The original subject line of this post was simply “Chores,” but adding “Chat” really takes it from drudgey to cheerful doesn’t it? No? Just me?
It is a dreary, chilly morning, which feels like a betrayal after the sunny warmth of the past few days. I was awake off and on during the night due to horrible nightmares involving my loved ones. I have to go renew my driver’s license, which is on the Top Five list of Things I Enjoy Only Slightly More Than Dental Work. Plus, I have postponed Bathroom Cleaning Monday for no reason at all beyond my absolute gut-twisting hatred of cleaning the shower, and it can be postponed no more.
When we are feeling so dreary, what better topic to tip us right over the edge cheer us is housecleaning?
I scrubbed the floors yesterday, which is a very satisfying chore. My back hurts a bit, though, and I think I once again have chemical burns on my fingers from the bleach, will I ever learn, which is both painful and also somehow apt. “Satisfying” is, of course, a far cry from “enjoyable.” I am trying to think about whether there are any chores I ENJOY. (Are there any chores YOU enjoy?) I suppose I enjoy the results when I clean the kitchen: The gleaming expanse of freshly-scrubbed counters. The shiny reflective surfaces of the stainless steel appliances. Everything ready and waiting for another meal to be made. Which will inevitably upend everything into disaster once again.
My mother was telling me recently about her own mother’s cleaning schedule. Every month they would deep clean the kitchen, which involved emptying out all the cupboards and drawers and scouring them with Murphy’s Oil Soap. EVERY MONTH. I do this… quarterly, maybe, on a good year? Is that horrifying? How often do you do EMPTY your cabinets and wipe them down, inside and out? While we’re at it, how often do you empty your refrigerator and scrub the inside of THAT? I do it far less frequently than I should, even though I have no idea what the Ideal Refrigerator Cleaning Frequency even is. There is possibly some sort of checklist available online, that would tell me exactly what to do when, but I don’t care to be bossed. I will instead remain fretful and slovenly, thank you very much.
Everything I know about cleaning, I learned from my mother. Well, that’s not entirely fair: I learned about dish washing from my father. And about scouring the sink with Soft Scrub. But everything else was my mother’s domain. She was much better about sticking to a strict housecleaning schedule than I am; see above RE: the bathroom cleansing delay. We cleaned the whole house every Saturday. I remember being awakened by the sound of the vacuum. My job was a) cleaning my room and b) dusting. (I also did most of the dishes on the daily, and did my own laundry and ironing. I REFUSE to iron as an adult, but as a middle schooler I ironed my Z-Cavaricci jeans. The heart wants what it wants.)
At some point, I did learn how to scrub a bathroom as well, so I’m sure I helped with that on Cleaning Saturdays. I don’t mind cleaning a toilet, really. And there’s nothing difficult or daunting about wiping down a counter (for me, I recognize and support those for whom it is either or both). By the way, my very best (only?) cleaning tip is to keep a toilet scrubber in EVERY BATHROOM. And if your bathrooms have cabinets, keep a container of toilet cleaner, 409, and a roll of paper towels in each bathroom as well. That way, even if your cleaning supplies are all the way in the laundry room, or you aren’t in the mood to do a Full Cleaning, you can do a quick spot clean and still feel accomplished and virtuous. Hot tips like this keep you coming back, I just know it.
My mother used Endust on a rag to do her dusting, so I also use Endust on a rag to do my own dusting. Swiffer dusters were not available back then, and, frankly, are hugely wasteful although I do still use them on occasion. I have a Swiffer-style sweeper with reusable pads for the floors. We had hardwood floors in the kitchen, so my mother never scrubbed the grout (no grout to be had). But she did use some sort of Pledge-type liquid to mop the floors until they shone. I use Mr. Clean on my hardwood floors because a housekeeper requested it specifically, and then I kept buying it whenever it was on sale, and now we have more Mr. Clean than any one person should. Bleach is my best friend in the bathrooms, and when it comes to cleaning the grout. I like vinegar and baking soda – or baking soda and Dawn – when it comes to cleaning my sinks. I love 409 for counter tops. Who knew adulthood would mean amassing so many Preferred Cleaning Items?
I suppose How to Properly Clean a House is an important life lesson for a child, and sometimes I fret (because I will literally fret about anything) about whether I am On Track in teaching Carla how to keep a house. What kinds of cleaning chores do your kids do? Or, if you don’t have kids, what were your housecleaning responsibilities as a child?
Carla’s main jobs are tidying: She must make her bed every morning. She must clean her room once a week. She must pick up any toys she leaves out, although this is a moving target; right now, for instance, there is a bunch of play-doh and various play-doh tools out on the kitchen table, which shows you both how good I am at enforcing her tidying responsibilities and how often we eat together at the table.
I also have Carla zoop the floors on occasion. Most of the kitchen debris comes from her (at what age do children stop shedding crumbs?), so it seems only fair that she help dispose of it. She also has to clear, rinse, and place her breakfast and dinner dishes. And, if we eat together, she clears, rinses, and places ALL the dishes. This is a very pleasing improvement in her Skills and Abilities, now that she is seven. She is responsible for putting away her folded laundry. Sometimes, if she is in The Right Mood, she will help me dust. I especially appreciate her dusting skills when it comes to wiping down the banister and stairwell baseboards.
When I was a kid, I also had to clean out the barn. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed that chore. I would crank up the country radio station and get out a big, stiff-bristled broom, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow, and remove all the manure from the barn to the shelter belt. Talk about a satisfying chore. You had the pleasure of not only seeing something go from filthy to clean, but also the satisfaction of pleasingly sore muscles. And it was nice to be out in the fresh air and sunshine. The horses did not enjoy it as much, sometimes nudging over the wheelbarrow in defiance or pushing past me to dirty the newly cleaned floor with an abundance of scorn.
My husband does most of the vacuuming, and he takes care of the bathroom floors. (He can vacuum the entire house and clean all the bathroom floors before I finish cleaning the kitchen.) (I suspect that he does not move the furniture to vacuum under it, but one can only ask for so much.) (He will vacuum under the couch cushions if I remind him.) He also does the VAST MAJORITY of the laundry folding, for which I am deeply grateful. I excel at washing clothes, and sometimes even putting them in the dryer, and sometimes even moving the clean, dry clothes up to the laundry room guest room. But unless I am VIGILANT about folding the clothes immediately, I grow overwhelmed and dizzy and choose to shut the door on the ever-growing pile until it threatens to take over the house or my daughter runs out of underwear, whichever comes first. My husband, on the other hand, is never daunted by a mountainous tangle of clothes. He LIKES to fold, and listens to music while doing so, and it takes him SUCH a short time I think he is a magician every time he does it. He is also very good at the mechanics of folding: his shirts are always creased just so and identical in size, a feat I have never been able to master.
Folding laundry is one thing. But my most hated chore, by far, is cleaning the shower. It requires scrubbing, which is physically draining. Plus, since it’s a small shower with a sliding glass door, it requires some bodily contortions that I don’t love. Plus, rinsing the shower always results in my shirt and socks becoming completely sodden. Plus, it is impossible to get every single bit of either the doors or the track on which they slide fully clean. PLUS I cannot handle hair in a drain. I JUST CANNOT HANDLE IT. Hair on a head, fine. Hair anywhere else, I will pass out or throw up or both.
Well, I had hoped that talking about chores would get me all fired up to go do some cleaning. It has not had that effect. Perhaps you will share what your favorite/most hated chores are, and/or what the breakdown of chores is in your househould, and/or your Hot Tips for cleaning. In the meantime, I am going to trudge up to the bathroom anyway and see if I can clean the shower without getting totally soaked.
Why do I love this post so much!?! Hahaha! My favorite line, by far: …”with an abundance of scorn.” “Scorn” was not what I thought was coming at the end of that phrase! Well done!
I have no fondness for chores, but was not given very many of them as a child. In fact, a clear memory I have is of spending the night at a friend’s when I was 7 or 8, and it was a Saturday morning so she had to do the dusting…. I had never seen a kid doing something like this. I had never seen my MOM doing this, actually. I had to make my bed and keep my room clean, practice music, and help set and clear the table at mealtimes. That’s it. I also did not earn any allowance as a child, and always envied the kids who did.
I’ll try not to write a novel, here, but typically my chores at home are cleaning the kitchen, and doing bathrooms. My husband does the dusting and vacuuming, and usually laundry. I’ll take on vacuuming more in the summer when he’s responsible for mowing the lawn. Our kids (16, 13) put their laundry away – 16 does his own, but not because we make him, just because he keeps his own schedule – clean their own bathrooms if we’re having a Cleaning Weekend – and then each has one other thing: 16 takes out the garbage on Sunday nights, and 13 is supposed to scoop the litter box a few times a week. We do tie allowance to chores, which is another conversation entirely.
I like Mr. Clean for toilets and tubs/showers, Soft Scrub for kitchen sinks like you, Swiffer for hardwood floors, and Pledge for dusting. Also of course Clorox wipes for the outsides of toilets, and a granite spray (which I’m not convinced about) for countertops.
I could say a lot more but I will spare you!
I have a granite spray too… I LOVE the way it smells, but I am skeptical of its usefulness as a cleanser… so often I will clean the granite counters with 409 and then spray some of the granite spray on afterward, just for the smell!
My hot tip for scrubbing the shower: do it while you shower. Add long as the cleaner your are using won’t make you pass out while you are scrubbing…. No weird contorting, everything easily in reach, lovely excuse for an extra long, hot shower.
This… never occurred to me.
I do this too.But not in all the showers in the house, just my own.
I love reading about other people’s regular cleaning tasks that would literally never occur to me to undertake. Perhaps I am using my cupboards wrong, but I have never ever emptied them out to clean inside them. I mean, maybe I’ve wiped them out when we have moved into a new house and they seem scummy… I am responsible for basically all household cleaning chores which may seem unfair but is part of an equitable arrangement we have that suits both husband and I. The nice part is he puts no level of expectation on something he doesn’t participate in. The house is exactly as clean as I care for it to be. My 14, 12 and 7 year olds have become great helpers over the pandemic year and the job I most love to delegate is emptying all the household trashes. As far as cleaning tools, the best thing I found recently is a shower scrubber on a telescoping pole. While I agree that cleaning while you are in the shower is the easiest, it would feel a little strange to me to go around using all the other showers in my house once a….week (let’s just say it’s once a week).
My husband is like that too, and it’s so nice — the cleaning angst is solely my domain (even though he helps with some of it). I don’t think he would care if I never cleaned the bathroom. (Hork.)
EMPTY the cupboards and drawers and scrub them out?? I do that when we MOVE HOUSE. (Okay, I will OCCASIONALLY, like every few YEARS, take everything out of the silverware drawer and clean THAT, mostly because that is the drawer that collects extraneous utensils, salt packets from fast-food places, etc.), and because the silverware holder will eventually start to look a little crumby/grubby.
Like Eli, I clean the shower while IN the shower. Also, a friend of mine said the guy who did their tub surround recommended cleaning it WITH SHAMPOO: as in, put some shampoo on a scrub brush and scrub it around; he said the stuff in basic shampoos (I use Prell) is the same stuff that’s really good on soap scum. I keep a scrub brush in the shower, and so I am at all times ready to scrub the shower if it is a day I can face scrubbing it. I like to keep a fancy conditioner on hand, or a hair masque, as incentive to clean: I wash my hair, put in the hair masque, and then think, “Well, it has to stay on for five minutes, so I guess I’ll scrub the shower while I wait.” Every so often I do need to use a bleachier product in the shower, but I spritz it on ahead of time, and then scrub quickly before the fumes take me out.
SHAMPOO?! This is genius. I am still not sure if it’s For Me, but between you and Eli, maybe I should at least try it.
I cannot tell you how much I like this post.
I also despise cleaning the shower…so much so that I just cleaned the bathroom and purposely ignored the shower. Also, I actually requested a hand held shower head for Christmas two years ago, so that I could easily rinse the shower…and even with that it is still a dreaded chore.
The only redeeming quality of doing chores is the satisfaction of the result. I cleaned the house top to bottom yesterday (minus the stupid shower) and warned The Husband that I wanted to wake up to the same pristine state. He came through – this morning I was still reveling in the clean and tidy. The downfall? I have to do it all again eventually…including the stupid shower.
As for the floors – also not a favorite but much easier with the O’Cedar Spin Mop – the secret I have learned is super hot water and powdered Tide (I will add a tiny bit of bleach for the tile floors, not the hardwoods). Oh my goodness, my floors have never felt cleaner.
Powdered Tide?!?! This IS a hot tip!
Total game changer! About a teaspoon of powdered Tide to the bucket of the hottest water you can get. I follow an account called Go Clean Co on Instagram – you would be amazed how often they use powdered Tide to clean random things. And the spin mop is great – the floor is practically dry before I get to the other end of the room.
The chore I will NOT DO as an adult is drying dishes. Well, I guess I will if I’m all alone and things are going to tumble out of the drying rack. But that is rare. I hate it so much.
I only recently started keeping a second set of cleaning supplies in the second bathroom and IT WAS REVOLUTIONARY. Why didn’t I do this before?
I don’t take things out of the cupboard to clean, but I do fairly frequently scrub down the cupboard doors.
I don’t mind cleaning house at all, I tend to do it in little snippets throughout the week though. It’s pretty amazing what can be accomplished in 10-15 minutes. I usually have 1-2 things that I will do each day that keeps everything in nice order.
Oh, we have a roomba – actually two – and it’s life changing.
I have so much to say, maybe I’ll make this a whole post! I really liked reading this! My boys keep their rooms clean, and help with the kitchen cleanup after dinner, and whatever else I ask them to do.
Oh yesssss. I love this topic! I have been trying to get into a cleaning schedule for yearrrrrs but it’s just so hard for me to get motivated when it’s just me in my apartment haha. I vacuum pretty regularly (because: cats) and tidy up every evening, but a deep clean happens less frequently than I’d like.
WHO CLEANS OUT THEIR CABINETS EVERY MONTH? That’s something I do only when I need to reorganize the space or when I’m moving, lol. Quarterly seems much more logical.
My favorite chore is laundry. I actually LOVE it. But I also only do laundry for myself so it might be different if I had an entire pile of Other People’s Laundry to contend with. But man, there’s just something so soothing about it for me.
I clean my shower much less frequently than I should. I just abhor it. It just takes so much effort!