If you have a solid cleaning schedule in place, congratulations—that’s half the battle. The other half of the battle, though, is staying engaged so you don’t start phoning it in. Here’s one way to shake up your routine every few weeks: Try cleaning with all five of your senses.
Generally, I recommend cleaning in 15-minute bursts and doing so on a schedule, consistently working those small chunks into your day. Typically, that means you’ll get into some kind of routine, like cleaning the bathroom a certain day, while also completing maintenance tasks as they pop up. You visually assess your home throughout the week, picking up whatever is out of place and putting it away, or tackling any mess you see. You have other senses, though, and employing those could revolutionize how you approach your housework. By choosing to activate a different sense every day, you flip how you’d normally clean on its head, taking note of things you might not normally look into on an average cleaning day.
Unlike other cleaning techniques, this doesn’t have hard and fast rules. Since the purpose is just to switch around your thinking and approach, it’s situationally specific. That is, if you live in a wet climate or have issues with your pipes, the way you clean on a “smell” day is going to differ from how someone who, say, tends to let leftovers pile up in their fridge might clean on a “smell” day. But by designating each day of a week to this approach, you open your mind to what those frameworks mean for you and your home. For me, for instance, if I’m cleaning with scent in mind, I’d use that as a day to whip out my Fabuloso and mop my floors, use a scented cleaner on my countertops, and refill my air fresheners. On a taste day, I’d toss out old spices or expired food, clean my fridge, or clean out pet bowls.
Filtrete, which manufactures air quality products, suggests using this technique, too, and gives a few ideas for what each sense might call for in terms of tidying up. Sight is an easy one, since that’s basically how we clean every day, but for sound, have you considered addressing squeaky floorboards, fixing leaky faucets, or making sure all the items you have on display are secured to your shelves instead of rattling around? For smell, don’t forget to deodorize or wash out your garbage cans. Touch day can be all about your bedding and laundry, if that’s what it inspires for you, or it can be about getting the dust and grime off your baseboards and flat surfaces.
Try doing this every month or so, actively reframing the sense through which you want to perceive your home while you clean and going after whatever that day’s sense brings to mind for you.
