Nobody starts out by meaning to create a cluttered home. Whether we’re starting afresh after the end of tenancy cleaning and a carpet cleaning, a New Year’s resolution or a move, we all have visions of clear spaces, tidy shelves and floors and order. But we all know what happens before long if we’re not careful: chaos, clutter, mess and all sorts of oddments piled in the most peculiar places (example from this writer’s house: jelly beans collecting in the laundry).
How does this happen? According to British decluttering expert Sue Kay, ten bad habits prevent us from reaching our mental goals of order. Break these bad habits and you will see a dramatic reduction – or even elimination – of clutter in your home.
Habit 1: Procrastination. You know how this goes. “I’ll just pop this on the kitchen bench for now and deal with it later.” “I’ll find a home for that eventually, but in the meantime, I’ll put it on the bedside cabinet.” “You can give that a temporary home behind the sofa until we find a better place for it.” “Put it in the spare room to be fixed when I get around to it”. In a perfect world, we would always be able to put things away straight away and fix things as soon as they break. In the world that we do have, assigning some time to mending, sorting and dealing with temporary arrangements is a better way to stop the “just for now” piles building up.
Habit 2: Neck or Nothing. One of the big obstacles that often gets in the way of people having a decluttering session (or even calling in an expert) is a fear that minimalism is the goal and that the expert will leave you with a set of possessions that would make a monk’s lifestyle look lavish. This is not the case.
You do not have to reduce your worldly goods to subsistence level. While you may have to get rid of the out-of-focus photos, you don’t have to get rid of the old daguerreotype of your great-great-grandparents. While you may have to offload ancient magazines and the books your children grew out of years ago and hate the sight of, you don’t have to get rid of your favourite copy of Lord of the Rings. It’s not all or nothing. It’s about getting rid of inessentials.
Habit 3: Everything is equally valuable. While this principle is true of people in society, it isn’t true of the things cramming your storage space. While one person’s trash is another person’s treasure (and I therefore won’t presume to tell you what items of yours are to be treasured), sometimes trash is just trash. Prioritise your possessions. Keep what’s valuable, but get rid of the things that you honestly are never going to do anything with.
Habit 4: Getting distracted. You’re sorting the books, the junk mail or the old magazines. Something catches your eye. Next thing you know, you’ve spent half an hour reading that ancient magazine and have made no progress. Or you’re going through your clothes and you stop to try on half a dozen outfits and spend ages seeing how all your accessories go with it. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis had the senior devil Screwtape recommending this sort of behaviour as an excellent form of tempting humans into wasting their time and energy so they do neither what they ought to do nor what they want to do. To fight this temptation, set yourself a time limit to achieve a reasonable goal, and/or enlist a friend to help you or to whom you can be accountable.
Habit 5: Self-sabotage. If someone has been pressuring you to declutter, you’re in a bad mood or you don’t really want to get rid of things (possibly because of Habit 2), some people sabotage the efforts they do make. They throw out something that really is valuable which they later regret – and use this experience as a reason for never touching the clutter again. Or they set themselves impossibly hard goals. They call themselves names. All this will create a bad association with decluttering. Instead, set yourself reasonable goals, be honest and give yourself little rewards (but not by buying more unnecessary stuff) for achieving these goals. Suitable rewards can include temporary things such as a nice bunch of flowers, dancing in the space you’ve managed to clear, having a moment of nostalgia reading old love letters or just sitting back for five minutes listening to music and contemplating the view out of the window once you’ve cleared all the junk off the windowsill.
Habit 6: Multi-tasking. This is an asset in all other aspects of life, but don’t try to declutter and talk on the phone/deal with kid’s homework/vacuum the lounge. It is better to do a little bit of concentrated decluttering lasting ten minutes than an hour of trying to declutter and other things simultaneously. Rather than testing and chucking out dead biros and stationery while talking on the phone, do this while you’re waiting for an anti-virus program to finish running (the operative word there was “talking” on the phone. If you’re on hold, however, this might be an excellent time to delete old emails or test biros while you doodle).
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The Hygiene Hypothesis is adhered to by many medical professionals as a way of explaining the high incidence of immune/allergy related ailments in the hyper-clean Western world. In brief, the Hygiene Hypothesis is as follows. Children these days in the developed, urban world have fewer older siblings (to bring home germs from the outside world), have less contact with animals and the outdoors than they did in the past or in rural areas, and live in a home that is kept scrupulously and meticulously germ-free with the help of modern disinfectants. Their immune systems are not exposed to many bacteria and as a result, they tend to over-react to otherwise innocuous substances, causing asthma, allergies and eczema (whether this is because the cells involved in immune response are “spoiling for a fight” and take it out on the nearest handy target, or whether the cells are more like nervous new recruits taking fright at shadows is a matter for debate).
According to proponents of the Hygiene Hypothesis, the best way to avoid the likelihood of these immune related disorders is to cut down on the amount of disinfectant used in the home, and to allow children to play in the dirt every now and then, and to play with animals (some go so far as suggesting that even Type 1 diabetes may be attributable to the Hygiene Hypothesis, but this is debateable – children can, unfortunately, get Type 1 diabetes even if they have plenty of exposure to animals and the outdoors, etc.).
This is yet another reason why we should switch to using natural home cleaning products. Natural cleaning products are all you need to remove dirt and the worst of the germs. Removing the majority of the germs is still very important for a household with young children, as infantile diarrhoea is extremely debilitating and can be dangerous, and meningitis is definitely dangerous. So don’t let the Hygiene Hypothesis turn you into a slob. But the hospital-grade disinfectants you find in some proprietary cleaners are simply over the top. They’re not necessary to maintain a healthy home. You do not live in a hospital where sick people – both those with reduced immune function and those with bacterial diseases – are confined, and you do not have to perform major surgery.
Common sense is still required and some things should be kept as germ-free as possible. Anything used for food preparation or storage should be cleaned properly and thoroughly. Hands should be washed before eating or handling food, and after using the toilet, doing a dirty job or playing with animals. Tea towels and dishcloths should be changed regularly. And extra care should be taken in households that have small children, elderly people or invalids.
If you need a natural cleaner that is more heavy duty than just soap, baking soda and water (soap is a mild disinfectant, incidentally), try one or more of the following:
Vinegar: vinegar kills bacteria, which is why it is used for bottling and for pickling. The more concentrated it is, the more bacteria it can kill.
Salt: salt also kills bacteria and is used to preserve food.
Mix it into a paste that is abrasive as well as disinfectant (you can use salt as a substitute for toothpaste, but make sure you rinse well and have a big drink of water afterwards if you try cleaning your teeth with salt).
Essential oils: Essential oils of thyme, oregano, lavender and/or pine are stronger disinfectant and anti-bacterials than some hospital-grade disinfectants. However, you won’t be using them concentrated in large quantities unless you have more money than you know what to do with. Add up to 20 drops to any other natural cleaning product for a bit of antiseptic boost.
Boiling water: Immersion in boiling water for 10 minutes kills all bacteria. Keep this for items that can handle the higher temperatures, such as metal, oven-proof glassware, china and cloth made of cotton/linen without any elastic. Don’t be a juggins and try to get the things out of the boiling water with your hands – use tongs and allow the items to dry thoroughly.
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The writer is in the throes of moving house while writing this. The move in question had the advantage of not having deadlines either for moving in to the new place or moving out of the old one, and it wasn’t a move to the other side of the country, so we could do it over several days and do it ourselves rather than hiring a moving company and an end of tenancy cleaning London company. From experience, here are a few tips to make things easier – in random order, pretty much like the boxes of bits come out of the trailer.
Don’t bother wrapping chinaware in lots of newspaper – you will only have to get rid of the newspaper at the other end, which can be a pain. Instead, protect your chinaware and crockery with soft items you already own and would otherwise have to pack separately. Use tea towels, towels, pillow cases, face cloths and the like to wrap.
Collect cardboard boxes from the local supermarket – if you can’t see any, just ask one of the store managers or supervisors. Sometimes, they have to return any packing boxes for re-use, but often they have some spare boxes that would otherwise be dumped.
If you have time, have a decluttering session or three before you are trying to pack up ready to move. If you don’t have time, make the packing session a decluttering session. You’re going to have to haul it out of the cupboard or the drawer anyway (well, you probably are), so if there’s no point in keeping it, then put it in a separate pile to be taken to the tip or to a local charity. It is probably not the best time to try to hold a garage sale – you have enough on your plate.
Keep cats inside for a few days after moving house, even if they usually roam around outside. This will help them realise that the new place is really home and that this is where the food dish is. After the first few days, you can let them outdoors. If you are shifting to a rural area, you can get away with letting them outside earlier.
Make sure you have eatables packed in a handy place at both ends of the move – the old house and the new so you can be sure of getting something decent to eat (even if it’s only baked beans and a cup of tea). This also means that you won’t be living on pizza or other junk food.
Cheat when it comes to clothing – don’t bother folding and sorting. Just treat it like a king-sized (make that emperor and grand dictator of the world sized) washing load – toss it all in the trailer together, then sort it out at the other end. It’s going to get creased whether it’s lobbed in a heap or whether it’s neatly in a box, and you’re going to have to sort it out and put it into drawers or cupboards at the other end, so you may as well save yourself a bit of time and effort – you’re going to need it for other things.
Alternatively, don’t bother taking your clothes out of drawers, if the drawers are in a dresser or tallboy. The bedroom furniture will be easier to lift if you remove the drawers, so all you have to do is whip the drawers out, put the dresser on the trailer or in the lorry, put the drawers back in, toss a blanket over the lot, tie it on, then reverse the process when you get to the other end. However, you won’t get a chance to declutter this way.
Children get unsettled by a move, so keep things familiar for as long as possible. Posters and pictures from bedrooms should be taken down on the day of the move itself and put up promptly. They should not be considered as “unimportant” and able to be packed ahead of time – when all else is chaos, at least a bedroom can be moved with a minimum of disruption.
Expect that thing will be chaotic and confusing for the first week or so after the shift. You will spend ages hunting for where you put the salt in the new cupboards. You will have to move things around in the living room to catch that patch of sunshine that you weren’t aware of. Be flexible and expect this. Also expect at least one thing not to go according to plan and at least one thing to get broken or chipped. If this doesn’t happen, count yourself very lucky indeed and celebrate this.
Accept any offers of help, especially if you have a piano to move.
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OK, when was the last time you cleaned up your bathroom cabinet? I can’t remember the last time I cleaned mine, but I moved house last year, so I have some excuse. Somebody had done a proper end of tenancy cleaning and left it all sparkling and ready for me to move my bits and pieces into. So I’ve got some excuse. How about you?
OK, so no more excuses. Time to get to work. Arm yourself with plenty of rags, a very large box or some other place to corral bits and pieces and a few natural cleaning products – warm soapy water and a spray made from dilute vinegar and an essential oil will be your most likely weapons, but you may need others. Also have some rubbish/recycling bins or bags on hand, because you’re going to have a clear-out.
Start by taking everything out of the cabinet. Put them in the big box so they don’t get knocked or spilt as you work. If anything is obviously broken or useless, put it in the appropriate recycling or rubbish box.
Now it’s time to get cleaning. Bathroom cupboards are usually coated with something like vinyl and are fairly easy to wipe out. Spray on your vinegar stuff and give the gunk a good wipe. This should get the worst off. It doesn’t clean off much grime? Try the soapy water and scrub again. Still no joy? If that grey gunk is oil-based, then a paste of baking soda and water should shift it. If, after all these efforts, the gunk remains, then your best bet is to soak the spot in neat vinegar and leave it to soak for a bit. Another good natural solvent is vodka or some other strong alcohol.
However, if the stain in question is nail polish, then use nail polish remover to get rid of it. It doesn’t just work for removing polish from nails!
Rinse off whatever cleaning product you have used with a cloth dipped in fresh water – the tap is handy, after all. Dry out your bathroom cabinet after rinsing – mildew and mould can be a real bugbear in the bathroom, so making sure that everything is as dry as possible is a real must. If you already have problems in this area and are trying to clean mould and mildew off the bathroom cabinet, then this should be fixed by using neat vinegar – this kills mould spores, which is why vinegar is used as a natural preservative and germ-killer.
Now it’s time to put everything back in. But don’t just chuck everything back in willy-nilly. Check things over to make sure that nothing has passed its use-by date. If they have, out they go. Wipe the bottoms and sides of any bottles with a cloth dipped in warm soapy water to get any trickles off – you don’t want to get everything dirty just after you’ve cleaned the shelf.
Organise things as they go in. For example, keep all hair-related products together, all shaving products together, make-up, medicine, etc. etc. If you’ve got any double-ups of something you don’t use very often or that isn’t consumable (e.g. hair straighteners), consider donating the excess item to charity. Also note any gaps – have you run out of sticking plasters or are the aspirins running low? Add these to your shopping list.
This may also be a good time to change your old toothbrush for a new one. But don’t throw the old one out, as old toothbrushes are very, very handy for all sorts of house cleaning jobs. Including cleaning the bathroom cabinet.
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“You have builder’s back,” said the acupuncturist to my professional cleaner friend in his delightful Chinese accent. “Woman not supposed to have builder’s back.” Yes, indeed, my friend’s back is living proof that housework can be physically demanding and a terrifically good workout – and is anything but a sedentary job if you do it full time.
One of the things that my domestic cleaner friend puts her impressive lats and delts down to is moving heavy furniture to clean under them. Because while many people think that out of sight is out of mind, dust still builds up on carpets and can cause asthma if not dealt with promptly. And occasionally, worse things accumulate under the bed, especially if you have a cat that has been accidentally shut in the house with no litter box inside.
If the item of furniture is not too heavy, all you have to do is to make sure that anything stored under the bed or whatever is moved out of the way. Then you have to pull the single bed or sofa out from the wall before you set to and clean the carpet with a vacuum cleaner, or remove the cat mess in the usual way with the help of loo paper (to scoop up the solid mess), a scrubbing brush and warm soapy water (to remove any stuck on mess and to kill bacteria; soap is a mild disinfectant, after all, as well as the fundamental cleaning product) and baking soda (to remove the smell so the cat doesn’t get the idea that beneath the bed is a litter tray). Don’t bend your back over too much while trying to shove furniture around (unless you have what that acupuncturist calls “builder’s back”) but bend your knees. Enlist help if you need it.
However, sometimes it’s not as simple as that. Even my cleaning friend says that some beds are beyond her strength – bunk beds and massive oaken king-size beds being the two examples she groaned about. So how does the professional house cleaner deal with this?
To vacuum under a big bed, the first step is to make sure that all is clear. Big beds often have a lot of storage space beneath them (if you are in need of extra storage space, take note!) and this will need to be removed before you can vacuum the carpet. If you can’t quite reach under, then use a rake to pull the stuff out – but make sure you clean any mud and other debris off the rake, or you will make a worse mess than you started with. After everything is clear, you can vacuum under the bed by reaching in to the difficult corners with the extension tube on the vacuum cleaner (now you know why they were invented) pulled out to the maximum. You will probably need to get down on your knees and peer under the bed to do this properly.
To deal with cat crap under the bed, things are trickier still. You could crawl under the bed and deal with the mess while lying on your front, but most of us would rather not have our noses four inches away from animal faeces – and cat poop seems to smell worse than any other kind thanks to the high amount of protein they eat. It is probably easier to remove the mattress from the bed and approach matters from above. If you can’t do that with the type of bed you have AND you can’t crawl underneath, the only course of action is to call in some help for shifting the bed. Don’t put your back out.
If your bed is big and has drawers underneath, then you can probably get away with not vacuuming underneath it – the dust isn’t going to come up through a solid drawer, what’s in the drawer, a wooden base and a mattress very easily – until the time comes for the end of tenancy cleaning or you want to rearrange the room.
