Campbell - Spring Cleaning

A DELL TRADE PAPERBACK
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036

Copyright 1989 by Jeff Campbell and The Clean Team

Illustrations copyright 1989 by Axelle FortierBerkeley, CA

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

The trademark Dell is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79694-3

This is a book about housecleaning written for people who would rather be doing just about anything else. It is the second such book. The first, Speed Cleaning (Dell, 1987), presented The Clean Teams unique system of cleaning that relies on principles of time-and-motion economy to reduce cleaning time by half or more. Its concern was saving time during weekly cleaningthe tasks most of us regard as routine cleaning (e.g., dusting, vacuuming, and cleaning sinks and toilets).

Speed Cleaning was the first systematic approach to cleaning an entire household ever presented in print. But it also had a special emphasis: to get it over with as soon as possiblenot to linger, fuss, dawdle, or dwell over it. You see, we were really writing just as much about personal freedom as we were about cleaning: how to free yourself from one of daily lifes great drudgerieshousecleaning.

People all across the country understood and responded. We heard from over 10,000 of you last year alone. And one of the things you told us is that youd also like to learn how to tackle the heavy-duty cleaning chores as well as the weekly tasks. We listened to you (thank you!), and the present book is the result.

For those of you not familiar with Speed Cleaning, wed better explain that were not going to offer a collection of household hints. Instead, we will teach you a system that uses solid tools instead of gadgets, generalized cleaners instead of dozens of specialized products that clutter up your home, and a step-by-step approach instead of isolated suggestions. Our emphasis is to get it over with and move on to other things. Tips, hints, and gadgets dont enable you to do the job from start to finish. At best, they are unrelated, useful ideas. At worst, they are a disappointing waste of your time and money.

Many of us, burdened with the time pressures of working, commuting, and trying to hold a household together, barely seem to have time to butter the toast in the morning, let alone strip the floors. Presuming you can find the time, how do you start? And will there be anything left of the weekend if you do? This book offers relief on both accounts.

Spring Cleaning addresses two major types of housecleaning:

1. Spring cleaning: Tasks that need to be done once or twice a yearstripping and waxing floors, cleaning windows, walls, rugs, etc.

We will show you how to do major housecleaning tasks the smart and fast way on your first attempt. And to do them right so you wont have to repeat them for the longest possible time. Our method also makes the jobs less frustrating and more rewarding.

2. Heavy (catch-up) cleaning. Tasks that you have to do to be able to start routine cleaning. These include tasks you dont do every time you clean but that you cant ignore forever.

It is for all those who, despite their best intentions, are always falling behind or just never get started. Not that we blame you. We all know whats lurking behind the refrigerator and under the sofa cushions, but we also know its not going to go away by itself. Many households need a thorough cleaning before a rational person would even attempt weekly or maintenance cleaning. Theres little point in cleaning just the top layer of crud over and over; the unexcavated layers are still there.

We are going to teach you one very good way to do each job. Its not that there arent other alternatives. We just arent going to mention them. Our steadfast aim is to show you how get cleaning over with so you have time to go to that evening class, or watch the football game, or take the kids to the park, or whatever else it is in your life that needs some time to flourish. We could gather everything there is to know about window washing, for example, into one surprisingly large book. It would take you all weekend to read it, let alone put it into practice. Thats not what were up to. We will give you as few decisions to make as possible about cleaning methods and products.

The flip side of this issue would be not enough information to do the job. Weve read books on cleaning that just raise issues and never get around to telling you what to do or how to do it. After reading them we still dont know exactly where to start or what materials to use or where to find the materials.

It would be wrong to be smug about all this. We just didnt have a choice, thats all. The Clean Team is a San Francisco company that specializes in residential cleaning, working in teams of three. We clean San Francisco homes about 15,000 times a year. And were fast too: Our teams can clean an average house in 42 minutes, or a one-bedroom apartment in about 21 minutes. No fooling.

If we didnt develop a way of cleaning houses fast we would be doing it for fun, not profit. The profit margin for residential cleaning is just too small to waste a minutes time. Every move has to count, and we also had to find the right products that wouldnt slow us down or make us redo our work. So we field-tested hundreds of products and innumerable strategies to cut our time to the bone. And we kept records on it allevery single visitto make sure we were making progress and not just hoping we were. It was hard, and we learned some expensive lessons along the way. But through Spring Cleaning you can learn from our experience much faster.

What immediately follows is a list of The Clean Team Rules. These are the principles weve distilled after years of field experience. But theres more to cleaning than rules. In we review the products that we mention in the book and that we use every day on the job. We also provide a way for you to order them for your own use (see the appendix). In the remaining chapters, we present step-by-step instructions for each of the major (and a few minor) chores, one at a time.

(on the rules and cleaning products) and then turn to the section that covers that project you have in mind. And remember to give yourself time to round up the materials youll needeither from us or from local suppliers.

The Clean Team rules are the ones we practice every business day of the year. As a business, we really dont have a choice about saving time, but you do: You can continue wasting time on an activity that you probably detest, or you can learn a systematic method to get it over with fast. (At least you have the luxury of a choicethats something of a consolation!)

We formalized our rules after we realized that we needed a way to train new Clean Team members in as efficient a way as we worked. Our first attempt at a rational list was made after scouring the library (surprise!) for literature on the principles of time-and-motion economy.