When Cleaning Hurts: Learning That "Good Enough" Can Be Just Perfect!

I don't know about you, but the word cleaning makes me cringe.  Few people enjoy cleaning, but for people with chronic illness cleaning is synonymous with increased pain and flare-ups of their illness.  We often are just too sick or in too much pain and the thought of cleaning overwhelms us.  But the problem with not cleaning is that things get really dirty.  And that dirt is not only bad for our health, it makes us ashamed to have people visit our homes.  Chronic illness is isolating enough without our homes adding to the problem.  So what do we do?

Like everything else we encounter with chronic illness, we need to learn how to modify things so we can do what we need to do without making our conditions worse.  This post will not be instructions on how to clean each individual item in your homes.  There are plenty of books, websites, and YouTube channels out there that can teach you the specifics of cleaning.  What this post will do is hopefully give you some ideas on how to manage to keep your house relatively clean without putting yourself in bed for days (or worse).

My first and most important tip on how to keep your house clean without killing yourself if this: hire someone.  Seriously, if you are lucky enough to have a good income from either yourself or a spouse, consider hiring someone to come into your home and clean as often as you can afford.   

As kids, whenever we were trying to decide if we were going to do something ourselves or not, my mother would tell us "It either comes out of your pocket book or your hide.  So figure out which one can afford it more."  For most of us, our "hide" has very little to spare.  So let your pocket book pay for it if at all possible.  

Unfortunately, the reality for many of us is that our pocket book is empty from paying for medical care so if our house is going to be clean, our hide is going to pay the cost.

That is where learning that "good enough" can be good enough comes into play.  We may never get our homes picture perfect or how we think they should be in our minds.  We need to learn to lower our standards and accept that if the house is clean enough that our health is not being harmed, then that is good enough.  If you are constantly trying to achieve unreachable standards or live up to others expectations, you will never be happy with your home.

Now that does not mean we should not try and make the job as easy as possible.  There are tips, tricks, cleaners and systems you can use to lessen the strain of cleaning.  Try them.  Play around with them and adapt them to your own needs.  Just like each of our illnesses are unique, so are our cleaning systems.  In order to (hopefully) help you develop a system that works for you, here are some tips that work for me.

1.  Listen to the experts.  Most of the tips I am going to list here came from various sources.  Many came from The Lost Art of House Cleaning, by Jan M. Dougherty.  This is a great book by a professional cleaner.  She is the one that made realize that I do not need tons of cleaners,  just a few good ones.  The Fly Lady Sink Reflections, by Martha Cilley introduced me to the concept of breaking your home down into zones so it is not so overwhelming.  The Clean My Space YouTube channel has a ton of helpful videos on how to clean certain items and areas.  I found her video on how to make vacuuming easier particularly helpful.

2.  Don't listen to the experts.  OK, I know I just said listen to them.  But they are not writing for people with chronic illness and there are some things they recommend that just do not work for me.  

Many of them say start with making your bed and give tons of reasons why this is vital to motivating you to keep your home clean.  It is nothing but a big waste of time to me.  I need to nap or just lay in bed so often each day that I am in and out of my bed all day long.  And even more importantly, bending down to make my bed is likely to flare my orthostatic issues and put me in danger of passing out.  The best I do is drag my bedspread up to cover the rest of the blankets so that if my cat with stomach issues has a problem, only the top blanket needs to be dealt with before I can rest.  Another tip is get dressed down to your shoes so you feel "professional".  Clothes don't make me feel professional.  Mostly they just make me uncomfortable.  Clean in whatever you are most comfortable wearing. I prefer to clean in my pajamas.  

Another tip is to do your cleaning in the morning. The theory behind this is that if you get something you are dreading out of the way first thing, you can enjoy your day more.  This is actually a valid thought.  The problem for me is that I can barely get out of bed in the morning, let alone do anything physical.  So I have revised this tip to be, "clean when you have the most physical energy".

After starting this process, you will soon realize what time of the day you have more energy.  Try and schedule your cleaning sessions during these times.  For me, it is between 11am-2pm and again at 3am.  Yes, I do clean in the middle of the night.  It is better than tossing and turning with insomnia.  It took me some trial and error to figure out what I can clean without disturbing the people in my home who actually sleep, but I found a few things that work.

Professional cleaners are also big on cleaning until it is CLEAN.  That often just takes too much energy for us.  Especially since many of us will be dealing with days (weeks, months, years) of dirty build up.  Dirt builds up in layers, it can get cleaned off in layers.  Don't exhaust yourself trying to get that counter or floor or woodwork spotlessly clean.  Give it a good cleaning during your cleaning routine and let it go.  You will clean another layer off the next time you are working on that item. Obviously this does not apply to anything related to food or personal hygiene, but otherwise, tackle things a little at a time.

3. Get some good all-purpose cleaners that do not aggravate your illness.  For me, this is plain white vinegar, Dawn dish soap, and an amazing cleaner I learned about called Krud Kutter.  Krud Kutter does not aggravate my skin or my asthma like most cleaners do so it is my go to cleaner for everything but the bathroom.  In the bathroom, I do use traditional bathroom cleaners and enlist the help of my roommates for cleaners that trigger my asthma. Use your chosen all-purpose cleaners with some White Terry Cloth Rags and some Microfiber Towels and you can clean pretty much anything in your home.  I use the vinegar and a microfiber towels on the windows, sliding glass door, mirrors, faucets, sinks, counters after they have been degreased, and pretty much anything you want to shine.  Dawn dish soap can be mixed with water, put in a spray bottle and used to clean anything that needs a very gentle cleaner.  Dawn is gentle enough to be used to bathe newborn kittens who are surrendered to shelters covered in fleas, so it is pretty gentle, but do test it first.  If you need a stronger cleaner, look for Krud Kutter.  It is found in the paint aisle of most larger hardware stores or online in a gallon jug and is an amazing cleaner!  I pretty much use it on almost everything.

I have three inexpensive Spray Bottles for cleaning.  One has straight vinegar.  One has straight Krud Kutter for really tough cleaning and the third has diluted Krud Kutter (five parts water to one part cleaner) for everyday cleaning. 

4.  Figure out what needs to be cleaned.  Make a list of each room or space in your home.  Then write down what needs to be done to clean the room.  I am not talking about five page long lists for each room to make it perfect, just the basics of what needs to be done to make it not dirty.  For most rooms this includes wiping off counters, sinks, tables, sweeping and mopping the floor or vacuuming the rugs.  You will also need to make a list of areas in your home that are extremely high traffic and need to be touched up daily.  For me, this is wiping off the bathroom counters (kids and stray toothpaste issues), wiping down the stove, kitchen counter and whereever the five year old ate dinner along with scooping the litter boxes. My roommate does our dishes and laundry but you might need to add these to daily cleaning.  This list will be your "Daily Cleaning List"

5.  Assign each room a day of the week.  Think a bit about your schedule and energy levels when doing this step.  I am useless on Monday.  The kids being home during the weekend uses up tons of my energy and so my pain level is often high on Monday.  So for me, I chose to assign my smallest room, our half bath, to Monday.  It is a small job that does not take too much energy and can be added to another day if I physically cannot clean on Monday.  Our full bath is scheduled for Tuesday.  The living room is Wednesday.  The kitchen is Thursday and Friday is our front entryway.  Bedrooms are done on the weekend as needed. These cleaning task are your zone cleaning lists.  Since I use Krud Kutter so much, I call these lists my weekly "De-Krudding" for each room.

6.  Clean daily!  Sorry, no way around this if you want your house to stay clean without putting in marathon cleaning sessions on the weekend or when company is coming.  But if you clean daily, it becomes easier, trust me.  And your daily cleaning should only take a short time.  Mine takes 20-30 minutes total.  Although,  I do usually break it up into two or more sessions to avoid getting exhausted.  

I use the Wunderlist App (ios, android and desktop) to keep track of what needs to be done and when.  There is no way I would remember it in my head.  This app is actually a to-do list app, not a cleaning app but it works for me.  I enter each room as a to-do item, with subtasks listing each thing that need to be done in the room.  Then I schedule it to be due on the room's assigned day and set it to repeat weekly.  For the high traffic areas, I have a "Daily Cleaning" to-do item with the needed subtasks and set it to repeat daily.

When I am ready to clean, I open the app, click on the "Today" header and it brings up the daily cleaning list along with the list for whatever room is scheduled to be cleaned that day.  I check off each sub task as I complete it.  When the entire room is done, I check the room off and it disappears until next week.  I follow the same idea for the daily high traffic cleaning.

7.  Clean in order. Dirt falls down.  So clean up high first, then down low.  Otherwise you are spreading dirt into an area that you just cleaned and then need to clean them again.  Clean clockwise (or counter clockwise) or in slices.  Don't bounce around.  Start at one side of the room and work your way around.  That way if you have to take a break or start again another day, it will be easy to know what has already been cleaned. 

8. Protect (and listen to) your body.  If you can clean it sitting down, do it. Use pillows or kneeling pads if you have to get down on the floor. Take frequent breaks. And skip the cleaning entirely if you are having a particularly bad day. 

Most importantly, don't sweat the small stuff.  If I am not able to finish an item on my daily cleaning list, I check it off anyway and start fresh again the next day. Any cleaning you are doing is an improvement over nothing.  I no longer worry what visitors think if my house is not perfectly clean or my bed is not made.  Anyone who would judge me based on how clean my home is just is not worth having in my life.  

Be aware that even if you get the best cleaning system in place, at some point you will have a flare up bad enough that it will all fall apart.  Don't beat yourself up about it.  Ask for help if you have people willing to help.  And when you are back to your normal, just put your routines back into place and your home will slowly start looking clean again.  Trust me, I know.  As of writing this post, I just put my house back together after a doctor imposed 6 month long restriction on physical activity of any kind.  It took a month, but my home is now back to what I consider good enough.

If you take nothing else from this admittedly long post, realize this:  You and your home do not have to be perfect.  Dealing with chronic illness is hard enough without putting unattainable cleaning standards on yourself.  Cut yourself some slack and realize that good enough really is good enough.  In fact, in my mind, good enough is Just Perfect!