Speed Cleaning (10 page)

Generally you can clean the door shelves by removing a few items, cleaning that space, and then sliding over a few more things and cleaning under them, etc. Pick up and wipe the bottom of each item as you put it back so it doesn’t leave a spot on the clean surface.

When you are finished with the inside of the refrigerator, don’t clean the outside yet. Go back and start to clean the kitchen as you normally would. If you are working as part of a team, it often makes sense to have another team member do the inside of the refrigerator as you begin to clean the rest of the kitchen. The reason is that the kitchen can turn into the longest job, and you want the team to finish at the same time. (See
Chapter 9
.)

You may be lucky enough to have one or two others to work with. If so, someone needs to delegate the tasks and have a good overall view of the work as it progresses. That person is the Team Leader. The primary responsibility of the Team Leader is to see that all team members finish cleaning at the exact same time.

To finish together requires some decision making on your part. Like, where do you start cleaning so you’ll finish together? When the Bathroom Person finishes his/her primary job, what’s next? The same for the Kitchen Person.

The key to finishing together is to identify the longest job and get it started at the right time. The longest job is the one that takes the longest time
and
that no one can help with. This is often the vacuuming.

When
this longest job should be started is crucial. Get the longest job started early so it isn’t still going on when the rest of the team is finished.

The graph on
this page
shows time wasted by starting the longest job (vacuuming) at the wrong time. The Bathroom Person ended up vacuuming while the other two stood idle. If the Duster had dusted only ten minutes, started the vacuuming, and then finished dusting, the whole team would have finished together. (See
this page
.) They also would finish the entire housecleaning eighteen minutes faster apiece—that’s nearly one full hour less total cleaning time per week!

The first time you clean your home, you should start dusting in the living room. If you later find you’re unable to avoid having the team end up in the same room toward the end of the cleaning job, then change your starting point to the master bedroom.

As Team Leader, you should ask
whoever
finished first (usually the Bathroom Person) to start vacuuming in the rooms you have already dusted. He or she should start where you did and follow your same path.

When the Kitchen Person finishes, have him or her make the beds with you (assuming you make beds when you clean).
Don’t
make a bed alone since two people can make a bed four times faster than one person. Then have the Kitchen Person start vacuuming the hardwood floors (using the Little Vac), also starting in the living room and following your same path through the house. The Kitchen Person can also use the Little Vac on any furniture as signaled by you. Next, he or she gathers up the trash by going from room to room and emptying smaller containers into the largest one so only one trip outside to the garbage can is made.

 

 

Most of what we’ve discussed in this chapter applies to a team of three. The jobs are a Kitchen Person, a Bathroom Person, and the Duster. Teams of four or more are so inefficient (unless you have a huge house) that you may want to rotate people off each time you clean.

In a team of two, one person starts as the Bathroom Person and the other as the Kitchen Person. The Team Leader is the one who finishes the initial assignment first—normally the bathroom. The Team Leader then changes the bathroom tray into a duster tray and starts dusting. The Kitchen Person starts vacuuming with the Big Vac after finishing the kitchen. Make adjustments so that each time the two of you clean you come closer and closer to finishing at the same time. It is much simpler for two people to finish at the same time than three, since there are fewer possibilities for how to divide up the work.

This is the most efficient way possible. No decisions, no negotiations—just follow the Speed Cleaning method and you get faster every time you do it.

You might want to chart your weekly housecleaning times so you can see how dramatically your time improves. Use it to motivate the members of your team during this critical learning period. Post it where it is easily seen, reviewed, and ultimately admired.

Did you ever despair of learning to tie your shoe, ride a bike, or swim? Can you remember how difficult it was to do something that is now mindless in its simplicity?

Did you ever learn touch-typing? If you did, you know that it took you longer to use touch-typing than your old hunt-and-peck method when you were first learning. You had to break comfortable old (inefficient) habits and replace them with unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and new (but very efficient) habits.

Also, if you used your old hunt-and-peck method of typing all day long every day, you would never, ever get much faster than 30 words a minute—even with all that practice. However, if you practiced your new touch-type method daily, you would improve your speed constantly: 100 words per minute is not an unheard-of speed. That’s more than three times faster than a method that once seemed just fine to you.

Housecleaning isn’t going to go away, so practice. Practice and be fast, and then do something much more fun or satisfying with all the time you saved.

For those of you who see all the time-savings available in the preceding chapters but feel that your particular cleaning problem is still ignored and still overwhelming, you may be right.

There are three types of household cleaning. One is weekly cleaning, which is the subject of this book. Unfortunately, there is also daily cleaning (clutter) and yearly (“spring”) cleaning. Clearly, you are going to have trouble dealing with the weekly cleaning if no one is doing the daily cleaning.

Daily cleaning is putting things in their place—day in and day out. Dirty dishes from the table (or TV room) into the dishwasher. Coats on
their hangers. Dirty clothes into the hamper. The trash set out. The toys put away. Our third book will detail our system for clutter control and household organization. It will provide step-by-step relief if your household seems out of control at times (or in control only fleetingly). In the meantime, here are a few suggestions.

The best solution for reducing clutter is to handle each item once so it never gets a chance to become clutter. Put it away. Takes about two seconds. Try it. If that doesn’t work you have too much stuff. Add a room, buy more furniture, or have a
garage
sale.

It may help to have designated “clutter areas.” Once you have designated clutter areas, it’s okay to throw things into them. Examples may be the corner next to the front door, one section of the kitchen counter, or the bedroom floor near the closet. After you get in the habit of putting things away in these areas, slowly reduce their size and then finally eliminate them.

Also, as promised in the introduction, once you start regular cleaning, these daily jobs will take care of themselves as a sense of pride in a clean home encourages everyone in the household to keep the home civilized between cleanings.

Stripping wax from floors. Washing ceilings and walls. Or washing (heaven forbid) the windows. All those things that may need your cleaning attention once or twice a year. Happily, those chores have been addressed in our second book on cleaning,
SPRING CLEANING
(Dell, 1989).

Good luck with Speed Cleaning! May it change your life.

We’ve spent much of this book explaining our method for cleaning your home quickly. But what if you don’t want to clean it at all? Hiring someone else to do the cleaning for you is appealing, but it also introduces a new list of issues, questions, and, well, problems.

There are three basic types of services, although their methods may vary considerably.

Some families are lucky enough to employ a cherished housecleaner who has been cleaning for them for years and is considered a part of the family. Unfortunately, as this group of housecleaners retires it seems there is no new generation coming along to replace them. Perhaps the number of people who view residential cleaning as a permanent career is dwindling. Maybe it just seems that way because there has been such an increased demand for cleaning services as millions of women have entered the work force.

The demand is being filled by more people who are cleaning either temporarily or as a perceived last choice. There appears to be a disproportionate number of immigrants in this group who do not opt for more traditional employment because language difficulties or lack of legal status in the U.S. prevents them from obtaining other careers.

Even when someone comes along with an aptitude for and interest in cleaning, it may still be difficult to be a good cleaner because formal training is virtually nonexistent. Also, language barriers are real, and cultural differences can lead to interpretations of “cleaning” in ways you didn’t anticipate, such as reorganizing your closets and drawers instead of actually cleaning the kitchen or bathroom.

Another component of this group that cleans on a transitory basis includes students, aspiring actors, dancers, artists, writers, and others who are cleaning until they get their diploma or big break, or until their ship comes in. But all these marvelously human situations are fluid, and as their fortunes rise or fall, you may lose your housecleaner.

In this case, a professional cleaning company hires, trains (ideally), and manages the housecleaner. If the housecleaner quits or is ill, it’s up to the company to find a replacement. Some companies send individuals; others send teams.

The quality and reliability of these companies varies enormously but is generally improving as more people appreciate the opportunities available in this expanding industry. As more companies enter the cleaning field, they increase competition, which tends to improve service—in important areas such as cleaner training, customer relations, and reliability.

You might find the perfect cleaner in any of these groups, but before you even begin to look, there is a very important question that you must investigate. For whom does your housecleaner work? You or herself or himself? Once you’ve answered this question, you may know exactly in which of the above groups you want to look for a housecleaner. And if you already have a housecleaner, you may be inclined to make some changes once you’ve considered this same question.