Cleaning on the Go!

By Winnie Yu for Completely You



When my kids were little, I used to devote an entire morning to cleaning the house. Three hours straight of scrubbing, dusting and vacuuming. In the end, I had a nice clean house to show for it.

But keeping up that kind of ritual didn’t work. Life got busier as the kids got older, and several years ago, I became the master of the five-minute cleanup. Now, if I have a few minutes to spare, I’ll scrub a toilet, wipe off a counter and dust a few tables. I call it cleaning on the go.

With this new style of cleaning, my house may never be completely clean again. Rather, it will be clean here or there -- just not everywhere. So my living room may be free of dust, but my kitchen will be a fiasco. My bathroom may be sparkling, but my office might be a disaster.

Cleaning this way has taught me three things:

1. I must have a clean bedroom. Going to bed in a room that’s filled with chaos is just not my cup of tea, thank you very much. That means every day, I make my bed; every week, I dust and vacuum my bedroom. If there’s one room that receives top priority, it’s the room where I sleep.

2. A clean kitchen floor makes it easy to let everything else go. When that’s sparkling, everything feels a little cleaner, even if my kitchen counters are a bit cluttered or the mudroom shelves are messy.

3. I am not a neat freak. While I fall on the side of the Felix Ungers as opposed to the Oscar Madisons, I am not nearly as tidy as some neatniks. If I can live with messes, then maybe I’m not as much of a clean queen as I’d like to think I am. And that’s OK. For me, I’ve learned that clean
enough is good enough.

Do you feel guilty about not cleaning often enough? Talk about it!



Winnie Yu is Completely You’s mom blogger. She has two daughters (Samantha, 14, and Annie, 12) and is the author of seven books, including New Mother’s Guide to Breastfeeding and What to Eat for What Ails You. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Woman’s Day, AARP Bulletin, Prevention and WebMD.com.