Clean Apartment/ Room…
If anyone has tips on how to keep your apartment/ room clean, I’d love to hear them.
I know the obvious answer is continually clean up after yourself, but after 29 years, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.
Is there another way?
1. Get rid of superflulous shit. Everyone I know who can’t keep clean has too much shit, everyone I know who’s tidy doesn’t.
2. Listen to good music and be hopped up on some sort of jitter inducing substance while you clean. Mary Poppins was right, chores need to be fun, and what’s more fun than cleaning while listening to Snoop after taking a bunch of pseudoephedrine?
3. Convince yourself that the empty feeling in your chest can only be filled by dusting the bookshelves. This probably only applies to people with OCD, but it works for me!
4. Look at an IKEA catalogue for like, 3 days straight, then attempt to make your rooms look similar. Finding cheap, clever ways to keep organized is fun. Once we bought a wire plant holder and affixed it to the wall to use as a book, remote, and pill container next to the bed. Genius!
5. Rearrange your furniture. You sort of have to sweep and get rid of junk when you move your couch to the opposite wall. Plus, rearranging is a great weekend project. My Dad used to rearrange entire rooms. I’d wake up one Saturday and he’d declare that the dining room was now the living room and I’d be moving my bedroom from the first floor to the second.
6. Have rituals. Momma calls them her daily and nightly ‘routines’ and she absolutely cannot begin or end her day without performing them. For example, every night before bed, I return everything to it’s place. Cups on the counter, blankets refolded and returned to couch arms, remotes returned to end tables, etc. It’s really easy and sort of fun and eventually becomes a part of your routine, right along with brushing your teeth and deciding which benzo to fall asleep with.
7. Use organization as therapy. Remember in High Fidelity when John Cusack dealt with his breakup by reorganizing his album collection autobiographically? I have all my books sorted by genre, then author and all my magazines sorted by date. Not only were they fun projects, but my shelves are gorgeous. Why just a few months ago, I changed my album sorting from alphabetical to chronological. I did this while drinking peach schnapps and listening to some of the albums I’d forgotten I owned. It was a great night.
8. If you have a roommate or a partner, make a certain day a cleaning day and have fun with it. Listen to songs about cleaning, It’s a Hard Knock’s Life from the Annie soundtrack, for example. Wear scarves on your head and role play - I do this even when I clean alone. Sometimes I pretend I’m an overworked housewife waiting for the neighbour I’m having an affair with to come over and ravage me amongst the mop pail and swiffer pads. Sometimes I just straight up pretend Miss Hannigan will serve me cold mush if I don’t make these floors shine like the top of the Chrysler building.
9. Every time someone with a place cleaner than yours plans to come over, act like they’ll hate you and judge you if your place isn’t tidy and clean frantically before they arrive. Remember that Simpsons episode where Marge cleans before the cleaning ladies arrive and says, “I don’t want those judgemental bitches in my home!” Exactly, Marge! Untidy, they’ll say, untidy! Clean your house and then declare, “Now this looks like a home ready to be cleaned!”
10. Use fun cleaning supplies! I have a bottle of antiseptic smelling cloths for my bathroom counter, a favorite rag that I use to dust, swiffer pads are my life, and I get a thrill from choosing what scent of Glade candle I’m going to use to express myself each month.
And finally, if all else fails, befriend me, because I never leave a place unclean. It is hardwired in my dna to leave a place tidier than it was when I arrived.
