Best strategy for triaging cleaning tasks

September 10, 2023 1:05 PM

When there’s more tasks for cleaning piled up, what is the best way to triage them? There so many different factors, like urgency, importance, durability, and dependencies, does anybody have a outline of a efficient way to triage?

Like vacuuming, if I do it now and again in a few days, skipping today only affects next days. On the other side, unclogging a drain needs to get done, gets harder if delayed, and affects efforts for cleaning until done.

posted by jras to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

The urgent vs important categories remind me of the Eisenhower box.
posted by zamboni at 1:20 PM on September 10, 2023

You might try breaking things down into ABC prioritization. Unclogging the drain is in the A category, vacuuming is in B.
posted by zamboni at 1:24 PM on September 10, 2023

If you can smell it, it should be on the top of the list.
Also, it will really help - I swear - if you either put things away, or wait until you have the time to put them away where they belong. Don't shove things around. (Ignore this if you have small children or pets or elderly who will get in trouble with stuff that's out and int the way.)

The absolutely last thing you need to do is put away your scrap-booking stuff that is spread out on the coffee table, for instance.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 2:11 PM on September 10, 2023

The book How to Keep House While Drowning has a good, practical approach to this kind of triage. The prioritization will be individual, and based on what you & your loved ones need to move through your day.
posted by ourobouros at 3:50 PM on September 10, 2023 [7 favorites]

I prioritize taking care of the things that make it hardest for me to go about my days. For example, if there's stuff all over my kitchen counter/ sink, it makes it hard for me to get food. So I'll take care of that long before cleaning the floors. They can keep getting dirty for a very long time before they significantly affect me.

(I only clean my shower if I'm having overnight guests I value impressing.)
posted by metasarah at 4:09 PM on September 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

To me, unclogging a drain isn't a "cleaning" task of the regular-household-maintenance variety, because unclogging is not on a schedule. That drain needs "fixing," a discrete job. Drain de-gunking is part of regularly cleaning the [room where the drain resides], to prevent clogging. And a clogged drain in the sink of a second bathroom is less of a priority than a clogged sink drain in the only bathroom.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:28 PM on September 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

1. Things which are health hazards if left uncleaned. (Chicken juice on countertop, clogged drains -- though that's less of a cleaning task than a fixing task in my mind)
2. Things which make my life harder if left uncleaned. (Dishes, giant piles of stuff that are preventing me from using my surfaces, laundry)
3. Things which will embarrass me if I have friends over if left uncleaned. (Bathroom, washing floors if they are visibly dirty)
4. Things which never get cleaned. (Dusting, things under or behind furniture, the carpet in my bedroom that nobody sees)
posted by jacquilynne at 5:46 PM on September 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

You can organise priorities by WHY you are cleaning.

eg, you are washing the dishes and wiping down the kitchen bench so that you can prepare/eat food without getting food poisoning, so that's a first priority.

If you have asthma that is made worse by dust, wiping down surfaces or floors with a damp wipe to remove dust might be your second priority. On the other hand, if you do not have asthma aggravated by dust, dust might move way down your list of priorities...
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:32 PM on September 10, 2023

Unfuck Your Habitat has a to do list for "emergency cleaning" (e.g. landlord surprise inspection). The first thing on the list is garbage. Which I fully agree with. I don't have a great sense of smell so when the kitchen waste bin starts getting funky or the fridge starts smelling gross, I know I need to immediately do a fridge clean out and trot all the food waste down to the city compost bin.

And, er, honestly, the desire to optimize things seems (to my ADD brain) like a procrastination strategy.
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:56 PM on September 10, 2023 [8 favorites]

I'll second the "don't try to prioritize" crew -- I do my best to engineer my environment so that when I'm annoyed by e.g. the sink being dirty, the supplies needed to fix it are right there. And if I need to clean, I should start with this thing, right there, that made me realize that I need to clean. Sure, maybe I could do it more optimally, but better to just start cleaning than think about cleaning.

Relatedly, a lot of cleaning tasks are really only 2 minutes, so I try to make myself do them when I'm microwaving something or boiling water for tea. Emptying the dishwasher, scooping cat litter, wiping down counters, taking out the garbage ... all of those fit in this sliver of otherwise-wasted time. So, I'm not optimizing ordering of tasks ... I'm just doing them when I can and where it's low-overhead.

Once I've cleaned one thing, I often get some momentum going and I try to ride that as long as I can. However, it can tend to be a bit random, so if e.g. I have guests coming over, I may have to make myself stick to *only* cleaning the guest bathroom rather than my more typical flow of "scrub bathroom sink + counter, take drinking glass back to kitchen and put into dishwasher, clean kitchen counter, take dirty rag to laundry, put away clean clothes, vacuum bedroom, put scattered cat toys back in basket ... whoops, toilet still not scrubbed"
posted by Metasyntactic at 1:14 AM on September 11, 2023

Decision making about cleaning sucks. All three of us have ADHD to some degree. Routine is good. Everything you have to think about "do I do this" is another opportunity to get distracted by literally anything else. So every Sunday morning we clean. The same things, the same way, every time. My partner cleans the kitchen and dusts surfaces. The same way every time. I clean the bathrooms including tub and toilets. My partner picks up furniture and vacuums/sweeps. I mop and put things back down. Then we're done. And we don't need to think about cleaning until next Sunday.

Rituals have power.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:02 AM on September 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

I recently started following KC Davis (author of the aforementioned book How to Keep House While Drowning) on Instagram (she's also on TikTok) and her podcast Struggle Care. I really like her approach, it's empathetic and practical. I've heard her talk about the 5 steps, which I think can help you focus in a room when you're overwhelmed:
1. Trash
2. Dishes
3. Laundry
4. Things that have a place
5. Things that don't have a place
posted by radioamy at 12:56 PM on September 11, 2023 [1 favorite]