Remember when a few days ago I wrote a post called "Number Five Subdivided" about seven ways to clean up after yourself? And how I said that I don't do any of these things regularly but that I was inspired to try them?
Well, I have been trying them! And do you know what, I think I am really on to something!
I've mostly been working on these (see the original post for details):
- Clean up after dressing and undressing
- Clean up after going somewhere in the car
- Begin cooking with these seven items available: apron, dishwasher, soapy sink, trash can, dishcloth, two towels
- Keep the kitchen sink empty (from the original article that inspired me)
I have been surprised at how quickly they've become second nature, and how much they've cut down on the general visual clutter in my household AND the size of the cleanup after dinner. There is a lot of bang-for-the-buck in these things (counting the original seven from the original article too).
As I have gone through my day making some of these changes, I realized there's a pattern to the habit of not-cleaning-up-after-yourself, whether it's in the car, in the kitchen, in the closet, or in the office.
It's this: Refusal to commit.
Take measuring cups, for instance. Let's say I'm making dinner and I measure a cup of stock and add it to my pot. Now I have to do something with this measuring cup. Do I wash it, or do I set it aside on the counter?
If the very next thing I have to do is measure a quarter-cup of soy sauce for the same pot, of course, it would waste time and water to wash the measuring cup, right? But on the other hand, if I know I won't be measuring any more liquids while I cook this evening, I may as well wash it (or put it in the dishwasher) right away, leaving the counter a bit clearer and one less thing to put away later.
Of course, lots of times I'm not sure if I'm going to need the measuring cup again. So I set it down on the counter and leave it there in case I might need it.
See? Refusal to commit. I don't know for sure whether I will save more work by washing it or by not washing it, so I leave it till later.
What am I afraid of? That I will need to measure something else and will have to use a clean measuring cup for it? Will I say to myself "Damn! If only I had known before I washed that cup that those ten seconds would be in vain!" Or (let's get real here) am I afraid of the effort of retrieving the dirty measuring cup from the top rack of the dishwasher, should I need it?
Refusal to commit!
The same thing happens in the closet. Why do I take off a pair of not-actually-dirty jeans and toss it on the floor NEXT to the basket, or roll it up and stuff it on a shelf, instead of putting it IN the dirty-clothes basket or putting it away in the drawer?
Because I might decide to wear them again in a day or two!
If I don't get around to wearing them, then they could go in the laundry. But if I put them in the dirty laundry, they might get dirty from contact with dirty clothes. So why don't I hang them up or fold them into a drawer? I guess deep down I think that because they've been worn once, they might "contaminate" my clean clothes! For a while I contemplated creating a special separate "purgatory" section of my closet just for clothes I've worn once and could still wear again. Finally it struck me — this is ridiculous. If something is clean enough for me to put on my body and wear out into the world, it is surely clean enough to hang next to freshly washed clothing, no? If I'm really worried that something is going to contaminate my clean jeans — what, does it smell funny or something? — don't I deserve to WASH it before I put it on my body?
Commit! If it's not wearable, put it in the laundry; if it's wearable, hang it up or fold it away. So simple.
All kinds of clutter come from this basic refusal to commit. How many items in your house go unused? We refuse to commit to a life with it, and we refuse to commit to a life without it; so instead of giving it away or getting rid of it, and instead of making changes that would allow us to use and enjoy it more easily, it just sits there taking up space.
Refusal to commit also encompasses the refusal to accept the clean-up time as an integral part of any task. Why, if we admitted that it really takes 45 minutes to make dinner (counting cleaning up as you go), instead of 30 minutes (not counting cleaning as you go), we'd have to start making dinner 15 minutes early! I might have to sacrifice some of my blog reading! And yet, that refusal to commit the necessary time can create a separate chore where before there was none.
We're doing paperwork in the office and as each bill gets paid, the stack of papers to be filed grows. It would take a few seconds to slot each paper into the right spot in the filing cabinet — but it's so much more urgent to "get the bills paid" (meaning the part where you put the checks in the envelopes and the part where you put the envelopes out at the mailbox) — and won't it "save work" to save all the filing for the end? It might save some work, you don't know! You refuse to commit the few extra seconds to file each paper because it MIGHT be faster to file them "all at once," and then you're left with an unhappy pile at the end… but that now becomes part of a different chore, called "cleaning up the office." Maybe somebody else will get stuck with that one… in a month or two…
I have found that if I stay aware of what I'm doing — You're leaving this thing here because you're worried you'll want to use it again and then the work of putting it away will have been "wasted!" – or — You're leaving this mess on the table because you're hoping that you'll have some excuse not to do it later and then Mark will have to clean it up! — I can kind of shame myself into cleaning up after myself!
Remarkable!
(Credit where credit's due: The original spark of this idea came from a book I read a couple of weeks ago by professional and semi-celebrity organizer Peter Walsh, whose point about "committing" to dirty or clean laundry rattled around in my head until I realized it was generally applicable to all sorts of clutter and cleanup.)
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