Plot the downfall of the bourgeoisie.
I just went from weeks behind on chores, to planning ahead.
Wash their sheets and pillow cases. Also vacuum. Dust mites are not healthy to have around.
Roomba is a lifesaver.
Agree. I thought they were overrated until we got one. They are like pets that clean. Ours has a cute punny name.
What’s it’s name? I named mine “Mr. Roombastic”
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Hijacking your thread to advocate for my lazy ideology. Disclaimer I have pretty severe ADHD so this might be extreme for most people but for me this makes life liveable.
Forget trying to make things look super tidy and neat like in an IKEA commercial. Make your living space functional, comfortable and easy to maintain. Reduce the amount of physical, mental and emotional effort required to maintain your environment. For example, for laundry:
- Don’t iron anything unless you really need/want to. (Job interview, going on a date, appearing in court, etc.)
- Anywhere you’re liable to undress, have a basket for dirty clothes. It should be open-topped (no lid!) and mobile, like a laundry basket, so when you need to do a load of laundry, you can pick up and use the whole basket - functioning both as the hamper and the basket. Bedroom and bathroom are the usual places for this! You want the act of tossing dirty clothes in the laundry to be just as easy as tossing it on the floor.
- There’s no such thing as odd socks. They’re called mix ‘n’ match socks now. Like Mashems!
- No neatly folded clothes or hangers or anything like that, except for very special things such as in point 1 - everything just gets dumped into big drawers based on category. I have little fabric boxes that fit into a kallax to keep this relatively neat looking but super easy.
- If something can’t survive going in the washing machine mixed load cycle and the tumble dryer daily load, it is not welcome in my life. (There’s a similar rule about the dishwasher!)
You get the idea. Embrace your laziness, don’t bother yourself with half a second what people might think of how you live. This is surprisingly neat and orderly and takes almost no effort to maintain. If you keep finding your basket is misplaced, buy another basket and keep it in two places. Stop fighting the current and go with your flow. Accept who you are, even if you’re a lazy bitch like me!
There’s no such thing as odd socks. They’re called mix ‘n’ match socks now. Like Mashems!
Or just get black socks and don’t worry about mixing and matching.
You can do that too, but it’s less fun! I’m just very easily amused, of course, but there’s something joyful about wearing odd socks. Especially if they’re contradictory. Like, I wonder what people think of someone wearing one bright pink sock and one yellow sock. Or one sock that says “Star Wars” on it and another sock that has dinosaurs. I have some Star Wars Han Solo socks where Han Solo looks like John Travolta. That’s not relevant to this, but every time I see those socks, they make me laugh because he looks very funny.
Also
6. Don’t bother making your bed. I don’t know why my parents ever ingrained this habit in me, but one day I was like… why am I even doing this? and so I stopped. Of course, I still change my sheets and pillow cases regularly, but I don’t see a reason for making my bed every day.
I do it, because it makes a massive difference to me how tidy my bedroom feels and how welcoming the bed looks at the end of the day. I just have a duvet though, so it’s 10 seconds of pulling on each corner until it’s reasonably even - not going for perfection!
I have a duvet too, I usually don’t make my bed but when I do it’s all about the trick shot - grab a corner of the duvet in each hand and whip it forward fast - like reins or something - and let it fall more or less perfectly on the bed with almost zero effort. Might take a bit of practise to get used to but this is what I’ve been doing for a long time!
Sorry, but I find that really hard to relate. How would that make any difference, practically? At the end of a day, a bed is always welcoming to me - I mean, I don’t need an excuse to hit the bed lol, in fact, I need an excuse to get out of bed. On some lazy weekends I may not even bother getting out of bed lol.
I enjoy having a tidy bed, it makes me feel more relaxed. Also got drilled to it from my parents and in the military, it promotes discipline and you start your day by accomplishing a task (gives a positive mindset).
So, let me get this right, you don’t fold your clothes? Rather you just crumple them up and put them in the drawer?
I never thought of this as a viable solution but I am going to try it out! Folding laundry is my #1 chore left undone. I end up “living out of the basket” and nothing is ever done.
You’re absolutely right. I don’t fold shit. If I need to wear a proper shirt then I’ll iron it when I need it, but usually just wear T-Shirts & polo shirts, so it doesn’t matter.
Yep, just give yourself permission to live out of the basket and put the basket on a shelf. It’s tidier and you don’t feel as bad about it.
I like you. My husband has ADHD and he does the same thing. I fold my own clothes because it’s relaxing for me, but no one should feel like they have to.
Thank you, and yes, absolutely, sometimes I go beyond this as well (for example, I’ll decide to pair up some socks) but it’s always an added extra bonus, not an expectation that I’m failing to meet. Psychology matters as much as anything!
You are my brother for life.
Thank you, but beware, as your new brother for life has some crazy hot takes and likes to argue a lot on the internet even though he probably shouldn’t. Lots of sibling responsibility! Although I don’t know which of us is the big brother / little brother.
Late to this, but except for folding (or hanging up) clothes, this is my laundry strategy. Don’t own an iron. Travel steamer for emergencies, more often used to refresh my hair.
I used to tell my kids to stand in the laundry basket to undress, because they couldn’t get the clothes into the basket.
Exercise their water valves. Crawl under the kitchen sink and the bathroom sink, reach around behind the toilet, find the hot and cold valves behind the washing machine. Especially if you live in a hard water area as I do, in Southern California. I have it on my calendar to do it twice a year. If I don’t, the valves will eventually become calcified and ossified and worthless. I say this based on hard experience.
Do you mind ELI5 what exercising valves means? Is it just opening and closing?
Yes
Huh. We have really hard water here (17° dH = 3 mmol/l = 303 ppm) and I never heard of any recommending that or having issues with that. Maybe German valves are just built to work in such hard water, as that’s really common?
Clean the filter in your dishwasher once every month or two, depending on how often you use it.
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I clean ours every 1-2 weeks
Blow out the dryer duct.
Is it DIY? This sounds like one of the things I’d rather hire a professional for.
Clean the microwave and oven. People have some filthy microwaves(mine included).
There’s an easy(ish) way to clean one. Put about 1-1.5 cups of water into a microwave safe bowl or glass (I use Pyrex measuring cup) and microwave it for about 10+ minutes. Let the water boil really good and the hot steam will soften all the crap on the inside of the microwave. Get the cup out carefully, wipe the inside with a wet cloth, maybe spray some cleaner if oily and you’re done.
Oh that’s smart. I’m gonna try this on my microwave
Be very careful doing this. The water can become superheated and explode when the surface tension is broken. Honestly, it’s probably better to find an alternative way to clean your microwave.
Couldn’t you put a little salt or something in it to make sure it has a nucleation point to start boiling
I’m not sure. That sounds like it might work, but I don’t have any source to know if it will.
Ok now I want to do it more
There’s nothing special about a microwave that will superheat water. You can superheat water on a stovetop, but nobody ever says not to boil water on a stove.
Huh? How would stovetop boiled water ever be still without bubbling? That’s required for superheating it.
my knob goes to 11
Eh, just do what most microwaves recommend for heating liquid: put a tea spoon in there. And if you are thinking “OMFG that will explode”, read about microwave and metal myths ;)
Change your air filters regularly
and don’t forget those extra air handler things like if you have a HRV. i swear the previous owners of mine never cleaned it and the OEM filters basically disintegrated when i did it the first time after moving in. luckily all i had to do to replace them was cutting down to size those cheap-o washable filters from the hardware store, good enough to keep the large chunks out.
Death to America
Clean under/behind appliances.
Ugh even that big ass fridge and stove?
Especially the fridge, mine was so clogged with dust under it I think improved it’s efficiency by 50% in 2 minutes with the vacuum cleaner
Clean the touchable surfaces on your devices and device keyboards.
Basically all of them, ugh.
Checking on your neighbors.
Yes, power drills can clean bathtubs and toilets. Just use different brushes.
Flush your water heater once a year.
I know that I’m guilty of not doing this regularly, my dad, a former pipeftter and practically a living parody of the responsible homeowner dad who drove us all crazy with preventative maintenance routines doesn’t even do it regularly.
But it’s really not hard, I’m not going to write a guide here because if you just punch “how to flush a water heater” into your search engine of choice you’ll get plenty of good results.
It’ll improve the lifespan and efficiency of your water heater and decrease how much sediment and such you have in your hot water.
Also when you get a new water heater, replace the shitty plastic valve they all seem to ship with these days with a proper brass valve, it’s like a $10 part from home Depot and takes about a minute to swap them out. They probably use them because they know no one actually flushes their water heater anyway, but if you’re one of the few of us who do, you know how sketchy the plastic ones are, if you touch them more than about 2 or 3 times you feel like you’re going to break them.
How truly necessary it is will depend a lot on the quality of your water, if you have good, clean, soft water, it may not make a noticeable difference, if you have harder, dirtier water it might buy you a couple extra years with your water heater, and if your water quality is especially bad you may want to do it a couple of times a year. It takes a little bit for the tank to drain, fill back up and get to temperature, but it’s less than 10 minutes of actual hands-on work, and you can go do whatever the hell you want in the meantime as long as it doesn’t involve hot water.
You should also check and may need to replace the anode rod every few years, that can also increase the lifespan of your water heater. You’re probably going to need a beefy impact wrench though, they often really don’t like to come free.
I bought a house that was used as an office before getting remodeled and sold to to me. When I drained the hot water tank brown slime came out, it looked like a ribbon of brown mushroom. Gotta assume this was bacteria byproduct built up while the tank ran at low heat and saw little water use. I added bleach to sanitize while refilling it and drained.
not relevant to every household, but regularly clean/rinse the effluent filter on your septic system (i do mine at least 2x a year)… and realize you may have more than one. it ain’t a pretty job, but you’re going to save yourself from a massive repair bill and/or damage from a backup by spending the 15 minutes to git er done.
