Cleaning, weight and money are three minefields strewn with emotion bombs and judgement shrapnel. I grew up in a house where all house cleaning was accompanied by temper tantrums (my dad), recriminations (my mom), and tears (me). In fact, if you read enough of my reviews you will get the impression that I grew up in a crazy, chaotic home and you will be correct. As an adult, housework has been fraught with emotion and often felt overwhelming. It is a place in my life where I have made huge changes, and I know other people can too. I had years of therapy and learning the hard way, but you could try Unf*ck Your Habitat: You’re Better than Your Mess. There is also an Unf*ck Your Habitat website. I listened to the audiobook read by Emily Woo Zeller.
Given my introduction, it may surprise you to know that I now help people unfuck their habitats professionally. As someone who helps people get control over their stuff, clean and organize, and has had to learn to do all of that as an adult, I feel qualified to pass judgement on Rachel Hoffman’s book. I would say that in general, this is the best cleaning and organizing book I have ever read and I would recommend it to anyone with some caveats.
Hoffman covers most of the things I would say to my clients really well, but she has a blind spot. First, what she says that we all need to hear:
- Gender rolls are bullshit and should be examined and then discarded
- The cleanliness of your house is not an indicator of your worth as a person
- Cleaning isn’t hard, you can learn to do it at any age and you don’t need a lot of special equipment
- Set reasonable goals and expectations for yourself
- A little at a time will eventually make a big difference
- Future You will appreciate a few minutes of effort from Right Now You
And most importantly
- You deserve to live in a comfortable space.
All of this is great stuff and anyone who finds they have negative emotions and expectations attached to cleaning ought to read it and take it to heart. Hoffman is great about addressing some of the the things that might make it difficult to clean – physical or mental illness, exhaustion, work, etc. She talks about the 20/10 method, which encourages you to plan your time in a reasonable way instead of trying to clean everything at once.
A 20/10 is 20 minutes of unfucking (cleaning, studying, what have you) followed by a 10-minute break. 45/15s are the same, only, you know, 45 and 15. The UfYH system is based on 20/10s because breaks are important. We’re looking to avoid marathons here.
I wish she had gone a step further in her thesis that people should find ways to clean and organize in ways that work for their daily lives. While she addresses perfectionism as a hindrance to cleaning, she identifies it as insecurity and procrastination rather than recognizing it as a symptom of anxiety or OCD. Hoffman also advocates several times for closed storage because it looks tidier. Over the years I have discovered that closed storage is a disaster for me and other people with Attention Deficit Disorder. If I can’t see it I forget about it and I have a tendency to dump things in closed storage places. If I could, I would take every door off my kitchen cabinets and closets. I’d rather look a little untidy than have hidden dumping grounds for crap. I wish Hoffman had taken her own words to heart – just because it’s the right way for her doesn’t mean it’s the right way for everyone. Ditch other people’s expectations, be honest with yourself, and take care of yourself and your spaces in a way that works for you.
One of the reasons I put so much effort into developing better cleaning habits is because taking care of the spaces in which I live and work is an easy, visible, and relatively inexpensive form of self care. I can’t do much to change a lot of the things that make me anxious or unhappy, but I can make sure I have clean clothes and a clean kitchen. I can clean my bathroom more easily than I can clean up my country’s political system. On a deeper level, learning to take care of my space in a way that works for me has taught me how to be kinder and more compassionate to myself, and in turn to other people.
At the moment, my house is far from perfectly tidy. There is a pile of laundry on the floor and drifts of dog hair in the corners. But, my sink is empty and my kitchen counters are clean. I don’t love cleaning my kitchen before I go to bed, but I do love being able to make my coffee in a clean kitchen in the morning.
