Incremental

It occurred to me today that perhaps one reason why I don't really clean my house is that when I do I approach it like a final exam.

When my parents were going to visit just recently, I spent days getting everything just right and thoroughly done - scrubbed down the kitchen, straightened cupboards, dusted every horizontal surface in the place, deep-cleaned and polished and sanitized all the bathrooms, laundered sheets and towels, vacuumed every horizontal surface that was covered with some kind of fabric.

This past week, though, I had invited some friends over for dinner (a brave first attempt at socializing in my own house and payment for many meals over at their house), and had scheduled it for the night following both voice and guitar lessons, so I just didn't have all that much time. I got groceries in between the two lessons and the next night ducked out of work a bit early to get all the food ready, but for cleaning I couldn't do the deep clean thing, as I had for my parents. I just didn't have enough time. So I did basics - instead of filing and sorting all the mail and clutter around in the living room, I just made a stack and moved it out of sight. Instead of taking everything off the coffee table and getting out the Pledge, I just dusted around the stuff as it sat there. I wiped a moist cleansing cloth quickly over the bathroom surfaces. I did vacuum, but didn't take any cushions off anything, it was just a quick once-over.

Now I'm sitting in my spare room at the computer, which didn't get done on that occasion because they wouldn't be coming in here, and everything is a bit dusty. And it occurred to me that I could just kind of dust it, now, quickly. Without having to dust everything, and also vaccuum and straighten and file and sort and degrime sanitize. And maybe I could keep up all my cleaning this way, in just little bits and bobs whenever it occurred to me. Rather than approaching cleaning as a huge, laborious, time-intensive final exam.

But this idea is making me uneasy so I'm going to put off dusting this space until I think a bit further about the two approaches.