Reply to How to clean like a professional team—when you’re just one person?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Pp you are amazing! Thank you for taking the time out to explain all of this. [/quote]

Welcome.  Glad it helped. I have spent years struggling with cleaning, career, kids. Whenever I used to figure out a routine and get into a groove, stuff happened and then the routine stopped working. Or it used to feel like a big burden.

I have kept cleaners too.  Went from a monthly cleaner to once every three weeks, two weeks, weekly and twice a week. There were several problems with having cleaners. I was more prone to stashing things away before they came so that they had uncluttered surfaces to clean. It made clutter problem worse (more hidden) and things were disorganized. The other problem was that knowing that I was paying them to clean, I let the mess build up during the week so that I could  get my money's worth when they cleaned it. So, inadvertently because of having cleaners I trained myself to not think of cleaning as a routine similar to  daily toothbrushing or flossing, but rather a weekly root canal.  Once the cleaners left the house clean, within hours it was a mess again.  I thought of cleaning as a terrible chore, not as a wonderful way to bring peace and serenity. And I was so sure that my house would be trashed in a matter of hours that I just waited for my dire prophesies to come true. Because of kids allergies, we did not have too much dust, but we had clutter  and the end result was chaos and stress in my mind.

Once, I realized that I can clean a clean house every day - it became a soothing routine, therapeutic, not overwhelming, not a secret shame, a way to slowly get organized, declutter, become minimalist, become active.  And the cleaning went fast.  Your brain is so amazing that once you start cleaning, it become super efficient in finding the best cleaning methods for your needs and household.  You also become very gung-ho about donating stuff and paring down because you don't want to clean more stuff.  You automatically become less materialistic.  You start having more fun in life because you can be on a zoom call and not be embarrassed by your clutter. You can have people come to your house and use your powder room, knowing that your house looks fabulous. You can ask people in for pizza and beer without too much notice because your house is pretty decent.  You feel great about buying flowers for your house because your house is so gleaming pretty.

If you want to let go of your cleaners, I suggest that you must systematically organize and declutter one room at a time and make them deep clean that room one time. Then you take over cleaning and maintaining that room every 2-3 days, and focus on fixing some other area. That way when you wean yourself off of having cleaners, you have already onboarded yourself in maintaining the house. You also have a fair idea of what you need to do. This is not a one time thing. You have to make your cleaning muscles strong over time.

Happy cleaning. [/quote]

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