Back to the housekeeping posts. I know, I know, but this morning was the time I had this week to do my own housekeeping. And yes, I got it all done, except for the laundry, by 10 am, so I figure I’m more or less qualified to run my mouth about how to get it [...]
Perhaps the most immediately useful thing I ever learned about household cleaning is that messes are of two basic types. One is the kind you can reasonably let sit until a convenient time. The other is the kind you really do need to clean up now. This is not about decor, or even about organization. [...]
A few more items on yesterday’s theme occurred to me last night, as I was falling asleep, and so now that I am not asleep I present them to you thus. The Basic Methods of Cleaning Things: There are really only so many ways you can remove dirt from things. In rough outline, they are [...]
It occurs to me that there are some things about housework that I was taught as a wee child, and which I consider pretty well foundational to making housework go easily and successfully, that it is just possible not everyone knows. So I thought I would share. Clean from top to bottom. Gravity works. Take [...]
Despite my flagrant, unrepentant domesticity, I rarely think of myself as a “good housekeeper.” Households don’t hold still. A household is basically a container in which you keep your personal allotment of entropy, and as a result there are never not things that you could usefully be doing. For some reason, my brain is [...]
I realized the other day that I almost never hear anyone talk about dusting. Astonishing, really, when you think about it. People tend to have so much stuff in their houses, in their spaces, in their lives, and so much of it is, let’s face it, stuff that we don’t use all that often. I [...]