Minutes to Clean?

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The other day I picked up the September 15, 2009 copy of Woman’s Day magazine. The article titled “Minutes to Clean – the Strategy That REALLY Works” caught my eye. My theory is that if I read enough books and magazines about cleaning and organizing, it will somehow change my DNA into someone who cleans and organizes naturally. So far it hasn’t worked.

The Woman’s Day article had a lot of good tips worth sharing; I especially liked the one about giving your cleaners time to do the work for you. Most of us just spray and wipe, but it’s better if you can wait a few minutes for the cleaners to do what they’re supposed to do.

I was also intrigued by the microfiber cloths mentioned in the article. Arianne Cohen, the author, talked to three professional cleaners to get their tips and tricks. The pros apparently use just these cloths and plain water for a lot of their cleaning. I think as consumers we buy into too many different products to help us keep our homes clean when just a few would do the trick.

The article also outlines a 7 step process to clean your house from top to bottom in 4 hours if you’re a beginner and 2 hours if you’re experienced. That sounded good to me so I decided to give it a try.

I’ll tell you now – you’re going to be disappointed.

The plan says that a better way to clean your home is to do one task start to finish throughout the house rather than doing a room at a time. The first step was dusting, and the pros say if you can get away with dry dusting, do it. Apparently every time you get something wet you make more work.

OK. So I started upstairs with a cloth and my usual dusting cleaner. I tried to dry dust as much as possible and limit the amount of cleaner I used. Rather than spraying surfaces, I sprayed the cloth.

I dusted the entire house, including places I don’t usually dust, like the stair railings, in 20 minutes.

Then I quit.

My daughter Sarah, in Michigan, was aware of my new plan because she had texted me just before I began. She was quite amused by my plan – another one of mom’s big schemes that won’t work out – and she made me promise to keep her updated.

She had quite a laugh when she found out I had quit after dusting.

But hey, I was hot and tired and even the music on my iPod wasn’t enough to make me want to keep going. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood. That happens a lot with ADD Moms. When we’re in the mood to do something, we can accomplish a lot. Trouble is, we’re rarely in the mood to clean the whole house in 2 hours.

The Woman’s Day article did have a lot of good tips and was worth the price of the magazine, even if it didn’t inspire me to clean my whole house. It’s the September 15, 2009 issue if you’re interested, and you can find the Woman’s Day site here.

Lacy Estelle

Lacy Estelle

Lacy Estelle is the writer of Lacyestelle.com and the Podcast host for An ADD Woman.

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