Hi there, I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question,
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now, today's question comes from a home owner, who wants to know,
"Angela, how often am I supposed to clean my house?"
Okay, I love that question for this reason, how often are you supposed to take a shower?
The answer is as often as you need it.
How often are you supposed to brush your teeth?
Well, rule would say once or twice, three times a day,
but the answer is however often you need it.
The same goes with your house.
Now, if you're hiring a house cleaner, it would easy to say, "Well, they come every
other week.
And so, I don't need to clean my house except every other week."
But the truth of the matter is, when your house cleaner comes every other week, they're
doing what's called bi-weekly chores.
Those are chores that can be put off for a couple of weeks.
Those are things like cleaning the baseboards and maybe mopping certain areas of your house
that don't get much use.
And it might be wiping down furniture or polishing furniture that doesn't get much use, or that
can go for a couple of weeks without that.
But there are every single day chores that need to be done every single day,
and they need to be done on a regular basis.
So, the question is how often do you need to do it?
Every day, and maybe sometimes multiple times a day.
Like, how many times a day should you do your dishes?
Well, the answer is every time you eat something.
There's a routine, and the routine becomes automatic, and you want to get inside a routine
that's automatic so that you're not thinking about it.
You don't wake up in the morning and say, "Oh, I got to go clean my house."
That's not fun at all, right?
But if you get in a habit of just having these little habits that you stack on top of each
other, then it just becomes routine.
Do you remember when you first started learning how to drive?
And you would get in the car and you would be nervous, and your knuckles would be white,
and you'd be hanging on to the steering column, and you're getting ready to go, and you think,
"Okay, I got to back up slowly, and I will put my foot on the gas slowly, and then I
will let off as the car I put in reverse, and then I will look behind me both ways to
make sure that there is nothing behind me as I back slowly out of my parking space.
And now I'm going to turn the steering column and I'm going to put my hands at 10 and 2.
Then I'm going to check my mirrors, make sure it's okay.
Then I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to put the car back in drive, and then I'm going
to accelerate and I'm going to drive where I'm driving."
Now, as you go down the interstate, again your knuckles are white, and you're looking
at the speed limit because you don't want to go over the speed limit, and then it gets
to a point where now you have to pull over somewhere and parallel park.
And as you pull over, of course, you're checking all directions around you, and you're checking
the car, and you pull right up next to the vehicle next to you and you match up your
mirrors with their mirrors, and then you turn your wheel ... You get the point, right?
After a while, the driving becomes second nature, and you just get in the car, you put
on your seatbelt, and you're gone.
There's no thinking about backing out, there's no thinking about turning corners, there's
no thinking about stopping at stoplights.
Your mind just knows what to do, right?
There's no anticipation and anxiety and worry and all these things.
So, whenever you start a new habit, there's going to be that white-knuckle moment where
you're going to be sitting there going, "Am I doing it right?
Am I doing it right?"
But the answer is, there's no wrong.
There's no right or wrong.
And so, the more you do it, the more you learn, and the more it becomes second nature to you.
So, when you get up in the morning, there's a series of things that you already do.
You just got up.
So, as you just got up, the habit that you stack on top of just getting up, and they're
triggered, one thing triggers another.
The thing that you do next is make your bed, right?
It's just a habit that you create that stacks on top of you waking up in the morning.
Then you have to go to the bathroom, right?
So, as you're in the bathroom, what are you going to do?
You're going to get dressed, or you're going to take a shower.
And so, that's a habit that stacks on top of each other.
So, if you are doing a series of things, what house cleaning items can you tag on top of
that as just natural habits?
It's a great question because you're going to eat, every day you're going to eat, right?
As you eat, what happens after the meal?
Well, you take your dishes to the sink.
That's one habit.
Well, if you stand there for 30 seconds and you rinse the dishes out and you put them
in the dish drainer, that's another little habit that you just stacked on top of a good
habit, which was taking your dishes to the sink.
And then if you're coming in for your next meal and you're standing there and you're
waiting at the microwave for your meal to cook, that's two minutes where you could put
all the dishes away that are in the dish drainer.
And so, every time you go in to put something in the microwave, that could be a little trigger
for you, that that's the time that you put the dishes away.
It doesn't have to be a household full of chores and you're always working, but they
just become second nature to you in the little tiny routine thing tasks that you do.
That way it creates an environment where your house is always clean, it's always tidy, because
you're always picking it up, and you're always maintaining it.
So, if in the morning when you're brushing your teeth and you're getting dressed for
the day, and you've stacked all these little habits on top of each other, you can stack
one more habit on there.
As I'm on my way out the bathroom I've put all my makeup in the little container or the
drawer, I've put everything away, you just wipe the vanity down, you're done.
You walk in and your bathroom always looks neat and tidy, everything is always put away,
until you use it again the next morning.
At which point that habit kicks back into gear, you put everything away after you use
it, you wipe the counters down, and you're done.
So, how often do you need to clean your house?
Lots of times a day, because it's a space that you live in.
And if you take good care of the space that you live in,
it's like taking good care of yourself.
And if you have great hygiene and you are a happy person, and you're in shape, and you
feel good, it reflects through everything that you do.
So, when you come home and you have a personal space, at your house,
that is your heaven on earth.
And so just little tiny habits that you do can make all the difference in the world.
So, how often do you have to clean?
Every day, lots of times every day.
But, like I say, it's habit stacking.
So, create good habits that then serve you for the rest of your life.
Alrighty, so that's it for today.
Until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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