How To Think About Cleaning
Life lessons from a germaphobe living amongst dirty people
There are two types of people
Those who leave things better than they found them, and those who leave things worse.
This is the underlying philosophy that governs my life, from cleaning the kitchen and taking out the trash, to thinking about what policies I want to vote for that make sure the trash I take out doesn’t end up in the wrong places.
It’s the difference between giving up your seat on the bus for the old woman in need, or choosing to not be mindful of the others around you; the difference between being difficult with your waiter, or making their day with a compliment, regardless of the tip.
Sure, I’ve had my fair share of selfish behavior: I’ve forgotten to top up a person’s travel card after borrowing it from them, not put in the extra effort to clean something recyclable and instead just throwing it out, eat a whole lot of junk food, and a myriad of other things I can’t recall or am too embarrassed to share.
You can use this idea in business, too, such as flipping houses or making a difference in the job you spend hours working. The reality, however, remains the same: you can either leave things better than when you found them, or make them worse. Rarely does anything stay the same after the effects of a human imprint.
When did I start to care about this?
After a year of living in a new house with strangers for the first time, I have learned more than I consciously can recall from the past 20 years I spent living in my childhood home. When you live with others, you are simultaneously dependent on and independent of them.
You go about your own life, but your life inevitably clashes with theirs. You could become great friends, but sooner or later, someone’s gonna use your fork and forget to wash it. But who cares about a fork, right? Well, maybe no one; but what I do care about is basic self-respect. Self-respect? Yes, because you can’t possibly respect anyone else if you don’t first respect yourself.
Respect
What I’ve learned is that people’s standards of respect vary. You shouldn’t take an act of disrespect too personally. The fact of the matter is, this person has not been brought up the same way you have.
Their definition of respect is not the same as yours if they’ve developed a sense of respect at all. Regardless, that shouldn’t stop you from thinking about respect. Most importantly, respecting yourself and having a healthy relationship with hard work — more on this later.
Why cleaning?
It’s one of the few things you can control. You could be anti-social, or have guests over too often, or be a horrible trumpet player, or do anything else that could make your housemates resent you. What they can’t hate you for, however, is your cleanliness and hygiene.
In fact, you could forget about housemates altogether. Your life could be a mess, even if you’re the only one living in it. A little cleanliness, however, will go a long way in improving it. Why wouldn’t you want to come back home from a rough day and treat yourself to a restful nap in a room that resembles a hotel suite?
Also — and maybe this is just me — but in my mind, perhaps a little order in the house may produce a little order in an otherwise hectic world.
The hardest thing to teach is discipline
The one thing I wanted to teach my housemates was discipline, which is the hardest thing to teach, and even harder thing to do. I feel very disciplined myself when it comes to cleaning and keeping tidy, but that’s probably because I use cleaning to compensate for my lack of discipline in so many other areas of my life.
In life, it’s so damn hard being consistent, yet this is what discipline is for. And the first step to becoming disciplined is by consistently mastering at least one thing in your life that you must consider inescapable.
Some people must go to the gym, others need to make their bed in the morning; either way, their day doesn’t begin or end if they don’t perform these rituals. Applying this mindset to various areas in life will teach you about discipline. But cleaning is an especially important area in life, because of these reasons:
- It is inescapable. You don’t go a certain somewhere to perform this activity, no; you ultimately live in it. Your relationship with cleaning directly governs the conditions in which you spend most of your life.
- It’s not personal. You might be super healthy, taking care of your diet and going to the gym, paying special attention to your body. That’s great. But one day or the next you’ll realize that no matter how much you strive to perfect yourself, you live in a world surrounded by other people. The way you interact with those people is strongly correlated to how clean you are and how well you tidy up after yourself in not just a personal way, but also shared environment.
- It’s hard work. Work is especially important. And this is the next thing I want to talk about.
Why a good work ethic matters
If you find value in the little pleasures of life, then you can’t have a negative perception of cleaning. Typically, we leave our mess for a while until we have to clean in bulk, which is hard and tedious work, as opposed to maintaining a clean environment, which is lighter, more pleasant work.
Nevertheless, deep cleaning is something we all have to go through, whether it’s because we’re moving into a new home, need to clean up after hosting a party, or just decided to make a lifestyle change and fix our mess.
Sure, you can go through with it with the mental strain that your work is tiresome, but I think having a negative perception of cleaning and work is a pity because life will be filled with cleaning and work in so many aspects of our lives.
Think of the day you will be living in a house, starting or shifting careers, bringing up children, or what have you; these things take up most of our lives, believe it or not. It would be a shame if we looked at the endless hours we put into these things in a state of reluctance. Therefore, unless we look at cleaning/work in a happy view, we will most likely never be truly happy or satisfied with our lives.
Pick your battles
I know, I know. You’re gonna tell me, We’re not machines, we can’t be perfect all the time, and you’re probably right, we’re not; we’re just people.
Have you ever noticed that in order to get something clean, you’ve gotta first make something else dirty? Maybe we should start seeing the world like that. We can’t be super clean and tidy in all aspects of our lives.
Like I said earlier, I use cleaning to compensate for a lack of discipline in other areas of my life, but I don’t consider this a personal fault. In life, we’ll have to make sacrifices and pick our battles.
Inevitably, we’ll also have to deal with other people, like my new housemates I mentioned; I’d go mad if I made a big thing about every little detail around the house.
So give yourself a break, and pick the battles only worth fighting for.
Get disciplined, start cleaning
So if I can impart just a little bit of wisdom to you, let it be my whole philosophy on cleaning, because that’s basically what I think about when I think about cleaning:
Get used to cleaning if you want to be happy.
