably step in their own piss and shit), have free reign over where you’re walking with bare feet?
You need a meta robot that cares for your robot fleet.
There are robot mops now? Are there any that do not send your house floor plan to the company?
Most will still work without an internet connection, you just lose some of the QoL functionality. I believe some can also work with Home Assistant, for self hosting those functions. Unfortunately they generally require an initial internet connection to set up.
I’m a little late to the party but keep in mind that people who stay on top of cleaning and have sparkling houses are doing just that and nothing else because it is so time consuming. You don’t want to invest all your free time (or all your time) into cleaning that will never end. Good enough is good enough.
Not true, it takes me a moment to put away my things into drawers and tidy up after myself.
Not sure why you got downvoted as cleaning efficiently and maintaining things as you go (rinsing off stuff as you cook for example) makes the whole process so much faster.
For example imagine you’re going through your clothes looking for an outfit to wear for the night. You can either dump all your clothes into a pile while trying things on or try them on and hang them up as you go. That way when you’re done, you don’t have a pile of clothes to deal with.
That’s not what I mean, I’m not talking about tidying up, I’m talking about proper cleaning, as in wiping the dust everywhere and keeping every imaginable surface clean, including walls, ceilings, cupboards etc.
Vacuum. that sucks up the dust and traps it.
Brooms & mops were from the ancient days before electricity existed, and as you’ve experienced, the dirt just keeps circulating and never goes away. Endless filth & frustration.
Set a weekly cleaning day and stick to it. On weeks when you can’t clean on that day, move it to a different day. Don’t skip.
And no shoes inside, ever. Tracks in lots of filth, even when it think you have clean shoes.
i don’t.
I have a mastiff. Truly clean will never be a thing again.
The best advice I have is one I found on the internet: Whenever you walk through a room pick something up and dispose of it, or put it back in its place.
Don’t Walk Past It. That is the name of the rule. It’s a great rule.
As someone with OCD in the form of germaphobia and excessive/repetitive cleaning, I recommend you see a doctor and get tested for OCD. Doing therapy massively improved my quality of life.
As a wise friend once said about home repairs “It’s easier to keep up than to catch up”
You can do a lot at once, you can do a little all the time but either way you have to clean regularly to stay on top of it.
You’ll never be able to get things clean - all you will be able to manage is “cleaner than it was before.” It becomes easier if you accept that.
And unless you’re trying to save money on buying dishes by eating on the floor, it shouldn’t really matter if they have a bit of dirt on them.
Routine.
Part of my routine is to do a more deep clean on one thing/section each week.
I gave up keeping the floor clean, I’m the only one that cleaned in the house, any complaints about the dirt on the floor was met with “well you should be wearing shoes”, any attempt at cleaning the clutter is met with the other household members stressed out because things changed. I take any W I can, but it’s defo a learn to get used to it type of situation at least in my case.
Maybe take the approach used in Asia of taking shoes off at the door to avoid tracking in dirt
Not just Asia. Wearing shoes indoors is mostly an american thing.
I do, the issue is I’m the ONLY one who does.
We have a robot vacuum that runs automatically every day. And yea, it picks up a load of dust every day. Leaves me to do other stuff.
Exactly this. You’d be surprised how much dust it can collect. After a week or two in my small home it can easily collect a fistful of dust, and that’s just from me alone.
I splurged on a Bissell cross wave pet and I can’t believe how amazing it really is. I wish I would have gotten the cordless version but it really has changed how often and easy it is to keep our floors clean!
I also really try to do a “closing shift” every night. And even if I have dishes in the sink, they have all been rinsed.
I wipe down the surfaces in the half bath every time I use it.
And I wipe the hand rails and base boards once every couple of months. We have 4 kids so there is always some kind of “mess” but I’ve gotten so much better about keeping up with the house. And I don’t beat myself up when I skip a day or two.
It feels like it’s never actually clean.
Keeping things neat and tidy is literally an endless battle against entropy.
I mean, it’s not like I can get rid of the waterbugs in my eyelashes when I take a shower. Becoming truly “clean” would mean destroying all physical traces of, well, everything. We would have to be made of pure energy to be really “clean.”
ITT a bunch of dirty mofos.
You can sweep and mop one time to a quality that you shouldn’t be able to see dirt and grit on your floor. Maybe a different story with pets… But I wouldn’t keep a shedding creature in the house besides my wife, personally lol.
Make sure that you cleaning routine is top to bottom. Wipe off the blinds, wipe the counters and appliances, moving down until the floor, which is last. Even if it isn’t perfect, it’s better than completely dirty, right? Progress is progress.
I have 2 kids under 3…
laughs maniacally
As long as you don’t have roaches or other pests you’re fine. It’s clean enough. Sincerely, a fellow parent
Daily tidying tasks: dishes asap, litter box, laundry, spray cleaner on the shower after showering. Once a week the more laborious tasks get done: vacuuming, mopping etc. Bathrooms every 3 weeks or so. It’s a constant rotation that I would struggle with alone… my spouse and I tag-team all cleaning together so that helps. Consistency with cleaning helps everything to stay relatively clean. If it ever gets to be too much to keep up with in the future, we’ve agreed that a weekly cleaner might be a good option to help us maintain.
Smaller houses tend to be better for this, generally. Cut down on all the stupid useless crap you own that you only use like once every 3 years, it’s not worth it to keep it sitting around. Buy and sell everything on craigslist, and rent the rest of what you might need. Maybe look into a storage shed or something, or dedicate a portion of your house to this, a room, something like this. Most people have a garage, I think. Pawn stuff off on everyone around you, call them when you need it, and then that’s a good opportunity to socialize. The same goes for “makerspaces” or whatever. Get out of your house more.
Work from the top down, start in an area with your fans, cobwebs, whatever, then work down to the pictures and higher shelves, the windows, lower shelves, tables, then hit your walls and baseboards, and then, after all that’s done, do the floors.
Remove clutter and little aesthetic baubles on shelves where dust and hair and crap might accumulate, unless you’re actively using the things in that space, or frequently moving stuff around in that area. It also pays to be conscious of how airflow moves throughout your house and how dust settles. It always tends to be the corners, but then corners also tend to be the deadzones where people put things anyways. If you can turn this on it’s head, and keep things away from the walls and corners more, that’s probably a decent idea, and could also help you open up your house more. If you can’t do that, you could look into like, these triangular dust guards they make for the corners of things, especially stairs, though those are mostly for sweeping, and I think dust might end up sticking to them regardless. The best solution for most people is probably just to go in the complete opposite direction, and get some big sealed corner cabinets with actual doors, instead of just having a bunch of open shelves everywhere.
Make sure you always remove your shoes when you come in from outside, and if you’re especially dirty, your outerwear. It’s easier to clean this all in one location by the door. Cats and dogs and all your other pets also shed a ton which can suck really bad and get on everything. I really like having pets, but god damn it can get pretty nasty. I would probably not do it all over again if I had the choice. Maybe look for breeds that don’t shed as much. Or just brush your pets maybe more than daily, that might also help.
Also, invest in a good stick vacuum, don’t get one of those huge corded garbage vacuums, or those ones that roll around and have the tube, those also suck and are awful. Also a good spray mop with the bottom that sticks to the cloth pad, and not like a normal stupid mop with a bucket or whatever, because those suck.
Yeah. Do all that, revolve your life around just cleaning and maintaining the shit that you own, and then you can probably get away with like an hour maybe once or twice a week for your whole house. How fulfilling!
A plan. Clean all floors weekly.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 7 months ago
Bold of you to assume my home is clean.