Bonne Marie is talking about spring cleaning in her blog today. Interesting, because I was thinking about cleaning last night (as I actually did some).


My mom - well, she'd hate me revealing this but - wasn't the strictest person in the world on clean houses. She was the original "A creative mess is better than tidy idleness" person. The house was never unhealthy, don't get me wrong, but it was frequently a site of clutter and my brother's and my latest "projects" or chair-forts or marathon Lego sessions.


In fact, my mother tells me that when I was about 3 or so, she was cleaning one day, and I looked at her and asked "Who's coming?" because she did extensive cleaning pretty much only when guests were due.


So I don't really have the "cleaning gene". So here's some advice for others who lack the cleaning gene, are terribly busy, or, like the Fillyjonk in "Moominvalley in November", are rendered unable to clean by a near-fall off of the roof. (Read the book, if you can find a copy).


First, what you need is a "junk room" where you can stash stuff and get it out of the way. If you have a spare bedroom or what the English wisely have and call a "box room", that will do nicely.


If you get a phone call and have 10 minutes or less to clean:
Take all clutter (unfinished projects, half-read books, mail, etc) and stow it in the junk room. Close the door.
Put any dirty dishes in the dishwasher if you have one. (If you don't have one, put them in the oven. Just don't forget to take them out before you reheat pizza)
If you still have time, wash out the sinks and the top of the stove. Somehow having a clean stovetop makes a kitchen look far far better than if you do anything else.
If you still have time, take out the high wattage light bulbs and put in 25 or 40 watt ones. Dimmer light = less visible dust

If you have 20 minutes, do the above plus
Sweep or vacuum the floor in the rooms where your guest is likely to be
Clear up clutter on kitchen cupboards
Clear up clutter on bathroom counter

If you have STILL MORE time:
Wipe up spots on kitchen and bathroom floors
Make a more concerted effort to put stuff away
Dust.

Any more time than that, and you're on your own. You can be as obsessive about it as you like. Usually I can put up with clutter and dust better than physical dirt. Spots on my kitchen floor (which is white ceramic tile) make me nuts.

And a question for all of you: Are the Swiffer wet cloths as big a rip-off as I have found them to be? I bought the mop thing, I have bought a couple packs of the cloths and tried them on different occassions. Now, I don't know if it's that my kind of floor-dirt is mostly dust, crumbs, and shed long hair, but the cloths just seem to push them around and leave them stuck on the floor. Maybe the cloths are best for moms with kids that spill juice - but they don't seem to work for me.

And I don't even like to talk about cleaning up the ant-carnage. Last week I caught ants coming into my kitchen and sprayed their entrance with pyrethrin. There were about a thousand dead ants to clean up. And there's no good way to do that - sweep, and they get stuck in the broom and dropped everywhere, they won't cling to wet OR dry Swiffers, and wiping them up with a damp paper towel just fragments the bodies and makes the mess all that much worse.