I Named My Vacuum (& Other Housekeeping Stories)

This post is #19 in my September Writing Project. Details are here.

Prompt: Housekeeping tips?

I am one of those annoying people who legitimately loves to clean and straighten and tidy and fuss. T will verify if you don’t believe me. My perfect weekend includes a fair amount of counter scrubbing and folding laundry is soothing to me. At times I take this to an extreme, which I blame to some degree on Pinterest and Instagram for showing me how nice it’s possible to make your house look—even though I know no one in my life expects my house to look like something on the internet when they come over.

Over the years I’ve picked up on a few tips that help keep the house looking halfway decent most of the time.

Keep Up With Things During the Week

This is not groundbreaking, but it’s effective, which is why I think it’s such a commonly shared idea. If I take care not to let things get too out of hand Monday through Friday, there’s less to catch up on over the weekend. Little things I try to do are handle the mail as it comes into the house, deal with dirty dishes right away, and vacuum the first floor each night. If I have clear counters, an empty sink, and floors that aren’t covered in crumbs, it goes a long way to convincing me the house is actually clean.

Invest in the Right Tools

I hated vacuuming with a deep and abiding passion for years. Our vacuum was heavy and bulky. I didn’t know how to empty the canister. The cord was constantly tripping me up. Sometimes it was just easier to not vacuum.

Then the vacuum conked out. In this house, two of the three levels are wall-to-wall carpet, so replacing it quickly was kind of necessary. Amazon happened to be running a discount on a Roomba. My mind had trouble justifying the expense but I was willing to give it a shot. And holy game changer, it was amazing. That thing just zipped around our house, scooping up all the tiny pieces of fuzz our old vacuum had apparently been missing in its final, less-than-effective days. I was mesmerized. In fact, I can remember one day when the kids and I sat in the armchair in Dude’s room for a solid 15 minutes watching Roomba zip around. We even named it: Stefon.

Stefon was and is amazing, but Stefon has a limitation; Stefon cannot vacuum steps and we have 28 of those in the house. We have an old handheld Dirt Devil that worked briefly, but it was glitchy and touchy and couldn’t hold a charge long enough to finish a flight of stairs. While in Target one day, we found a Dyson V6 cordless stick vacuum. It was HOT PINK and it was on sale and I was sold. LET ME TELL YOU. I love this thing as much as I love Stefon and I’m realizing as I type this that maybe I should name the Dyson too. I think Seth is a good choice.

(Is anyone here getting the Seth and Stefon references?)

Anyway, we have Stefon setup on our upper level where it’s all carpet. Between working from home and the weekends, I am around roughly four days a week – one day for each inhabited bedroom + the hallway. Seth is on the main floor and I use him at least once a day to zip around. Being cordless and lightweight, it’s so easy to grab him (now it feels weird that I’ve gendered my vacuums) and zap up the dirt tracked in and the crumbs dropped around the table.

This tip kind of sounds like I’m telling you to go spend a fortune on vacuums. That worked for us, but maybe vacuuming isn’t your white whale. Maybe you hate dusting; consider an air purifier. If the smell of Pledge gives you a headache, try a different brand of products in different scents. 

I don’t think this tip works for toilets though. There’s not a tool in the world that makes me want to clean a toilet.

Share Your Expectations With This Living in Your Home

This feels kind of obvious, but I think it might help to consider. I’m not hugely perturbed by hair in the shower drain, but my husband hates it. I’m the one with the long hair, so I take an extra second and clean the drain after each shower. T went through a phase where he would leave his dirty clothes on the floor, despite the fact that the hamper was like six steps away. I told him it bugged me and now he doesn’t do it anymore. 

The same rules apply to the kids (to varying degrees, based mainly on age). If you make a mess, you clean it up. If you take a bowl of blueberries to the couch, you return the bowl to the dishwasher when it’s empty. When you’ve dried off from your bath, you take your towel to the basket.

Don’t let that stuff fester. A home is home to everyone who lives there. Everyone has to do their part. Don’t take it all on yourself.

Get Rid of Some Stuff

If you’re spending all of your time maintaining the things in your home, are you spending any time enjoying those things? 

I used to keep a collection of my parents’ good china on display in our dining room. We never used it. Sometimes I’d glance at it and think “that’s nice.” But it’s not something I feel emotionally attached to. So we packed up the china and, because I wasn’t quite ready to part with something that had been my mom’s, we stored it in our basement. Then we sold the china cabinet. That cut out quite a bit of dusting and honestly, I don’t miss it. 

If each of your 25 tchotchkes makes you happy, by all means, keep them. But take a minute and ask yourself if that’s really true.

Joshua Becker writes about this far more eloquently than I ever will. 

Decide What’s Most Important

Yeah I know, your spouse or kids or job or something else is most important. I’m talking about just in the realm of housekeeping. I get a little freaked out if our kitchen is too messy, so cleaning it up each night is a priority. The dining room is barely used though, so if the kids want to do art projects in there and leave their crayons out for a few days, whatever. I hate when our bed isn’t made, so I take a minute to do that each morning, but I don’t care about the pile of stuff lurking next to the dresser. 

Choose your battles. And maybe name your vacuum.