In the past, I’ve written about my lack of motivation to clean, especially the scrubbing variety of cleaning. I just don’t like it. I’m sure that someone out there does like it, but I don’t know many of those people. Like many, I dislike the process of scrubbing: the procrastinating, the other procrastinating, collecting the equipment, moving everything out of the way, scrubbing, wiping, putting things back where they were.
To be honest with myself, it really only takes ten to fifteen minutes to do each of these tasks. It’s just that the procrastinating bit takes longer. Much, much longer. Days longer, sometimes. There’s always something more interesting than scrubbing. You know, I could be saving the world, parenting my daughter, making and eating delicious food: all tasks I prefer to scrubbing.
I’m sure that even if scrubbing is your thing, you probably have a household chore that is equally irritating to you. And eventually, as you know, you do need to get around to doing it. The sink looks awful. The playroom floor is so messy that you can’t walk over it. There gets to be a critical cleaning need, and at that point I generally buckle down and do the cleaning. When I’m done, I look at it and smile. I don’t like the scrubbing, but I love having scrubbed.
I’m trying a new approach now, and it seems to be working. I used to clean during the day, when all of the world saving, parenting, and food eating takes place. Since those things are much, much more interesting than scrubbing, I’m now doing a single ten-minute task every morning before everyone else gets up. This simple approach has kept my house clean for the last couple of weeks.
I have a morning routine, and I get up quite early. By doing a tiny cleaning task in the morning, I get it out of the way, feel good, and don’t procrastinate. After all, my morning time is precious! I don’t want to waste this alone time on procrastinating!
We’ll see how long this lasts. I hear that if you make it for a month, something can become a habit. One month, here I come!
Image Credit: sparkulus