Absolutely Honest Cleaning Confessions for Spring Cleaning Season

The other night, I was unpacking from a trip (ahem, nearly a week after our return) while watching Youtube. Dawn from the Minimal Mom was trying out new cleaning products, and casually admitted on camera that she had some grout in her shower that she just couldn’t get to come clean, but she didn’t care that much and hadn’t tried that hard to fix it.

And internally I took a big deep breath and felt my shoulders settle with a bit of relief. Someone else’s house gets a little dirty. And they don’t care.

What a breath of fresh air.

Do you, too, ever feel like a horrific housekeeper after watching #cleantok or seeing yet another post about spring cleaning? While our house is usually relatively picked up (because we have no children and both get stressed out by clutter), we are not germaphobes or cleaniacs. Stuff gets dirty. We don’t always clean it right away.

And no one talks about this reality on the Internet.

So lest we all believe that our houses are the only ones with a little – or a lot of – grime, I’m coming clean (heh heh) with my own cleaning confessions.

I’ll admit, posting this makes me nervous. I mean, I’m baring my housekeeping flaws on the Internet, and people often equate cleanliness with, like, morality. (They’re wrong, BTW, in case you needed to hear that today.)

Plus, I don’t want you to read this and feel awful because you think your own flaws as so much worse OR call social services on us because you think we’re monsters. (We’re not. We’re human.)

But I think the risks are worth it. Be nice in the comments, and we’ll power through. Here we go.

Anna’s Cleaning Confessions

1. I do not have a cleaning schedule.

We do the dishes, make the bed, and put away random crap most days because clutter makes me lose my mind. But as for actual cleaning? There is no schedule or system.

2. We clean when I am grossed out or when people are coming over.

Cleaning happens only when it has to. That’s it. Luckily we have people over not infrequently otherwise we’d be living in squalor.

3. It has taken me years to start successfully doing the dishes most nights.

At this point, I’ve lived in my own dorm suite/apartment/condo for over a decade. And daily dishes doing is a development over the last year or so. It’s a worthwhile habit, no doubt. Highly recommend. But it took me so stupidly long to develop. (Dana K. White’s book How to Manage Your Home without Losing Your Mind was legitimately helpful here.)

4. Speaking of books, I read cleaning books and watch Youtube cleaning/decluttering content instead of cleaning my own house.

Sometimes Clean with Me videos inspire me to, you know, actually clean. And more of the time, I watch them while sitting on the couch and enjoying my sparkling water.

5. I am embarrassed by how often I remember to wash our sheets and towels.

I am absolutely mortified to admit this and have considered deleting this point because GROSS. But I am swallowing my shame for you, man, because I want anyone else who, ahem, doesn’t always remember to wash their sheets every two weeks that you’re not alone. If you wash your linens once a week like one of Martha Stewart’s protege, I need to understand – how do you convince yourself to put in so much effort? This is a serious question. I know the feeling of clean sheets is dreamy but also. It’s work.

(Also I feel like I now need to clarify – if you know us in real life and come visit us, I promise we are giving you clean sheets and towels. Pinky swear.)

6. We wash duvet covers and blankets, uh…less than that.

Like we’ve been married for four years and I can count every time we’ve washed our non-sheet blankets. Egads. This is why we’re top sheet people. (I DO NOT understand people who are not. How do you live.)

7. Speaking of laundry, we don’t do it that often.

We do laundry when my husband runs out of white t-shirts. And that’s maybe every two weeks. In our defense, not washing jeans and sweaters every wear is much better for their longevity. But also I…have better things to do than laundry? We don’t have kids, and I’m not looking forward to the day when being this chill won’t be possible.

8. I use tinfoil on roasting pans so that I can just run some water over a pan and call it clean enough.

Now this is just a good life hack, really.

9. I only clean our oven when it becomes a fire hazard.

If our smoke alarm is going off, I’ll clean it. If we’re moving out of a rental and want to earn our security deposit, I’ll clean it. Otherwise…

10. We got a Roomba so we don’t have to vacuum.

My in-laws gifted us a Roomba for Christmas a few years ago. It is the bougiest device, but it can be programmed to vacuum individual rooms. So now we…never vacuum. Or sweep the kitchen because the Roomba vacuums it every night for us. Most expensive lazy person solution ever. But our floors are at least clean.

11. I have had cleaning our windows on my to-do list for at least a year.

We’ve got old windows that have a big space in between the internal window and the screen and storm window. They’re so grody. I’ve been meaning to scrub them for literal months. Like, more than twelve.

12. I have never cleaned our blinds or washed our curtains.

Our blinds are almost always pulled up because I grew up in the country and have no conception of privacy. So they shouldn’t be that dusty, right? Curtains are perhaps a different, dustier story.

13. We don’t own a mop.

We’ve got a Swiffer. It’s adequate for the infrequent times when I notice that the kitchen floor is visibly splattered.

14. I only vacuumed our upholstered headboard when I started having sneezing fits every morning.

Turns out dust mites are a thing. And wouldn’t you know it, the vacuuming cured the sneezing. Now I just have to, you know, remember to do it again.

15. We’ve lived in our house for a year and half. I’ve only dusted the baseboards when we’ve repainted rooms.

I guess Adam did the hallway baseboards once, too. He recently pointed out the dust on our bedroom baseboards, so I guess that’s his job now?

16. We have marble tile in our bathroom. It terrifies me.

I love our bathroom, and the previous owners did a lovely job choosing tile. But also. The ways to screw up marble feel legion and I am freaked out by the idea of wrecking it. (And yes, I know Google exists for a reason and this isn’t rocket science. I KNOW. Let me feel my feelings.)

17. If it fit our budget, I would have no hesitations about hiring a housecleaner.

Not in the cards because my husband is a PhD student. But truly, no shame in that game.

18. Our toilets need scrubbing right now.

Will I do it soon? That remains to be seen.

The moral of the story? We’re all doing great, my friends. The spotlessness of our spaces do not indicate our value. We don’t need to let people who spend their time cleaning on the Internet make us feel bad. We can choose to have other priorities and that’s beautiful.

Got any cleaning confessions of your own? Drop ‘em in the comments!

P.S. If you love a real peek into someone else’s dirty laundry, you’ll love to snoop in all our closets.