Cleaning..

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By breaking it into tiny steps. For instance, if I have a room that's been neglected for a while -- the bedroom, say -- I break it up into segments and work on one segment at a time. I pick up all the dirty clothes first and put them in the hamper -- nothing else, just dirty clothes. Then I pick up the trash and put it in the trash can. Then I pick up any dishes and put them in the kitchen sink. I don't stop to wash them, that's another job for another time. Then, I start at the top of the room -- literally -- and use a broom to sweep the dust and cobwebs off of the walls. Then I'll do a book sweep of the room and put the books either in the office or on the shelf they belong on if they belong in that room. Then the table tops, lamps and various knick-knacks get dusted. Then the rugs are shaken out off the porch, then the floor gets dusted. Once I'm done, the room is clean from top to bottom. I usually work in 15 - 20 minute increments and give myself equal time to pursue an interest in between.

For rooms that have already had the top-to-bottom treatment, I have a schedule. On Mondays and Thursdays, I clear table tops and dust. On Saturday, Tuesday and Friday, I do book sweeps. On Saturday morning, I wash the week's laundry, dry and fold it and put it away. I clean the kitchen as I dirty it and wash each meal's dishes as soon as I'm finished eating. Litter boxes are taken care of about every other day. On Sundays, all the rugs get shaken out and all of the floors are swept every other day, the walls get the top-to-bottom treatment about once every other week. Over a week or two, an awful lot of work gets done, a little at a time. The house is always tidy, but not obsessively clean. It looks lived in.

Now, this is only possible because I live alone. With kids or other people in the house, all bets are off! Especially if you have an adult or two in the house who refuse to use the cleaning schedule. I tried to live with a couple of adults who only wanted to clean things "when they saw that they needed it." What it turned into was, nothing got cleaned ever except by me and if I did clean a room, it got trashed the same day. Very frustrating. Anytime I find myself thinking it would be nice to have someone living with me again, I remind myself of this.

Yes, my husband and I view the world very differently. He's actually better at clutter, I'm better at cleaning, but he shuts down if there's too much clutter. Frankly, I don't really *see* the clutter. The kids are in and out, he's in and out, and I'm filling in the hole I'm trying to dig myself out of.

I do find it helps to do dishes while I'm cooking, but then throw in the three other people and it's interesting!

My problem with my wife's decluttering tendency is that I keep up with things using visual memory, so when she moves an item in her clutter removal, to me it's lost because I have a lot of difficulty relocating items with my eyes. I waste a lot of time finding things that are no longer where I saw them last.

I have tried to adapt organization schemes where there is a place for everything, and try to maintain everything in it's place, but for some reason I forget to follow through. Many times things get left out of place because I forget to complete a task, and in forgetting I have forgotten where I left them. It's annoying.

Yes! My husband is an INFJ, while I am an INFP and I think this is where the difference in the 'J'/'P' comes in. It's how we view the world and our surroundings. Give me something with tiny details and I can study it for hours though.

I found that with FLY Lady I kept coming up with reasons NOT to do the steps in the notebook. Like she is so big on lace up shoes! She says in one article, no arguments! Dress to shoes! But I HATE SHOES! Particularly lace up shoes. I don't mind shoes that I can kick off as much, and I do like my combat boots (I like the snuggled sensation and the clomping sound they make)... but for some reason I was just feeling so rebellious about such a small thing.

Hmm.. maybe wearing shoes in the house actually would be a good idea. My dog always freaks out and starts barking when I put 'em on, because she thinks I'm taking her for a walk, no matter what.. it's become a bit of a problem. Wearing shoes more might be a good idea anyways.

My wife is ENFJ. In MBTI functional language we make perfect opposites. Actually INFP and INFJ are similarly opposite functionally speaking. The following are the INFP preferred functions in their preferred order followed by INFPs "shadow" functions. Shadow functions are functions that the person tends to dislike or distrust when they encounter them in other people, or perhaps at first. It really a bit more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it. After that I am putting the function order of INFJ for comparison. If you compare your preferred functions to your husbands shadow functions, and visa versa, you will observe that each of your preferred functions is listed among his shadow functions. This means his tendency is to distrust your preferred way of doing things and visa versa. Of course one can learn to overcome these tendencies, and one can also learn to utilize his own shadow functions to learn to make them work for him instead of against him.

First the preferred functions:

INFP: Introverted feeling, extroverted intuition, introverted sensing, extroverted thinking
INFJ: Introverted intuition, extroverted feeling, introverted thinking, extroverted sensing

Now the shadow functions

INFP: Extroverted feeling, introverted intuition, extroverted sensing, introverted thinking
INFJ: Extroverted intuition, introverted feeling, extroverted thinking, introverted sensing

End of MBTI lecture.

That's exactly what it's like when I try to tidy a room.
My bedroom for example is very hard for me to clean because I have too many things and never know where to put them. Instead of making things tidier, I end up splitting one messy pile into two or just making the original pile of mess even bigger. It's like I just move the mess around rather than get rid of it. It's really frustrating. It's like everytime I have to tidy my room my brain just shuts down and forgets how to be organized.