Thoroughness is the Scriptural Goal

Whether therefore, ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10: 31

Routine housework and drudgery seem to go together, meaning routine housework provides great opportunities to apply the “whatsoever ye do” part of this verse. The repetitive, never done, and always needing doing (again) part of housework seems a far cry from the majestic glory of the Holy God. 

The challenge is to clean both the inside and outside of all our cups. The need is for a plan that will make it easy for us to remind ourselves about everything that needs attention AND for a system that will make it virtually impossible to miss doing the required task at the planned time for doing it. This plan and system has to account for the three types of cleaning that go into the total cleaning package: maintenance cleaning (basic tidying, disinfecting, solving surface issues), deep cleaning (think spring and fall cleaning tasks), and organizational cleaning (decluttering, developing effective processes and systems, implementing logistical changes).

Information about the plan and system will come after discussing the five principles.  For now, let’s just say a Clean Cup Cleaning plan will take more design work than anyone has ever dreamed of doing for something as dull as cleaning. Prepare for eye rolling.

In its favor, once designed, only two to four short cleaning modules are needed each day to care for someone’s living space. Less with a team or apprentices. The perpetual system will be custom-tailored to individual work needs, expectation levels, and home/living spaces and won’t cost anything but some EO time to prepare. In the meantime, a trip to the library will garner an almost endless array of other cleaning/organizing books to help you train yourself in this area, as well as help you decide if designing a Clean Cup Cleaning plan for yourself will be a worthwhile project.

A trip to the library about  twenty years ago led me to one of the two basic book sources I used for training myself in cleaning principles. I brought home Speed Cleaning by Jeff Campbell and appreciated the elegant simplicity of the professional cleaning principles presented there, one of which is to start at the same place in a room every time, and work right around the room doing whatever needs doing as you pass it. Easy to try to see if it works well for you. Check out the book from the library, or in the modern mode, check out their website for free information and (of course) books, equipment, and supplies they sell. Now it is far too early to be making purchases, but you can start the educating yourself in this self-improvement housekeeping training program almost immediately with this resource.

Pioneer women had a system of Monday laundry, Tuesday ironing, Saturday baking, etc. because each task took hours to complete and required strenuous physical exertion. A predictable routine was imperative, because you could not just decide to shift another twelve hour responsibility into the next day. Indoor plumbing and running water were the first, and continue to be among the most significant of our mechanical maids.  Other appliance mechanical maids use the available water and electricity to slash the hours required to complete tasks, and to obliterate most of the heavy manual effort cleaning used to require. Let us be grateful.

But effective home stewardship still requires an overarching system and smart work processes to handle responsibly everything we have.

Each Clean Cup Cleaning principle has some “propers” to make the principle a reality. Thoroughness requires a proper plan to steward well our living space. Thoroughness also requires proper tools and proper techniques. Tools like carry-alls, cleaning cloths, scrapers, toothbrushes and cleaning solvents. Techniques like working once around a room, knowing when to upgrade your firepower, soaking before scrubbing, using two hands as much as possible, and thinking about how to do more in less time.