(Part Two)
It had been a hard nine days and an even harder Tisha B'Av.
Perhaps it was the year that I had been given a psak
to eat in the middle of the fast due to feeling ill and
expecting. Somehow, during this period, I had given
permission to my two older boys to rearrange the furniture in
their rooms. Consequently, they had placed their beds in a
way that all toys were accessible and the end result was a
helter-skelter, true, bonafide mess. Cards, puzzle pieces,
beads, Lego, and more were everywhere except where they
should have been.
Motzei Tisha B'Av I woke to this reality, plus the
umpteen loads of post-nine days laundry, and general
balagan around the house due to neglect and the
mourning aspects of the past few days. Unfortunately, I do
remember yelling a lot, being totally overwhelmed, and
managing to get it all done eventually. I've learned a lot
over the years on how to deal with messes that threaten to
take over. Obviously, the best thing is prevention but
sometimes due to illness, calamity, or even because of a
simchah, the state of the house is not what we would
desire.
The first step to conquering an out-of-control mess is to
break things down into smaller parts. If the whole house is
flying, then concentrate on one room at a time and don't look
around. Once in that room, again divide it up into sections.
Concentrate on one section at a time so that you don't get
distracted and end up doing a little here, a little there and
in the end get nothing really done.
Everyone has their own style. I once had a neighbor who
always did her living room first. I disagreed. I say that
you'll always get to the living room but if you wait to do
the bedrooms they might not get done. So, I usually like to
start with the bedrooms. (Side note, really, bathrooms are
always first and should be for the obvious reasons).
My mother, o.b.m., had her own rules of housekeeping. The
first is that everything has its place. This will certainly
cut down on cleaning/work time if: a. you don't have to spend
time looking for things and b. you don't have to figure out
where to put things. Today there are numerous ingenious
storage ideas one can find in hardware store; hooks, shelves,
cabinets and drawers. Use your creativity to find a place for
each item.
The next thing my mother would say is that cleaning was a
process of elimination. So here you are in a room and the
mess seems to have no end. Once again, focus on one small
area of the room. Pick up everything and get it put away.
Just knowing that there is one tidy small corner will make
you feel better and more motivated to get the job done.
Continue in this way until the room is done and then move on.
Of course, teaching the kids to work like this with you is a
lifetime skill.
Until now, I focused on working on small parts at a time but
there is a time that you should also work more globally, ,
doing large areas of the house at one time. Spray bottles are
one of the quickest and easiest tools for cleaning. I have
special spray bottles in each bathroom to give them a fresh,
pleasant appearance. I wipe the bathrooms out every morning
and try to give them a second quick wipe in the evening, and
it usually only takes minutes.
Once a week, I take the window cleaner and race through the
house with it. I give a quick wipe to the mirrors and
windows. Because many of my windows are not sliding, they are
quite easy to wipe down. I don't go after perfection; just
getting rid of the smudges. It makes everything seem much
brighter and shinier and it really only takes about fifteen
minutes.
My favorite spray bottle combination is a mixture of general
all purpose cleaner with a bit of (mild) bleach and water. I
use it for numerous tasks; to wipe down walls and simple
furniture, doors and kitchen cabinets, vinyl chairs etc. I
also use it as a stain remover when doing laundry. One day a
week, I work my way down the house with a spray bottle and
rag, and spray and wipe as I go. Once again, I don't aim for
perfection but general control of dirt and grime. Keeping
this up regularly actually makes the work much, much easier,
as there is rarely a big mess to go after. The same goes with
wiping down your refrigerator and other appliances. Upkeeping
them saves you a lot of time and energy in the long run.
Using the right cleaning products in the right way will
always make the job easier. A while back we were always
buying large sizes of dish/floor cleaners and other
detergents. The bottles often looked similar. During this
period I complained that my floors always looked filthy. The
listener was a friend who'd had her first child after waiting
six years. At the time we both had a bunch of young children.
She said to me, "I give you a blessing that your floors
should always look dirty."
The situation was intolerable. No matter how hard or how
often I washed them, I could never get those floors to look
and stay really clean. One day in exasperation, I called my
friend and said, "Enough! Take away your blessing! I can be
blessed with a family and still have clean floors!"
"OK!" she said, "I take back what I said. May your floors be
always reasonably clean."
Shortly after that, I found the source of the problem.
Instead of using floor cleaner, it had been mixed up with a
similar looking container that held shampoo.
