I hate cleaning the house, for much the same reasons as have already been mentioned, plus I wasn't taught the art when I was young, being a boy in the 1950s. My mother was very fastidious about cleaning up, and extremely miserable about it too, which sent me the message that cleaning is some kind of highly depressing trap.
Living alone clarifies the situation - I made this mess, I clean this mess, or suffer it - but the sheer loneliness of the work can get to me and make me reluctant to do it, just as I'm reluctant these days to get into any completely solo projects that might take a long time. One day my partner and I hope to live together, and my plan is that we'll share the cleaning, which will make it more social. Previous live-in partners have tended to take responsibility for a lot of the cleaning, and I've been too lazy to protest, or too slow to get there first. In spite of my aversion to cleaning, it really dismays me that women have tended to take over these things, when all I need is a friendly request and clear instructions.
My main strategy until then is to minimise the cleaning. If I don't get things dirty, I don't need to clean them. I do very little cooking, which saves a ton of work, and my raw diet is tasty and has kept me physically healthy for decades, so I'm clearly not malnourished. I live mostly in one room of the house, and the rest of the house doesn't get very dusty, so I guess they must be right when they say that most household dust comes from human skin. I'm very interested in finding better containers for all my stuff, because one thing that puts me off dusting is that I've got hundreds of small items sitting about wide open to collecting dust, so naturally it will be a long, lonely job to clean all that, so it doesn't get done. This "open plan" method is otherwise a great way to store my stuff, because it's easier to access it, but I didn't reckon with the cleaning problem. So now all I have to do is to survey the entire house, itemise and categorise all my stuff, and select suitable containers and places for everything. That could take me a long time. Organising my stuff is a big problem for me.
Taking out the trash - that's easy for me. I've got a fairly large waste bin in the kitchen, lined with a big plastic refuse sack, for dry waste, and a small slop bucket for moist stuff, lined with two plastic shopping bags, and a couple of small "clean waste" bins around the house. On trash day, if the bins are getting full, I just close the bags and throw them into the outdoor bin, then replace the bags. None of the waste containers have lids, which makes them easier to use.
Cleaning the toilet - for me, that's the main indicator of whether or not I've slipped into squalour. Brushing it seems the only way. Cleaning the brush is a problem. My best solution so far is to rinse it off by flushing the toilet and holding the brush in the water stream. Then I shake off as much of the water as possible before removing the brush from the bowl. Then I return it to its stand, which collects the remaining drips, and they evaporate. I'm not happy with the method because a faint yellow stain builds up in the collection part of the stand, but the whole brush-stand assembly is very cheap to replace.
Cleaning the bath - I scrub the sides of the bath just before I get out of it, then rinse it thoroughly. Easier to implement than having to go off and do that chore at another time. We have very hard water, so scum forms up very quickly, otherwise a quick wipe with warm soapy water would probably do the trick.
Sometimes I wonder about getting a water softening cartridge. The smallest drip of clean water on the steel draining board leaves a dirty-looking deposit, and the spouts of all my taps are always growing limestone deposits. Doesn't make the toilet any easier to clean either.
Cleaning the kitchen - I try to limit my use of crockery and cutlery down to 2 plates, one bowl, and a fork and spoon, which simplifies the washing up. If I'm feeling overwhelmed or lazy, I often switch to disposable paper plates. I've heard that their main drawback (their flimsiness) can be mitigated by having a real plate under the paper one, but I've not tried it yet. I don't eat at a table, so I have to eat fairly carefully. Most of the food-preparation debris is in the form of crumbs from the bread, so I hold the breadboard just under the worktop and sweep the crumbs onto it with a paper towel. Occasionally I'll wipe the worktop down with warm water. I try to be very careful with the cooker when heating saucepans, and with the microwave, so that they don't boil over and create a mess to clean up.
Occasionally the carpets need vacuuming. I have a routine for that, though I find the vacuum cleaner rather too big and unwieldy to take much pleasure in. I hate changing the bedclothes, possibly because the side of the bed is against a wall, so it's hard to get the sheets into position. I might try removing a wardrobe or two from that room, so that the bed can be pulled away from the wall. But removing wardrobes can be tricky.
As for chemicals and disposables, I try not to worry too much about the environment. My lifelong pollution emissions record is very good, so I think I'm entitled to a bit of disinfectant and a few paper towels in my old age. The council here does a recycle thing, and I put cardboard and junk mail into that bag, but not if it's too much bother, and definitely not if it means I've got to clean anything to make it suitable. So some of my waste goes into landfill, which it shouldn't really, but like I say, my overall green credentials are good.
29 Jan 2015, 1:18 am
