Or ways to remove that accumulation fast?
Non-vacuum cleaner tips would be more actionable for me currently, but please do share your ways.
Before someone visits.
This is the truth. The pandemic really messed up my house because we stopped cleaning when people stopped coming over, and now it is so bad that we still don’t have people coming over. Add to that having a kid who doesn’t want to ever get rid of any of her old toys, and 2 parents trying hard to not let depression win… I don’t think we’ll ever have a clean house again.
having a kid who doesn’t want to ever get rid of any of her old toys
Do it for her then. I purge and donate my child’s toys every couple of months. It would be chaos otherwise.
wow, I can’t imagine randomly losing your possibly favorite toys every couple of months would have any sort of effect on a person when they become an adult. How many toys are you buying your kids throughout the year?!? Just get them proper storage and explain to them their items need to fit into it (shelves, toy chests. etc). Let them decide which items when it gets too much, you’re gonna have a hoarder on your hands when they get older if they always fear losing their items or never learn to let go of things they don’t need anymore.
Our kid is kinda spoiled and also needs her stuff purged every now and then. It’s pretty easy to tell which toys she cherishes and which ones have been sitting in pieces in the bottom of a tub for the last 6 months. I’m sure most people that do this will get their kid involved in the process. Hoarding can also lead to lasting effects as an adult. Imagine what their friends and classmates think about the clutter when they see or hear about it.
Ok let me ask my two year old what he thinks. He responds very well to reason.
That’s… how children learn?
Don’t live near dirt, wind or rain. Don’t bring cardboard into the house. Don’t allow animals in the house, including humans. Keep the house temperature over 2000.
Well the way to avoid dust is to not have any soft furnishings including carpets and rugs because they shed fibres that form dust, not have any clothing, because that also sheds fibres and forms dust, not have any skin because that sheds and forms dust, also have no hair, pets, unsealed surfaces, open windows, wear outside shoes inside, etc etc…
But if the above sounds too tricky then yeah the alternative is you just have to vacuum, mop and clean. I hoover several times a week, my partner dusts roughly weekly. It sucks. Entropy is a cruel mistress. But the upside is, having less dust in the house a) looks cleaner, b) is better for your respiratory system. So it’s worth doing, especially if you have someone in the house with something like asthma that would make them more sensitive.
Robot vacuum cleaners aren’t great a cleaning, but they are very effective at keeping the dust down. You will still want to clean occasionally but with a robot vacuum running regularly you can do it much less often and the house feels cleaner in the meantime.
I’m also lucky enough to be able to afford house cleaners now. It is such a nice gift to our family to not have to worry about doing these things. We can spend that time doing stuff together rather than cleaning and we don’t think about how dirty the house is and dread cleaning it nearly as often. If you can afford it I would highly recommend it. It definitely isn’t cheap but many people have more expensive habits that bring less joy IMHO.
I’ll second the robot vacuum. Doesn’t even have to be an expensive one or a “top reviewed” blah blah(don’t get a lemon though). It’s not a replacement for a vacuum or having to clean, it’s just a nice little companion that helps out a little and reminds you that you have to clean. Don’t have one myself but a relative does and it’s fun to see (over there a lot to help out because they’re older).
If you’re into sci-fi or electronics or little animal/robot companions in games, it kinda feels exactly the same but in person. Such a strange sensation to feel joy when the little robot guy runs between your feet or you have to shoo them out of the bathroom so you can use it lol. Even my older relative kinda treats it like a pet but all you have to do is empty it’s belly.
Thirding on the robot. Mine is connected to Home Assistant (that’s another rabbit hole to jump in) and it cleans the whole flat whenever nobody is at home. Basically every day at least once and we never get annoyed by it’s sound.
My concern with a robot vacuum is Lego (and other toys). I figure the robot will either give up and move out when it can’t do its job, or it will find the bin of small LEGO, dump it, and feast.
I have dust mite allergies. 2 most important changes I did were:
(1) no carpets, no curtains, only tile floors.
(2) and I love my robot vaccuum. They do 80% of the work, daily, whilst I’m away.
I wait until it starts getting noticable. Then I spend an hour cleaning - prioritizing the stuff that I’d be most embarrassed for a guest to see. After an hour the house is usually back below noticable levels of dirty. It’s never pristine but at least I have a facade of being a functional adult.
As @xmunk said, cleaning needs to be embedded in other tasks. If you cannot figure out how to embed a given task then you can set it for a fixed schedule. For example, you say that you clean your desk or office on Saturday morning and you have a given set of steps you accomplish.
Another trick I learned from corporate world is to delegate the tasks. It is more manageable to follow up on someone doing it for you than you actually doing it. This can be someone else living with you, or someone you can hire to do. For example, you can hire someone to clean the house every Sunday. This later option could be expensive.
If you want to embed tasks and do it yourself, then you need to make them easy for you, for example, you can overstock cleaning products. Let’s say you have a kitchen microfiber towel that hangs nearby and a dedicated cleaning product at reach. You consider that a meal (launch or dinner) equals, fetching the ingredients, cooking, eating and cleaning dishes, putting away dishes, and finally cleaning them. If you don’t clean dishes then you consider you did not finish your dinner.
Same thing for the bathroom, you need cleaning tools at reach when you are in the bathroom, don’t reuse kitchen stuff to clean the bathroom. Then when you shower, you clean the bathtub, the mirror, the sink, your underwear, wipe the floor, etc.
Same thing for the bathroom, you need cleaning tools at reach when you are in the bathroom, don’t reuse kitchen stuff to clean the bathroom.
Bleh, this reminded me of a housemate who insisted that buying two of a cleaning product was a waste of money and space and then routinely lose them. Very annoy. Big fan of keeping stuff for cleaning a space around that space instead of the other side of the house.
