JordiScrubbings.com

This is sort of a follow-up post to one I wrote a few weeks ago on the growing amount of to-do lists I have in my apartment.

One of the guilt trips I often face is that I don’t think I clean my place frequently enough. When I was growing up, my mother would clean the whole house every Sunday. Like Mr. Clean meets the Tasmanian Devil, she would whip through four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two living rooms, a dining room, and kitchen like she was on a mission from God. A mission to annihilate all dust, dirt, and dog hair from the face of the planet Earth, or at least her house. Sure, I’d help her out at times, by vacuuming my own room and maybe even cleaning my bathroom, but that just meant she had time to juggle a load of laundry or two while cleaning.

Since I’ve been in my own place, sans roommate, since 2003, I’ve assumed the role of chief, cook, and apartment cleaner. Although being chief of my place is simple enough, the other two roles have been a work in progress. While I am slowly but surely cultivating my culinary competence, my cleaning capability still has much to be desired. At least by the standards my mother instilled in me.

(Good thing she is scared of heights and I live on the third floor of my complex!)

So in order to make myself feel less guilty for not scrubbing the bejesus out my apartment every weekend, I’ve convinced myself I don’t have to. First of all, it is only me in the place. How dirty can I possibly make the carpet in a room in rarely go in? Why clean a tub I never use? And why clean when I can go out?

Now I’m not saying my apartment is nasty. Far, far, far from it. I like to think on the average bachelor scale, I’m in the middle, leaning toward the above-average percentile. Not quite the epitome of order and neatliness, but far from your average frat house or male-dominate college apartment (seriously, I have a friend whose college apartment had a bag of another dude’s hair nailed to the ceiling, a sink full of dirty pots and pans, and the crusted remnants of a thrown chocolate cake smeared on his living room wall).

But here is my dilemma: I live in a nearly 1000sq ft apartment. If I were to clean the whole thing, wall-to-wall, top-to-bottom, inside and out, how long would that take? Three hours? Six? Maybe 12? I have psychological hang-up due the potential time commitment.

What I need to do is find my Effective Cleanliness Range (ECR) and then plan my cleaning accordingly. For example, if it takes 5 hours to do 1000sq ft, that’s 200sq ft per hour. That’s my ECR.

Since I can’t change my ECR without reducing the quality of the clean (can’t do that!), maybe I could change the time spent cleaning. I could clean an hour a day, perhaps after work in the evening. But I know that won’t happen. If I was disciplined enough to do something for an hour a day after work, I would be at the gym working out – something I haven’t been dedicated to in the last year.

So here is another thought: what if I moved to a smaller apartment? Using the same ECR (200sqft/hr), I could obviously clean a smaller apartment faster. Something to think about.

Another thing to think about is the fact that one day I hope to buy my own house, condo, or townhome. Again assuming it is just me and I don’t have any roommates, and my Russian mail order bride has not yet arrived, what is the breaking point at which my ECR would be insufficient to clean the whole place in a week? That would be my Maximum Effective Cleanliness Range (MECR).

Since I’m at work for 40 hours a week and asleep for roughly 42 hours a week (6×7), that leaves 86 hours to get my clean on. Add in the “getting ready for work” time (10 hours a week), the driving to and from work (another 10), and the time needed for food in and food out (10 hours a week)  and I’m down to 56 hours.

If I kept up my ECR of 200sq ft per hour, my MECR could feasibly be 11,000sq feet before cleaning overwhelmed my need to eat, sleep, or work. That is one big house. Of course, keeping that house at level of cleanliness would completely eliminate my ability to get my boogie on.

And we can’t have that.

You know, instead of moving, maybe I should stay where I’m at, stop writing, stop figuring out inane formulas, and actually start vacuuming. Especially on Sundays.

My mom would prefer it that way.