Speed Cleaning (7 page)

Stock your carryall tray with the following items:

Stock your cleaning apron with:

The Duster’s job is to start cleaning the house except for the kitchen and bathroom. This work is drier than the work in the kitchen and bathroom: less spraying and wiping. There are several rooms involved, but they go faster, and there are no floors to wash—except wiping up an occasional drip of something. If you’re going to work in a team, the Duster is also the team leader. But we’ll get to that in
Chapter 9
.

The strategy here is similar to the one for the kitchen and bathroom: Start in one place and then work your way through the rooms without backtracking, using The Clean Team rules.

As before, work from high to low. For the Duster, this instruction takes on additional importance: dust follows a relentless gravitational path downward, diverted only temporarily by air currents. Unless you have a healthy respect for this physical reality, you will find yourself redoing your work constantly. You will have an understandable human impulse
first to dust what’s right in front of you or what’s interesting or what’s easy to reach. Instead, train yourself to look
upward
toward molding, tops of picture frames, and light fixtures first, always checking for cobwebs.

Finish each area as you pass by. Do all the dusting, polishing, wiping, brushing, wet-cleaning, and tidying you need to do in an area as you pass through it. Change tools and cleaning supplies as needed: If you are dusting happily along with your feather duster and happen upon raspberry jam smeared on the top of the TV set,
quick!
Pop the feather duster into your back pocket with one hand as you reach for the Red Juice with the other. Spray with one hand as the other reaches for the cleaning cloth. Wipe with one hand as the other replaces the spray bottle on the apron loop. Then replace the cloth with one hand as the other hand reaches for the feather duster, and you are on your way again. A true blitz—a sign that you are mastering what you are doing. For pity’s and time’s sake, don’t go around the room once to dust, once to polish, once to tidy things, etc.

Whether or not you are working with others, part of your strategy is to reduce the work load of the vacuumer. (The vacuumer will normally be someone else if you are working with another person.) Throughout this chapter, we’ll suggest ways you can shorten vacuuming time by doing what would have been some of the vacuumer’s work as you dust your way through the house.

Pay attention. Be alert to smarter ways of doing what you’re doing.
When you shave off a minute or two each time you clean—not by rushing, but by smarter cleaning—that’s what it’s all about.

Since your home or apartment is unique, and since there are so many possible floor plans, we are going to discuss a typical one. Then after you’ve read this chapter, you’ll draw a floor plan of your own home and chart your way through it. So before you even pick up your feather duster, you’ll know where you’re going to start, where you’re going next, and where you’ll finish.

First, though, we’ll work our way through the rooms a Duster is likely to encounter—in this case, in our sample home. As we go, we’ll explain cleaning methods and techniques to be used in each room and on the furniture, fixtures, and other items. Since there are so many possible arrangements, we do not suppose we’re covering them all. We believe, however, that by learning our techniques for these typical rooms you’ll know how to approach items not specifically mentioned here or items arranged in a different order in your home. We know this because it is much more important that you follow the
rules of cleaning
we’re teaching rather than learn “hints” about specific items. You use the same technique on a $5,000 Baccarat crystal centerpiece as on a 50¢ garage-sale vase. You may breathe a little differently, but you clean them the same way.

Our sample living room, dining room, entryway, and hall have rugs on a hardwood floor. The bedrooms have wall-to-wall carpeting.

Put your apron on and load it from your tray, putting Red Juice on one side and Blue Juice on the other. Put the furniture polish and polishing cloth in your apron. Put your feather duster in one back pocket and the whisk broom in the other. Take six to eight cleaning cloths and put them in the apron. (Next time you clean, you’ll know better how many cloths to grab.)

As you start to spray and wipe your way around the room, carry the drier cleaning cloth over your shoulder so it’s easy to reach. When that cloth gets too damp for streakless cleaning (mirrors, picture glass, etc.) but is still usable for wiping, rotate it to the apron pocket and sling a new dry cloth from your apron over your shoulder. Use the damp cloth for wetter cleaning jobs like fingerprints, spots on the floor, and windowsills,
for example. When that cloth in turn gets too damp or dirty and is no longer usable even for wiping, store it in the bottom of your lower right apron pocket.

Approach most situations with your feather duster in one hand and the other hand free. Shift quickly to heavier-duty cleaning options as the situation demands, and gradually you’ll notice you’re beginning to do so smoothly and to anticipate your next move.

If you use proper technique with the feather duster, you will move most dust quickly from wherever it was to the floor, where it will be vacuumed away. (High to low—
Rule 3
.) Poor technique will throw a lot of dust into the air and contribute to the poor reputation unjustly suffered by feather dusters.

Most dusting motions are fast, steady motions over the surface being dusted—a picture frame, for example. At the end of the dusting motion (i.e., at the end of the picture frame), bring the duster to a dead stop.
Don’t let the feathers flip into the air at the end of a stroke, thereby throwing all the dust into the air, where it will stay until you’ve finished cleaning and then settle back on all the furniture you’ve just finished cleaning.

By coming to a dead stop at the end of each stroke, you will give the
dust a chance to cling to the feathers. To remove the accumulated dust from the feathers, tap the feather duster smartly against your ankle, close to the floor, every once in a while. The object is to get the dust to settle on the floor where it will await vacuuming.

Set your tray on the floor next to the door of the first room you’re going to clean. For our purposes, you’re going to start by cleaning the living room.

Rule 3
says to work from top to bottom, so the first thing to do is to look up and check for cobwebs. Use your feather duster to remove them. If they’re out of reach, stick your feather duster in the end of one or two lengths of vacuum wand. Then do a quick tour of the whole room, as it’s too time-consuming to put down and pick up this makeshift apparatus more than once. Kill all spiders. Or catch them and let them loose outside if you’re a pacifist or if they beg for mercy.

Dust door panels or trim with the feather duster. Clean fingerprints around the doorknob with Red Juice (spray and wipe). Then, with Red Juice and cloth still in hand, clean the light switch next to the door. Move to the right along the wall, dusting everything from cobwebs on the ceiling to dust on the baseboards with long “wiping” motions of the feather duster. Remember to stop dead at the end of each swipe. Shift to wet cleaning (Red Juice, Blue Juice, or polish) only if you need to—as
Rule 7
says.

Picture glass typically needs wet cleaning only a few times a year. To test for cleanliness, run your
clean
and
dry
fingers lightly over the glass. Any graininess or stickiness means clean it. If it needs it, wet-clean by spraying Blue Juice lightly and evenly and then wiping dry. Wipe it really
dry,
not just until it looks dry. The difference equals a streak: Glass begins to
look
clean as you’re wiping it even though it’s still slightly wet with Blue Juice. Wipe until it’s completely dry. Trust us.

Wipe in broad movements, taking care to wipe the corners well. Don’t wipe in small circles or random excursions. Also, stabilize the frame with one hand—
firmly,
don’t be halfhearted—while you wipe with the other. If you don’t stabilize it, it may fall or leave scratches on the wall from the frame jiggling as you clean it.

The woods are full of people who can do a slow and mediocre job of
cleaning glass. Our goals are higher, and one of the things that makes the greatest difference is checking your work. If you look head on into the glass, you will see a reflection of your own sweet face, but you may miss 80 percent of the dirt on the surface. Check it from as narrow an angle as you can.

Once you have cleaned a picture frame or mirror, it probably won’t need a thorough wet-cleaning again for weeks or even months. Dust it every week or so on the top of the frame and occasionally even the glass itself.

As you dust, check the walls for marks and fingerprints. Use Red Juice on wall marks of all kinds. Before you move to the next section of the wall, look all the way to the floor (especially when there is a wood or tile floor) to check for little dried-up spills that should be wiped away.

Clean
above
the end table first. With wiping motions of the feather duster, dust the lamp shade, bulb, lamp, and then the objects on the table. The surface of an end table is rarely touched, so there is no need to use furniture polish every week. Just use your furniture-polish cloth without extra polish. By “polish” we mean either wax or oil—an important distinction to make, it turns out, as the two do not get along well on the surface of furniture. If you’ve been using an oil polish (“lemon oil,”
“red oil,” etc.) continue using it. Otherwise use the Old English from your apron pocket—a type of liquid wax that we find very easy to use.

When cleaning an object-laden table, just work from top to bottom again. Use your feather duster first (on lamps and objects on the table), then a cleaning cloth (on objects that need more cleaning), and then the polishing cloth (on the table itself).

Use caution. Cleaning and moving small items on shelves and tables is the scene of most accidents for dusters. A few guidelines will avoid most accidents: most important, pay attention to what’s in front of you. Use both hands to move anything top-heavy or irreplaceable, or anything composed of more than one piece (e.g., a hurricane-lamp base with a glass lantern on top). It’s almost never wise to move something on a pedestal by pushing the pedestal. Steady the top piece with one hand and grab the pedestal with the other. You usually get to make only one mistake with such things. And keep a wary eye out for heavy objects:
Do not,
oh
do not,
slide them across the surface of furniture. Scratches will follow in their path without fail or mercy.

Our end table is on a wood floor, so use your feather duster to wipe the floor around the legs and underneath it to save time for the vacuumer. By dusting these areas where the vacuum would leave rings
or where the vacuum can’t reach, you are speeding up that job, since the vacuumer won’t have to stop to do it. If furniture is on a carpet, use the whisk broom instead of the feather duster for this job.

Fabrics vary greatly in characteristics that affect cleaning strategy. If you’re lucky, your furniture will need only a quick swipe with the whisk broom. At the other extreme are fabrics that hair will cling to until you pluck it off like a surgeon. In the middle are a great number of fabrics that will cooperate reasonably and respond to your whisk broom. Every so often even the most agreeable of fabrics could use a good vacuuming, however, to remove accumulated dust. The frequency of vacuuming depends on how dusty your environment is and how sloppy you are. If you like to eat crackers while sitting on your couch or if the cat sleeps there, you will overwhelm the capacities of the whisk broom and will have to call in the vacuum regularly. But not now.
First finish
dusting and polishing.

Back to our sample couch, however, which has pet hair and cookie crumbs on it. Clean from the top down, using your whisk broom. You will be tempted to start with the cushions, as they are easiest to deal with. Resist. First, starting with the left side of the couch, whisk the crumbs and hair from the top, back, and sides. (Careful not to make work for yourself by whisking debris onto the clean end table.) Whisk down and toward the cushion.

Should you clean under the cushions? Ah, the eternal question asked by reluctant cleaners! The answer lies under those very cushions. Lift up a cushion or two and peek. You will know instantly. If it needs a thorough cleaning underneath, set the left cushion on the one next to it to get it out of the way while you whisk out that area. Then move to the next section and (starting once again at the top of the couch) repeat the process. If the area under the cushions only needs a touch-up, just tilt the cushion up for a quick swipe with the whisk broom. Leave the tops of the cushion for the vacuumer, who can do them much faster.

To signal the vacuumer that the cushion tops
only
are to be vacuumed, leave a cushion overlapping the next one. The large vacuum has a beater brush that is safe for most fabrics. You simply lift the beater brush up to the couch cushions and vacuum away. No further vacuuming is necessary as long as you have removed the hair and crumbs from the rest of the couch. Keep in mind that you want to do everything possible to make vacuuming easier. These steps greatly reduce vacuuming time.