When you just look back

About few weeks ago, my sister told me, it made her feel really great to have done cleaning her room. Before that, I used to sweep once a week and cleaned the kitchen once in a while. There seemed to be some room for improvements.

When I was in Japan, I used to use something called “クイックルワイパー (Kuikkuru-waipaa)”, which consists of a skelton stick and a sheet of special paper. Not having found something similar in Europe, I’ve been using good-old broom to sweep my room. I once (well, actually more than once) thought about buying a roomba, but thought it’d also make my life more complicated.

When I was going for shopping in supermarket, I found something called Swiffer broom, of which the concept was very similar to クイックルワイパー. You use the paper and replace it with new paper once it’s caught enough dust. I thought sweeping every day (shortly before going to office) and replacing the paper once in 2 days would be enough (so far, it seems to be enough).

Once I started sweeping my room regularly, my cleaning interest spread around. My next interest was the kitchen, which I started to clean more often, and then the bathroom got targeted (which is cleaned once every weekend). I then went to the couch (where it got many hairs, if you have a very close look at it) and using adhesive tape, which was originally designed for cloths, to take off the dust and hairs.

While doing this, my life has changed as well. I now know more what I have in the fridge. So I haven’t bought something I already had in the fridge, or having something in the fridge, which went bad or out of date. It feels like I have more control over my life, although I’m not sure if there is a logical relationship in between.

# I also took the frost in the fridge. Unfortunately, I could see a new frost already next day! I should probably carefully select things that won’t go bad in normal temperature, and let the frost naturally melt for the next time. Perhaps it won’t be so long.

The remaining target I see now is the book shelves. Because I usually do not move around the books, I’m expecting to see some dust behind those books. On the other hand, however, it’d be one full-day work if I’d take off all the books and sweep the whole shelves. Perhaps I should first decide which books to digitalize (and throw away).

While sweeping the floor everyday, I thought having a shoe-shelf with the wheels would be very practical. It is not a rocket-science (actually it should be very simple), so I might just make one for my own by going to DIY shop (it’d be probably cheaper, but could also be faster).

I do have bought new cleaning equipments and those cost some money. But I don’t feel reluctant to spend for them at all. It could be one of the most useful ways I’ve spent my money.

Perhaps I should have been aware of the joy of the cleaning and started to look for something similar to “クイックルワイパー” in Austria. I could certainly say that cleaning my room is a new (and very practical) hobby of mine!