14. Make sure there's a trash can in every single room of your house. If it's easy to throw things away, you'll reduce messes that often make their way to the floor.
15. Invest in what I call a "picker-upper", which is simply a long-handled grabbing tool. Once seen only in medical-adaptive-device catalogs, these handy things are now available to the general market. Aluminum Reacher.
I have one in the kitchen and another upstairs. (Because I have back problems, I also keep a third one next to the dryer so I can remove the dry clothes without back strain.)Even if you don't have back problems, you'll find yourself using this tool quite often to pick up little messes. Have you ever spotted a piece of fuzz or scrap of paper on the floor but didn't pick it up because it wasn't worth the trouble of bending over? With a picker-upper, you can clean much more easily, no bending necessary.
Best of all, kids love playing with it! Hand a child your picker-upper and tell him to see how many bits of trash he can pick up from the floor. You might be amazed at how quickly and easily—not to mention thoroughly—he does the job!
And that's it, my 15 Steps to Vacuuming Once a Month. As long as you don't skip #7, which is the most important step and was featured in Part 2 of this series, you should find that your fullsize vacuum cleaner really can sit quietly in the closet most of the time. By making these 15 changes/additions/adaptations to your home, your House That Cleans Itself should have floors that tend to stay clean rather than tend to get dirty. And that's the whole goal of a House That Cleans Itself, to create a space that tends toward cleanliness rather than mess.
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