Housework and Getting Organized

I don't think I've ever been really disorganized, even as a child.  Like all children, I tended to leave toys out, but various occurrences changed even that.

When I was about nine, my mother and exstepfather moved from their apartment to a sailboat, where they remained for several years.  Living on a boat by necessity minimizes the mess you can make.  Quarters are cramped, and the available storage space must be used as efficiently as possible for clothing, food, toiletries, etc.  Thusly I got rid of a lot of toys, kept my books together and neatly sorted, and organized my clothing.  My system spread to my room at my dad's house.

Around the same time, I ran into trouble at school.  I was attending a snooty private school against my wishes, and my teacher assigned a lot of homework.  I had trouble keeping up, and my dad helped solve the problem by arranging an organizational system for me.  As it was only elementary school, I had just one binder for all my subjects.  He taught me to put the papers for each subject in the binder in the order in which I had the class, and to put the papers in the rings of the binder so they couldn't fall out.  I also put the books in my desk in the same order as I would need them for class.

When I reached middle school, my system was in place.  I put my binders and books in my locker in the same order as my class schedule, and I made use of the rings in the binders.  I threw out crumpled papers and things I didn't need that kept me from finding things quickly, which was key as we only had a five minute passing period.

I also learned by examples from television and my family.  The protagonist in the show "Keeping Up Appearances," while excruciatingly annoying, kept an immaculate house.  I learned to clean a little bit constantly instead of trying to do it all at once.  Simultaneously, I noticed that my aunt always had a clean house and well-stocked guest room.  I modeled my housekeeping after both of them.  Years later, I read Guards!  Guards! by Terry Pratchett and especially liked the line "the slightly miffed air of one who has run their finger across a daughter-in-law's top shelf and found against all expectation that it is sparkling clean."  I determined that I would never be a sloppy daughter-in-law and set to work ensuring that my shelves were free of dust.

Not long after, in the spring of 2009, my grandfather passed away, and the work of cleaning out his house fell to me.  My grandfather lived in squalor:  Everything in the house was coated in an eighth-inch-thick layer of dust; there were used tissues, paper towels, and toothpicks everywhere; grime coated the kitchen counters; papers were strewn over every conceivable surface and jammed into drawers; clean and dirty clothes alike covered every piece of furniture in his bedroom; and the bathroom was of course a nightmare.  I swept, dusted, and scoured everything.  Then I threw away twenty bags of old papers, tissues, and paper towels; I took a further twenty plus bags of old clothes to Goodwill; and finally I filled the trunk and back seat of my car to the brim with the nicer clothes and donated them to Goodwill as well.  I saved one basket of new socks and underthings to distribute among friends.  Anyway, needless to say, the disaster that was my grandfather's house was quite an inspiration.  As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and I redoubled my efforts at keeping my own house clean.

I have a schedule when it comes to housework, which I developed at age twelve after a classmate asked me what day of the week it was.  Upon hearing the answer (Thursday), he said, "Damn, I have to vacuum."  I thought that relegating tasks to days of the week seemed a pretty good idea, so I developed a similar system.  I refined it over the years and currently work with the following:

Monday—Clean kitchen.
Tuesday—Clean bathrooms.
Wednesday—Do laundry, including towels.
Thursday—Vacuum.
Friday—Dust and generally tidy up.
Saturday—Do laundry, including washing sheets.
Sunday—Catch up on other chores and gardening.

Obviously, I do smaller chores as needed; e.g., sometimes a kitchen mess means cleaning the kitchen on a different day of the week.

The following links take you to a page for each room of the house.  Each page has a list of tips for cleaning and organizing that room.