How often do you use a cloth to clean the floors of your home?
Sounds as a weird question? Quite understandable!
In this age of maids, mopping sticks and mopping robots, taking a wet cloth and cleaning by hand could sound weird to many. Probably, there is a generation of kids who don't even know that in olden days this is how people used to clean their homes. But I would strongly suggest that you try doing this at least once. But why?
Because:
You discover a lot of things that you were thinking are lost.
As you need to bend down to mop, you discover that there are many tiny things like pens, some papers (bills may be) etc hiding under the furnitures or the corners.
You discover a lot of unreached corners in your home.
You would be surprised to see the amount of dust gathered under your bed or sofa.
You realize that you are not doing justice to your home maintenance under the pretext of a busy schedule.
Why don't people do deep cleaning consistently?
Willingness
Many people staying in rented homes or apartments are not willing to spend time and energy in the home maintenance. They don' t have a sense of responsibility for the home and hence are ready to live among the dirt. Anyways, the home would be painted once in 4 or 5 years and all the dust would be removed at that time. Why waste time everyday on this?
Motivation
Even if you are living in your own home, how often do you feel its worth the time to do deep cleaning of your homes? As cleaning is a repetitive activity, its considered as unproductive. At this point, I am reminded of my grandma's words, "The more you keep your homes clean, the more would the goddess of wealth be happy to stay in your home" and I strongly believe in her words. And sometimes, have felt it to be true.
Cleaning, though repetitive, is not unproductive, Everytime you do it, you learn a way to do it more efficiently. Also, you start thinking twice or thrice before buying any thing, which could occupy space or which could block the corners. If you do the deep cleaning consistently, the time that you would require to spend on cleaning would be drastically reduced in due course.
In a way, you learn to remove the wastes or waste generating objects (Reminded of the 'lean' concept?).
Support
Its an agreed fact, that more the number of people who are committed and could contribute to an objective, the more faster and more efficient would be the way in which the objective would be achieved. If everyone in the family could support, then I am sure such homes would definitely be beautifully maintained.
Ok. Now why am I writing about this? Am I interested in seeing your homes beautiful? May be.
But more importantly, this act of cleaning by reaching out to the corners, would help you learn how to develop the willingness to do a seemingly monotonous activity, be self motivated and also to learn to gather support, which are very important lessons in leadership.
Ours is a culture which brings out leadership in us so naturally. Lets not lose it!