Minimise task swapping

The time it takes to swap between tasks is not time spent cleaning and achieving results. Unnecessary task swapping is the mortal enemy of efficiency. Let’s look at Jane vs. Marie in their cleaning efforts to compare efficiency in vacuuming then mopping the floors of several rooms. Jane tackles this in a room by room approach, first vacuuming the floor of each room and then mopping. Marie vacuums all of the floors in the rooms, and then pulls out her mop bucket and mops all of the rooms. Jane will need to move the vacuum out of the room and pick up her mopping equipment each time she works on a room. Marie will only be changing tasks once. Human movement will be saved considerably by adopting the Way of Marie, and keeping your task swapping to a minimum.

The top down approach and avoiding double handling

For any task in life, it is best to look to avoid double handling. One way that double handling can be avoided in your housecleaning efforts is to work in a top-down manner. For example, wiping down a kitchen bench may cause crumbs to spill on to the floor. If you had just finished sweeping and mopping the floor, then it will be necessary to re-mop the floor or to endure this newly created mess. It’s an obvious thing really, but worth mentioning.

Little and often

We’re not just looking to spend less time cleaning our house, but we obviously want it as clean as possible as well. Otherwise, we would simply suggest that you don’t clean your house at all or perhaps just once a year? Well, to the sane reader it’s clearly not a good idea.  Just as you cannot water a plant in one huge monthly soaking and expect it to thrive, you cannot expect to have a consistently clean house without frequent cleaning.

Cost Benefit Analysis – Deb’s Story and the case for professional cleaning

Let’s study the case of Deb, a person who earns more per hour than the cost of a house cleaner. For Deb, if working overtime or extra hours are available, then it is barely even a thought that the most efficient solution for Deb that instead of spending 3 hours cleaning the house on the weekend, she should work 3 hours extra at her job to pay for a professional cleaner. Reasons for this:

  1. The professional cleaner is likely better at cleaning than Deb is, and will get the job done in less time.
  2. Deb does not need to task-swap between cleaning and her job or leisure time. Time can be saved on changing into expendable cleaning clothes for example.
  3. Deb likely enjoys her job more than cleaning. If this is not the case, perhaps a career change is in line.

As you can see there are a number of key points that put forwards a strong case towards outsourcing the cleaning of your own home. There’s a counterbalance here in the sense that managing the outsourced cleaning duties cost some time. Getting a cleaner should be approached with the same calculated approach to determine whether you simply hire proven, police checked cleaners via an agency or if you decide to go about delving into the domain of being your own house cleaning agency.

An efficient approach towards cleaning your house can save time, money and generally make life more pleasant. Do an examination on the way you are cleaning your house today, and look to boost the efficiency involved in the way you go about making your house clean.

 

 

 

This article on house cleaning information was bought to you by Housework Heroes, a leading WA provider of house cleaning services. To read more home tips by us, you may want to check out – How to Re-Caulk the Tile in Your Bathtub.

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