by request: Clean Kwan Do

A domestic-martial-arts teal deer

Cleaning is a learned skill. I've had several roommates who were very tidy people (I'm not one of them), but had no idea how to clean. I can (and do) clean. I am good at cleaning, and it's because I have taken several levels in cleaning and am at least a green-belt in Clean Kwan Do. Anyone who has tried and failed to master their own kitchens knows there's considerably more to it than “you just put things where they belong.” This is like training an army by telling them “the pointy end goes in the other person” and then turning them loose on the enemy to figure it out for themselves, including figuring out which end is the “pointy end.” Some of them will pick it up by observation. Most of them will die, and some of them will somehow manage to cut their own leg off with a spear. I'm of the opinion that the worst potential teacher in the cleaning arts is someone who is naturally good at it. There's no other explanation for such gems as “you just put things where they belong.”

The most common hurdle for the cleaning novice isn't not knowing where things go, it's not knowing where to start. Being overwhelmed is an enormous problem even if it's only a sinkful of dishes. I'm twenty-seven and I've finally graduated to “the new messy” (empty floor, laundry under tenuous control, ONE organized out-of-closet pile, two organized in-closet piles, flat surfaces still buried). The laundry part is just because I'm lazy, but all the rest of it (window seat, bathroom renovation, and all) is a chain of causal relations ultimately ending in being overwhelmed. (The art studio, for those of you following along at home.)

Several excellent books have been written about how to clean. I even own a few. I have read none of them, and learned to clean over a period of years, all of them fraught with suffering. Suffering, I believe, is key to learning to clean properly, but it must be the correct suffering. Being made to go back and do it again with specific instructions on what you missed the last time, over and over, until you get it right, is the correct form of suffering. “It's not clean, go do it over” with no further use of feedback is the incorrect form of suffering. After all, if you knew what was wrong with it you'd have gotten it the first time!

I completely believe that most human beings literally have to learn how to see clutter in order to pick it up. My mother can tell my father to “clean off the patio,” and he leaves hoses, piles of lumber, and empty containers everywhere... but he straightens the yard chairs. He's not being an ass—he honestly believes it's clean now, and needs to be told “go back and coil the hoses and put them away next to the spigot” and “pick up the lumber and put it in the shed” in order to bring these things to his attention in order to deal with them. My father is NOT UNUSUAL in this strategic blindness, and anyone with children or teenagers in their lives is well familiar with it. The thing is, this kind of selective blindness does not go away as you age... resulting in an entire host of adults with the desire to clean, but not the knowledge of how.

If the list of missed details takes longer than fifteen seconds (five for children younger than ten) to state, slowly and clearly, it's not going to stick in the disciple's brain. This would be what we call a “two trip” list.... they go and clean, and then you send them back again for the second (or third, or fourth) part of the list. (Suffering!) And actually, if the list of missed details in a single room is a four-trip list then it's time for the Master to stand over the Student and point things out one at a time as the Student completes them.

Now, if you are prepared to suffer, I am prepared to impart on you the first task towards attaining Level One in Cleaning: flow.

Pick a place to start.
Like a a game of Jenga, this is somewhat arbitrary. Like a good game of Jenga, it isn't mostly arbitrary—it's based on strategy.

For a bedroom, one of the best places to start is making your bed, for two reasons. 1. it makes the room look cleaner in ten minutes than an hour of picking up, and 2. it gives you a clear flat space to sort that you are then bound to finish dealing with by simple expedient of needing to sleep there later.

Another good bedroom starting strategy is laundry: putting away the clean laundry and sorting the dirty laundry by load. Whatever your starting point, the key is to make it the same one every single time. One task is always followed by another, and the order and progression of these tasks does not change much. This is not just cleaning, these are katas, and like a martial art the end goal is to train a psychic muscle memory into your brain. Repeat these katas enough, long enough, and you will be able to start the chain of cleaning without thinking about it. Being able to clean up without thinking means you 1. aren't overwhelmed, 2. suffer a lot less, and as a consequence 3. clean more thoroughly, faster. And you get to fantasize about George Clooney driving a Smart Car in the Alps (there's a story about that).

Example: Bedroom
Make the bed
Sort the clean laundry onto the bed by owner, drawer and closet, getting rid of anything you don't like or doesn't fit.
Put the clean laundry away
Pile up the dirty laundry into sorted piles: dark wash, colors wash, whites wash, hand wash, dry-clean. Don't sort by temperature (that comes when you have leveled up), just wash everything on cold.
Go into the bathroom and grab the dirty towels and mats.
Pile them into the laundry
load and start the washer
empty the dryer, fold it at the dryer and sort the laundry onto your bed by owner, drawer, and closet, getting rid of anything you don't like or doesn't fit.

Now comes the conditionals... things dependent on a situation that is not always going to be the same. You may have shoes, or Christmas wrapping supplies, or luggage, or dog toys (or the entire dog) on the floor. Sort this, decide where it goes, and then when you are headed in that direction, put it there. If that place is full don't worry about it yet, just get it to the geographical location in which it belongs.

The idea is never to touch anything more than twice—once when you determine what it is and where it belongs, and a second time when you put it there. This is for cleaning every room and area, not just a bedroom, and it is a goal. Like all good goals, you won't be able to meet it all the time (if you do meet it every time, it's time to set a more difficult goal).

After enough stuff is off the floor (piled on the bed or at the spot where it is to be put away later), vacuum.

This is the bedroom kata. Process the laundry as needed until you're out of laundry. (I'm well aware that this could take all day. It could even take several days. If that's the case, pick a number, for example, four, and do four loads of laundry a day, every day, until you are out of laundry.) Put the clean laundry away.

Example: Bathroom

Like with the bedroom, picking the right starting place is key. I usually start with the counter, but if you can't physically get into the bathroom you might have to take a different tack. Regardless, you'll need a toilet cleanser, toilet brush, scrub-sided sponge, all-purpose bathroom cleaner, some form of mop or swiffer, and a vacant washing machine. Gloves optional.

Turn on the fan
Put on gloves (if you're a glove person... considering you're going to be sponging a toilet, you probably are a glove person)
Take everything off of the counter (includes soap, jewelry boxes, hairbrushes, and toothbrushes) and set them on the hall floor outside.
Pick up the bath mats and dirty towels and put them into the washing machine.
Spray the entire counter and sink down with a cleanser
Scrub the counter
scrub the sink
wipe down the counter
rinse the sink
wipe the faucet (lime, calcium, and hard water comes after you've leveled up)
replace the stuff on the counter where it belongs. Things that belong in a drawer should go in a drawer, things that go in the laundry should go in the laundry.
pour cleanser in the toilet bowl according to the manufacturer's directions
take everything out of the tub/shower.
Stuff bath toys (kid's bathroom) and scrubbies in a bin or net bag under the sink.
Put shampoo and soap on the counter.
Spray down the entire shower/tub with a cleanser
Scrub or wipe according to the directions on the cleanser bottle
rinse the tub/shower
wipe off the faucet
Put the soap, shampoo, and bath puff/backbrush (if any) back in the shower.
Do not put washcloths back in. Those get washed.
Scrub the inside of the toilet bowl with the toilet brush. Pay attention to the hole, the waterline, and underneath the rim.
Spray the outside of the toilet bowl with cleanser
Scrub the outside of the toilet, making sure to get both sides of the seat and lid, the flush handle, underneath the seat, between the seat/lid and the tank, and the base/pedestal of the toilet. If someone in your house is bad at aiming, all of these places will have pee on them.
Flush the toilet
sweep/vacuum the floor, paying attention to the weird corners and under the counter
mop the floor
shut the door (leave the fan on)
put the towels and mats into the dryer
when they're done, put the towels and mats back into the bathroom
turn off the fan

The amazing part is that after you've gotten good at this kata you can complete that ENTIRE LIST in twenty-five minutes. However, as my brother found out, until you've gotten good at this kata it's going to take you several hours. (There's a story behind that.)

Note that there is no mirror cleaning. We don't spray the mirror when we brush our teeth or floss. If someone in your house does then by all means clean the mirror, either before or after you clean the sink. Also note you should be frequently rinsing your sponge.

The important part in these lists is not the order, the important part is that it flows. This is not a to-do list, it is a kata of cleaning, and for it to be effective and useful one task should flow into the next. The logic is that the mats need to be washed and will take the longest, so they go in first. Then the sink and counter because that is how I have been trained. I got overwhelmed and dinked around for three hours as a result, so my mother arbitrarily picked somewhere for me to start. I liked the sink best to start with, but wound up ignoring the counter... so the sink and counter were combined into a single being for cleaning purposes. You can, if you like, do the tub/shower first, because the tub/shower is the deepest part of the bathroom, moving outwards to the toilet, and finally the floor, at which point you are outside of the bathroom when finished. A cycle, a circuit... and when the mats are dry, the floor is dry and the fumes are gone. HUTZPAH!

Moving on to the kitchen this same idea of chain-of-reaction and flow continues...

Example: Kitchen
note: you need to be frequently rinsing your sponge/rag out. FREQUENTLY. AS IN, VERY OFTEN.

Empty the dishwasher (if the cabinets are dirty, ignore that for now)
Load the dishwasher
start the dishwasher
clean the sink
pile any remaining dishes in the sink
take everything off of the counter and stove
spoon rests go in the dishwasher/sink
sort the counter-stuff into piles: trash, food, goes on counter, goes on counter because I don't know where else to put it, mail, keys, books, etc.
Deal with the piles. Just get them to the geographical location where they belong.
Things that genuinely live on the counter temporarily go on the table or the floor
spray down the entire counter with a cleaner
scrub the counter
wipe the counter
spray down the entire stovetop with a cleaner
scrub the stove
take off any pieces that come off (dials, etc) and put these in the dishwasher if dishwasher safe
scrub the stove again
wipe the stove
wipe the oven front, use cleanser if necessary
wipe the stove hood, use cleanser if necessary
take the rotating dish out of the microwave, put it in the sink with the other dishes
Empty the dishwasher (if it is done)
(if it is done) Load the dishwasher
(If it is not done) hand wash the dishes in the sink, set them on a clean towel on the counter to dry
Clean the inside of the microwave. Pay special attention to the corners.
Spray the outside of the microwave with cleanser.
Wipe the outside of the microwave. Pay special attention to the door front, keypad, and handle
put the microwave back together
Put the dishes away (empty the dishwasher, put away the handwashing)
put the kitchen towels in the laundry
place items that go on the counter back on the counter
Wipe the table
Sweep/vacuum the floor
mop the floor
consider whether anything on the counter could find a home elsewhere
Have a seat.

See?

Example: Kid's room

if needed: (Strip the bedding
wash the bedding)
or: (make the bed)
put the bed-toys on the bed
put all the clean laundry on the bed
put all the dirty laundry in the middle of the floor and sort into dark-color, light-color piles. Children can't sort by wash cycle, but they can sort by color.
stack all the books in the in the corner, neatly
put the books in the bookshelf
pile all the plush toys together, neatly. Line them up like they're alive if you have to.
Put the clean laundry in the drawers
put all the rest of the toys in a pile/toybox/shelf/where they go. Be extremely specific about where they go. Do not ever say “where they go.” Say “put them in the toybox in your closet.”
(put the bed-toys on the floor
make the bed
put the bed-toys back on the bed)

See? Prioritizing is part of it, but it's not prioritizing based on what needs doing, it is picking a single, extremely specific starting place and creating a flow from that place. You are moving in a circuit. If, at any time, you have to stop what you are doing and do something else, your flow is broken, your kata is incorrect. Don't cycle the washing machine/dryer loads when the machine beeps, do it as you walk past them, as part of the greater kata flow. Start the washing machine when you start cleaning the bathroom, for example, and don't change the loads until you finish the bathroom. Be aware of yourself and figure out how your natural traffic patterns can be used and, where they are counterproductive to what you want, how they can be changed.

If the sequential flow of tasks is not working for you, perhaps a flow of location would... to pick a fixed point in your kitchen, for example, and work your way clockwise until the kitchen is clean. The problem one encounters with this is that so many tasks are pervasive. Dishes are everywhere in a kitchen, so the pure-location method involves a lot of duplicated work. Ideally, the order in which a task flows takes this physical-location flow into account. Continuing with the kitchen example, after the dishes perhaps the refrigerator is right there next to the dishwasher, and the logical next choice to clean before moving on to the sink. The stovetop tends to be of a level with the counters, making it a good next step in the progression as you work your way around from the sink, but if the microwave is right there, perhaps you should choose to do the microwave before the stove.

What is important is to not break the flow and to repeat it the same way every time. If you break the flow you will have enough space inside your head to be overwhelmed, and you will stop. You will have a scattered focus, and you will be able to pay attention to how tired you are, and you will stop. It's not a to-do list, it's a kata, and you don't switch up the order in a kata just because you're feeling scattered or have gotten bored.

Your flow will change as your circumstances do. Vacuuming used to be a part of my pattern. It still is the starting point for my father's clean-the-downstairs kata pattern, but it's no longer a part of mine, thank Roomba. Instead my clean-the-upstairs kata now begins, on days I sleep in, with race-ahead-of-the-roomba-to-roomba-proof-everything, and on days I go to work roomba-proofing is part of my morning ritual; and pick-the-dog-hair-out-of-the-motor is typically how the kata ends.

When teaching children be aware that you can't stand over them every second, but you also can't tell them to do something and go away and expect it to get done. When initiating children into the cycle you build in check-ins... they make their bed, then go get you, then sort the laundry, then go get you... if you are good, if you've taken a level in Convenient Timing, then they don't have to stop to go get you—you can conveniently show up right as they're finishing a task and direct them (amidst much bitching from them, usually) to the next.

This, then, is level one: the perfection of flow. All other levels are fundamentally based upon this level and cannot be mastered until the flow is accomplished, removing the barriers of overwhelmed feelings and replacing them with the (monotonous and dull) calm of long, hard practice. Levels from here merely go further, deeper, and typically involve toothbrushes. (For the curious: Getting The Deposit Back style cleaning is level three.)