Do you enjoy cleaning the house or loathe it? Having a clean house is nice but people are messy. Maybe you fall somewhere in between: while you don’t necessarily enjoy doing chores, you love how satisfying and refreshing it feels to have a clean space once your work is done.
I don’t love cleaning, exactly, but I often find it relaxing. Whether it’s taking out the trash, sweeping the floor or making my bed, transforming disorder into tidiness always improves my mood. In a world where so much is complicated and beyond our control, folding a pile of laundry is simple and straightforward.
When Chores become Entertainment
But why relax by doing actual chores when you could spend time watching other people do them? In the age of social media, it seems that no aspect of our lives can escape being turned into consumptive entertainment–even cleaning has become ‘content’.
I’m not on TikTok but I have heard plenty about “Clean Tok,” and I regularly run into short cleaning and chore-related videos on YouTube and Facebook. I’ll admit, it can be engrossing to watch someone transform a filthy space into something spotless. Sometimes it’s even laugh out loud funny.
Like most forms of entertainment, a lot of these cleaning videos showcase extreme methods that are unrealistic for the average person. They’re also an avenue for advertising expensive organizational tools and cleaning products.
Letting go of Perfection
In reality, perfection is elusive. Especially when it comes to maintaining a spotless home. This is even more true in a shared household, where patience and flexibility can be essential skills in sharing the chore load. Your housemates may have cleaning methods a little different from your own. I wrote about this Cleaning, Preference Styles and Teamwork.
One of the most common friction points in shared housing is mismatched cleaning standards. What feels “clean enough” to one person can feel genuinely uncomfortable to another — and neither is wrong. They just have different thresholds.
The fix isn’t to find someone with identical standards — that’s nearly impossible. It’s to talk about expectations before they become resentments. A simple conversation early on — how often should the bathroom be cleaned? what’s the rule about dishes in the sink? — can prevent a lot of tension later.
What I’ve Learned from Living with Others
In fact, having different cleaning habits, preferences and practices than your housemates can actually be a great thing. While the internet is always a helpful place to go for information, some of the most useful advice and ‘how-tos’ I have gotten over the years has been from housemates.
I learned basic chores at a young age, of course–that Drano was reliable for unclogging the shower drain, that cotton should be washed in hot water, that “elbow grease” was just as soap and water, et cetera. But, there was so much more to learn.
When the Dishwasher Broke
One memorable lesson came when our dishwasher broke during the holidays, just as everyone in the household was cooking more than usual. At first, it felt like a disaster–especially since the repair company was closed.
But my home-mate Janet, who had grown up in a large family without a dishwasher, quickly improvised a system. A large pot of water on the floor served as a rinsing station, while a tub of soapy water sat on the counter for washing. We spread towels across another counter for drying and kept an extra towel handy for items that needed to be put away and dried immediately. What seemed like a crisis turned into an efficient, collaborative routine. One that I may have to use again someday!
That’s something shared housing teaches you — resourcefulness. When you live with people who have different backgrounds and experiences, you pick up things you never would have figured out on your own.
Simple Tools that Actually Work
There are plenty of flashy, expensive products on the market that promise astounding, sparkling results. But, I’ve found that the most helpful cleaning products are also some of the most cost-effective. Household items like Baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, vinegar, or brand names like Pine-Sol, Comet, and Folex don’t break the bank and are all very helpful.
Tricks I’ve learned over the years for getting rid of tough stains: club soda for taking spilled coffee off of a white shirt, or mixing hydrogen peroxide with baking soda to remove dark stains from a white rug.
A few more tried-and-true tricks worth knowing:
- White vinegar on hard water deposits around faucets and showerheads — let it soak for a few minutes before wiping
- Baking soda poured into a drain, followed by vinegar, to deodorize and loosen buildup
- A small amount of Pine-Sol in a bucket of water goes a long way on tile and hardwood floors
- Folex on carpet stains — spray, wait a minute, blot. It works on things that seem permanent.
None of these cost much. Most of them were passed along by a housemate at some point.
The Case for Spring Cleaning
Cleaning tips aren’t the only habits and tips that I have borrowed and learned from housemates, but, seeing as it is Spring I wanted to keep with a theme in this blog post. It’s been a long, cold winter, and I definitely think there’s something valuable in the practice of “spring cleaning.” Open the windows, scrub a wall or a floor that doesn’t get much attention…and, you don’t have to do these tasks alone. If you have a housemate, doing household tasks can be fun and build camaraderie.
There’s something about tackling a big cleaning project together that shifts the whole dynamic of a shared home. It builds a sense of shared ownership — and people who feel ownership over a space tend to take better care of it day-to-day. A spring clean done together is worth more than one done alone.
Final Thought: the Best Shortcut of All
In internet lingo this could be a “hack”–hire a professional housecleaning service. In a shared household, with multiple people pitching in on cost, can make it very reasonably affordable to hire a professional home-cleaning service, even if it is only once per month to do a deep-clean.
Split two or three ways, a monthly professional clean often costs less than a nice dinner out — and it raises the baseline cleanliness of the whole home, which makes the everyday maintenance easier for everyone
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