Cleaning Quotes

“Eric moved the broom experimentally and made an attempt to sweep the glass into the pan while it lay in the middle of the floor. Of course, the pan slid away. Eric scowled.
I'd finally found something Eric did poorly.”
― Charlaine Harris, Dead as a Doornail

“Instead of communicating "I love you, so let me make life easy for you," I decided that my message needed to be something more along these lines: "I love you. I believe in you. I know what you're capable of. So I'm going to make you work.”
― Kay Wills Wyma, Cleaning House: A Mom's Twelve-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement

“Excuse the mess, but we live here.”
― Roseanne Barr

“My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?”
― Erma Bombeck

“normal person's weekly chore list:
1. clean kitchen.
2. clean bathroom.
3. clean entire rest of domicile.
cleaning impaired person's weekly chore list:
1. don't get peanut butter on sheets.”
― Dave Barry

“As I would soon learn myself, cleaning up what a parent leaves behind stirs up dust, both literal and metaphorical. It dredges up memories. You feel like you’re a kid again, poking around in your parents’ closet, only this time there’s no chance of getting in trouble, so you don’t have to be so sure that everything gets put back exactly where it was before you did your poking around. Still, you hope to find something, or maybe you fear finding something, that will completely change your conception of the parent you thought you knew.”
― Roz Chast

“Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters.”
― Robin McKinley, Sunshine

“Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, “Respect me; I’m a respectable grown-up!" and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death.”
― Wendy Wasserstein

“Her mind is a mess, and she has no intention of cleaning today.”
― Alfa H, Abandoned Breaths

“The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, "I want to love, I want to live...”
― David Sedaris, Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays

“The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it - the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“...I have to go home and get a few things done. If I don’t get out the Pledge soon, the dust bunnies are going to be leaving tracks on my furniture...”
― Carla Foft, Addressing Spirits

“I keep a list as close as my phone, and draw a deep sense of satisfaction each time I strike a task from it. In such erasure lies joy. No matter how much I give of myself to household chores, each of the rooms under my control swiftly unravels itself again in my aftermath, as though a shadow hand were already beginning the unwritten lists of my tomorrows…”
― Doireann Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost in the Throat

“Then she dove into the morning cleaning.
There weren't many rooms in the tower, which made it easy, but she liked to be thorough. Sweep, mop, polish. The garderobe and her mirror got sparkly from scrubbing with a bit of vinegar (a trick she learned from Book #14: Useful Recipes for Master Servants). She transferred a day dress that was soaking in a soapy bucket to a clean water bucket, scrubbing out the bit of lingonberry juice stain from breakfast on Monday.
7:00: Personal ablutions. She washed her face and nails and applied cream to her cuticles and everywhere on her face but the T-zone, which was, despite her fairy-tale beauty, just a tad prone to breaking out.
8:00: Reading. She (re)read Book #26, Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo. More a pamphlet than a book, but it counted.
8:30: Art! Lacking a proper canvas (or piece of wall space) she chose to spend her painting time decorating the mop handle. It might not be dry enough to actually use the next day, but that was all right. Birthday weeks meant the occasional break from routine-- that was part of the fun!”
― Liz Braswell, What Once Was Mine

“Approach the spaces in your home this way:
First, your living room and family room.
Second, your own bedroom and the other bedrooms in the house.
Third, all the clothes closets.
Fourth, your home's bathrooms and the laundry room.
Fifth, your kitchen and dining areas.
Sixth, your home office.
Seventh, your storage areas, including your toy room and craft work spaces.
Eighth, your garage and yard.
...this represents the easier-to-harder progression.”
― Joshua Becker, The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life

“My mother
despises what can never truly
be done so she does not care for cooking
or cleaning.”
― Faith Shearin

“Here's five energy drinks, go clean the universe.”
― Nuclear Circus, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“Having spent the morning weeding, pruning and bringing the garden to near perfection, I took a moment to sit on the old garden bench to catch my breath, brush the dirt from my hands, and wipe the sweat from my brow. And scanning my handiwork, I realized that I did not make the garden beautiful. Rather, I just cleared away everything that had kept the beauty from being seen. And I thought, should we not do the same with our souls?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“ProfitMax Chemical is stewarding environmentally sensitive cleaning solutions.”
― Brian Bluhm

“What bothered her was not that the tasks that had to be done were exerting. It was not even that they were tedious. It was that she felt that the three others lived their lives and she went around after them cleaning up their mess. She was an unpaid servant, expected to do a superlative job. In return, she was permitted to call this house hers. But so did they.”
― Marilyn French, The Women's Room

“Organization and cleanliness bring spaciousness. When there is space, inspiration and new possibilities can come in. As we organize our physical environment, we also bring a certain organization to our heads, creating spaciousness within us.”
― Aline Ra M, Bullshit-Free Mindfulness: An Uncommon Guide for Joy in Everyday Life

“A proper, effective and strong cleaning program is often seen as secondary by many businesses. But in many if not most cases, it is the first thing a customer experiences.”
― Brian Bluhm

“Nature has given us tools that work naturally to clean and sanitize the earth.”
― Brian Bluhm

“Expect minimizing your storage spaces to take time. These spaces are filled with items that took years to accumulate, so it will take more than one day to get through it all. For me, it was a multiweek process to minimize our basement in my spare time. Set a realistic schedule for yourself.”
― Joshua Becker, The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life

“It's a completely different feeling when I return from work now. There are practical benefits: finding things quickly, being able to walk around the car without squeezing against boxes, and feeling less anxiety about the garage that I knew needed to be cleaned.
But the benefits go beyond that. My minimized garage helps me to feel more in control of my life.”
― Joshua Becker, The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life

“Minimizing your garage and yard is likely going to be hard work for you. But at the same time it is going to be rewarding because the yard is on display for you (along with everyone else in the neighborhood as well as your guests) to see, and the garage is probably the first place you encounter when you come home.”
― Joshua Becker, The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life

“You can say what you want about housework--dusting, vacuuming, mopping, and so forth-- but besides having dinner together every night, there's nothing more valuable to a household than order. A tidy home provides structure for family life and an oasis from the chaos of daily living. And these sorts of household chores keep us in touch with our possessions, ideally in a constant state of measuring their value in our lives. Housekeeping chores are made for divvying up among family members-- cleaning gets done more quickly, everyone is invested in the care of the home, and good habits are established and shared all the way around.”
― EllynAnne Geisel, The Apron Book: Making, Wearing, and Sharing a Bit of Cloth and Comfort

“You don't exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you.”
― K.C. Davis

“For those who set out to clean the dirt of the world, the best broom is their own clean morals, because you can't clean the dirt with dirt!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan