Making Habits Stick

I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions for 2021, because I’m self-actualized. JK, I’m not self-actualized, but I have finally managed to nail the resolutions that I’ve been making every year for the past few 20 years. These are 1) flossing my teeth, and 2) keeping my house clean.

I can’t point to what exactly made these habits stick after so many years, but I do read a lot of books about habits, including Atomic Habits and Tiny Habits, so the advice must have stuck in my head.

Here’s what I think made it work for me.

Flossing
– I have a set time to do it (after breakfast)
– I found a floss that I like and I buy it at Costco so I never run out. I also keep it out on the counter so I have a visual cue.
– Practice makes perfect. I used to hate flossing because the floss would get stuck between my teeth and my gums would bleed. I guess I figured it out over the years because now I can do it no problem. It also takes literally a minute or so.
– Positive reinforcement. The last two times I went to the dentist, he said to keep doing whatever I’m doing and that I should come back in 6 months. 6 months! I know that’s normal, but dentists have had me on an every 4 month schedule for years.
– Tracking. At first I was tracking the habit and trying not to miss a day but I’ve stopped tracking now that I have it down.

Housecleaning
– I have a set time to do it (noon)
– I’m following a system, so I have specific instructions on what to do each day. I don’t have to think.
– My daily tasks don’t take that long
= I made my own cleaning products which smell good and are in pretty containers
– My house looks great so I feel rewarded.
– I track my progress in my planner. Don’t underestimate the power of checking something off a list.

Another Word About Decluttering

I said in an earlier post that you don’t have to wait until your house is decluttered before you start cleaning. You CAN clean a cluttered house. I stand by that but want to make a distinction between two kinds of clutter.

The first kind of clutter is stuff that is not put back where it belongs. The clothes on the dresser. The clean laundry still in the basket. The mail on the counter. The dishes in the dish drainer. The box of shoes that my husband ordered online that sat on the piano bench for…days? Weeks?

The second kind of clutter is stuff that shouldn’t be in your house at all anymore. The cassette tapes from my kids’ childhood. Two identical nutcrackers. My pj’s from junior high school. JK, I decluttered those long ago, but whenever my husband and I argue about drawer space, he brings up those pj’s as if they’re still there!

I am definitely attacking the first type of clutter in my new cleaning routine. We live in a small house so if things are left out, it makes the whole house look messy no matter how shiny the wood floors are. Honestly, it’s depressing being surrounded by clutter. It’s also easier to deal with it as it comes, rather than letting it pile up. Speaking from experience here!

I’m ignoring the second kind of clutter for now. It’s mostly all put away, out of sight, or it’s relegated to rooms that I’m not in regularly. It feels overwhelming to deal with that kind of entrenched clutter right now, and I don’t want to risk the progress I’ve made with my housecleaning routine by biting off too much.

Maybe someday I’ll have a clean and decluttered house. But for now, I’ll settle for mostly clean and mostly tidy.

Do You DIY?

Hey y’all,

Do you have favorite cleaning products?

Clean Mama, the system I’m following, advocates for using non-toxic products and includes recipes for making your own.

I’m not against toxic chemicals in my cleaning products per se, if it means that I have to do less scrubbing, but if there’s a natural alternative that works well, I’ll try it. Truth be told, most of my cleaning is done with Dr. Bronners mixed with water, and Bar Keepers Friend cleanser so I’m good. But I decided to give DIY a try.

I bought some pretty spray bottles and found some mason jars in my cabinets to hold my cleaning solutions. I’m convinced that I use the DIY products more because they’re attractive and smell nice.

Yeah, I know it says dill pickles. It’s all about repurposing. And isn’t the calligraphy lovely?

Here’s the matchup.

All purpose cleaner: used for counters, cabinets, general cleaning
DIY (water, vinegar, alcohol, essential oil) vs. Dr. Bronners and water: Both work equally well. Tie.

Cleanser: used for sinks, stovetop, and tub
DIY (baking soda and essential oil) vs. Bar Keepers Friend cleanser: DIY worked fine on sinks and stovetop and smelled divine (clove and sweet orange essential oils) but was no match for my perpetually dingy tub. Cleanser stays in the rotation.

Scrubbing tool: used for sinks and tub
Loofah vs. scrubby thing: the loofah has a nice aesthetic, but there’s no beating the scrubby. Does anyone know what it’s really called and where I can get a lifetime supply? My mom got me a bunch years ago but I’ve almost gone through them all. The loofah was kind of useless.

What is the scrubby on the right called and where can I get a lifetime supply?

Wood floor cleaner:
DIY (water, vinegar, olive oil, essential oil) vs. Dr. Bronners and water: I really like the DIY mixture. Dr. Bronners cleans a little better maybe, but the floors look a little dull after. The olive oil in the DIY makes the floors shine. Obvi I don’t use it for my kitchen and bathroom floors, just wood. I still use Dr. Bronners and water for kitchen and bathroom floors.

Stainless steel cleaner: used for refrigerator doors and stove
DIY (vinegar on a damp microfiber cloth followed by olive oil on a microfiber cloth) vs. the cleaning spray that I got when I bought the refrigerator: Most definitely the DIY. The spray smells horrible (likely toxic) and leaves the refrigerator doors streaky. The vinegar didn’t seem like it was working well at first, but when I went over it with the olive oil, it worked like a dream. My fridge has never looked so good.

Tile/grout cleaner: for tile in bathtub
DIY (hydrogen peroxide and tea tree essential oil) vs. Tilex shower cleaner: This is a tough one. Tilex and other similar cleaners work great but are highly irritating. The window MUST be open and you pretty much can’t be in the room when it’s doing its thing. That can’t be healthy. I didn’t try the DIY until about 3 weeks into my routine so there wasn’t really a lot of mildew to clean away. Therefore, it seems fine. I guess where I come down is to use a harsh cleaner if you have a lot of mildew but hydrogen peroxide works fine for maintenance.

Toilet cleaner:
DIY (oxygen whitening powder for laundry) vs. Pine Sol: Both work equally well. Maybe the DIY is a little better?

That’s it. I didn’t do DIY glass cleaner because I have tons of glass cleaner that I want to use up plus I ran out of containers.

Benefits of Quarantine – A Clean House

After years of being housekeeping challenged, I have finally found a routine that works for me. And all it took was a global pandemic and being stuck at home for nine months.

Seriously though, after being home this long, I decided that maybe I could make a cleaning routine work. Me being me, I started by researching housekeeping blogs and came across Clean Mama. Her routine was pretty simple and I liked her aesthetic. I tried it and to my shock, it took right away. I’ve been doing it for a month and my house looks great.

Clean Mama advocates doing a few things, like making beds and wiping counters, every day, and then you do one chore per day. So Monday is bathrooms, Tuesday dusting, Wednesday vacuuming, Thursday mopping, and Friday kitchen (my adaptation). I do my chore at noon, after my morning meetings and before lunch. I actually look forward to it, if you can believe that. My morning meetings must be pretty bad!

I could see the difference right away. My wood floors went from dingy to golden brown and shiny. My bathtub went from gray to light gray white with almost no mildew on the shower tiles.

A word about decluttering. Most housekeeping books and blogs focus on decluttering, and say that you can’t really clean a cluttered house. But, yes you can. I am very bad at decluttering because so many useless items spark joy for me. Like that drawer of cassette tapes that I lovingly made and listened to when my kids were little (they’re now in their 20’s). For example. If I waited until my house was decluttered before I cleaned it, it would never get cleaned.

I am so happy with my clean house. And even more happy that I was able to crack the code on how to keep it that way.

What IS Dr. Bronner’s?

I keep liquid hand soap in my bathroom and kitchen, and my usual brand is whatever they sell in large refill size at Costco. But I ran out of liquid soap and I couldn’t justify a trip to Costco just for soap, Costco being a half-day excursion for me. Not because I live in a remote area, but because by the time I drive there, park, eat a hot dog, taste all the samples, look at all the housewares that I don’t need, and grind my coffee – because who goes to Costco without buying coffee – it’s half a day. So I bought liquid soap on my regular grocery shopping trip, which happened to be at Whole Foods.

Despite the fact that Whole Foods is all eco-friendly, they had surprisingly little choice in refill-sized soaps. The salesperson recommended Dr. Bronner’s, which she said you could use for anything from washing your hands to washing your car. What does that mean, I wondered? That it’s so gentle that it’s ok for your hands, or that it’s so strong that it will clean your car? Do I really want to wash my hands with the same cleaner I’d use on my car? Nevertheless, and because I had no other options, I gave it a try.

Have you ever seen a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s? It has so much writing on it that you wonder what you’re getting into. Bible verses that make you wonder whether you’ve inadvertently supported the Moral Majority, writings from Thomas Paine and Rudyard Kipling. In writing so small that my over-50 eyes can barely read it, but also it’s so dense with writing that it surpasses my attention span. Have I bought into a cult? Without reading everything, I can’t get the overarching theme, and without the overarching theme, I can’t tell whether I’m supporting a religious cult or a harmless back-to-the-earth movement.

And then there’s the soap itself. Somewhere amongst the small print, it says that it’s highly concentrated and to dilute with water. But how much water? The same amount of water for your hands as for your car?

My favorite thing about Dr. Bronner’s is the smell. Super pepperminty. My whole bathroom smells like peppermint now, which may mean that I haven’t diluted it enough but I like it.

Have you ever used Dr. Bronner’s? Do you use it for all your personal grooming and housecleaning tasks? How much do you dilute it? How well does it work? And most importantly, what kind of an organization have I supported?