Cleaning a House That Cleans Itself, Part 3

Why do I talk about deep cleaning in a blog that's primarily written to help your home stay clean with less work, not more? Here's my third and final reason.

Reason #3: Remember that an important key to having a House That Cleans Itself is arranging/improving/organizing your home in such a way that it gives out that elusive feeling of "clean" to all who enter there, regardless of whether you've actually done any cleaning lately or not. In your house, that can mean paying attention to "Sight Zones", designing better systems for concealing your "Expected Messy Areas", or tackling those "Inevitable Invisibles" (things such as stains or nicks or frays that contribute to an overall feeling of "unclean" but that you don't ever notice because you've been living with them so long that they've become invisible to you.)

Short bursts of intense cleaning can be a big help with the latter category. If a formerly HTCI room has started feeling "off" to you, step back and really look at it (or maybe get some perspective by whipping out the camera for some photo investigation like you did in your original conversion). Chances are that when you do you'll spot something that needs attention--not to mention some elbow grease. Tackle it head on, however, and you won't just wipe out an Inevitable Invisible, you'll also feel that room transitioning back from a sense of unclean to clean. If you live in a House That Cleans Itself, that one effort will make all the difference in helping it stay that way.

And that's my third and final reason that from time to time I talk about how to deep clean on a blog that's all about cleaning less, not more: Because sometimes a single burst of deep cleaning on your part right now can make a world of difference in maintaining a House That Cleans Itself for a long, long time to come.