You say your bathroom is so dirty, your friends drive to the nearest gas station in the middle of dinner?
You say there’s enough dog and cat hair on the kitchen floor to construct three more pets?
You say your doctor believes there’s a cure for the common cold in the mold in your refrigerator?
And you’re convinced that one of the kids is missing in a pile of dirty laundry?
Is that what’s troubling you?
Then listen to Don Aslett and spend some time each day tidying up the house, attacking the clutter and wiping the toilet and the sink, doing the dishes and making family and guests clean up after themselves.
And don’t use vinegar as a cleaning agent!
Wait a second. No vinegar?
“You’d be really surprised at the number of women who take me to task for that,” Aslett said by phone from Hawaii, where he was supervising construction of his new maintenance-free house.
“But then I ask them, `Do you wash clothes in vinegar?’ and `Do you wash the dishes in vinegar?’ and they say, `Of course not.’
“Well, a cleaning agent that’s good for some things should be good for other things,” Aslett said, “and vinegar–which is an acid–just isn’t.”
Who is this Aslett, and where does he get off telling people how to clean?
Well, Don Aslett has written 26 best-selling books on cleaning, owns Varsity Contractors of Pocatello, Idaho, a professional cleaning company with franchises in 23 states, and has 40 years’ experience since he began tidying rooms as a student at the University of Idaho.
“When I started,” Aslett said, “I didn’t know how to make a bed.”
Now, he can. In fact, Aslett, dubbed the “Don Juan of the john” because he can clean a bathroom top to bottom in 3 1/2 minutes, has spent his time finding ways to cut cleaning chores up to 75 percent.
For Aslett, this is the 6,000th interview, by his count. He has been on “Oprah” twice to offer cleaning tips to the host (as if Oprah cleans her own houses).
It hasn’t been a good morning for Aslett. There are wild cows running rampant through his neighborhood–the location used to film “Jurassic Park”–and about dawn, one decided to give the dust buster a run for his money by relieving itself on the front steps.
“This can’t wait till the weekend,” Aslett said, echoing his advice.
“The biggest secret to cleaning is the word `now,”‘ he added. “But most people wait till Saturday. Men won’t do the dishes. They’ll let them pile high in the sink until they run out of them.”
Then they buy paper plates.
“You know why the restrooms at Santa Anita Racetrack are cleaner than most home bathrooms?” he asked. “Because the cleaning people are at it all the time. They get in there and wipe the toilets and the sinks and disinfect, and they’re out in no time.
“They focus their efforts on the outside of the toilet, not the inside,” he said. “Around the toilet is where it can get really crudded up. So they just spray it, and they’re out in three or four minutes.
“How long do you think a motel would stay in business if the cleaning staff took as long as the typical homeowner?” Aslett said.
Well . . .
Mike Boyle, general manager of the Omni Hotel at Independence Park in Philadelphia, acknowledged that he’s “a nut about cleaning,” but emphasized that it took a lot longer than 3 1/2 minutes to clean a hotel bathroom.
“We wipe down the shower tile every day,” he said. “If a guest saw just one hair in a hotel shower, he or she would be really upset. Guests expect the room to be brand-new.”
In the home, however, such exacting standards aren’t required, Boyle said, so 3 1/2 minutes a day might be reasonable.
Except in his house.
“I wipe out the bathroom sink with a towel every time I use it,” he said. “How many people do that?”
What really gets Aslett’s goat is clutter.
“Junk and clutter is 40 percent of all cleaning. Paper clutter kills you. We deal with an average of 250 to 300 sheets a day just at home. There’s just too much stuff,” he groans. “There were only 100 magazines in 1940, 1,500 10 years ago and 4,000 now.
“That’s the main problem with the economy,” he said. “There’s just too much of everything.”
Despite evidence to the contrary, Aslett insists that cleaning is the world’s oldest profession. He believes that if you teach people one or two principles to clean by, they’ll do it for the rest of their lives.
Other cleaning experts, like Jeff Campbell and the Clean Team, professional cleaners in San Francisco, have their own guidelines–and some coincide with Aslett’s. Campbell and crew in one book, “Speed Cleaning,” advise readers to:
– Make every move count. Plan and organize cleaning for efficiency.
– Use the right tools to save time wasted redoing a task.
– Work from top to bottom to avoid having dust and dirt float down to the just-cleaned lower levels.
– Use both hands to save time.
– If there are more than one of you, work as a team.
Aslett also begins with a plan, advising folks to decide what they’re going to tackle, then assembling the right tools: rags, broom, sponges, mops and buckets.
Aslett suggests fine-grade nylon scrub pads for floors (they can scratch, so don’t be too heavy-handed), and nylon utility brushes for tiles and brick. Professional supplies often are better and cheaper than those in retail stores, and professional tools and cleaners are more task-specific.
Of course, a good vacuum cleaner with a new bag also is helpful.
“Every house can be cleaned with two buckets,” he said. “One bucket contains soap and warm water; the second bucket is empty. The mop or other cleaning tool goes into the water bucket first, but the dirt is wrung out in the empty bucket.
“You can do the whole house, and when you get used to doing it this way, you can do it fast,” he said.
“You can do the floors in minutes and with the right cleaning tools, you don’t have to bend over once.” (If you clean regularly, dirt doesn’t accumulate in corners, he said. So no need to scrub on hands and knees.)
No one should be excused from cleaning, Aslett said.
“Just because someone is a guest in your house doesn’t mean that he or she can’t make the bed or tidy up after themselves,” he said. “If President Clinton stayed at my house, he’d have to clean his room like everyone else.”
Aslett isn’t sure whether Clinton makes his own bed but if he doesn’t, he’s typical of the majority of American men. Husbands tend to find ways of avoiding cleaning and, even in this enlightened age, consider cleaning women’s work.
“Don’t let them get away with it,” Aslett advises in another book, “Who Says It’s a Woman’s Job to Clean?”
And what’s good for the president and all other men is good enough for the kids, too.
“There’s a serious problem these days in that kids don’t accept responsibility,” Aslett said. “One way to make sure everyone does his job is to write everything down and post it–say in the kitchen.
“Everyone is judged on appearance,” he said. “The biggest reason to clean is to be treated better. That’s what we need to emphasize to our kids.”
As spare time grows short, people are trying to make things maintenance-free, Aslett said.
“I know of 10 or 15 people around the country who are building maintenance-free houses,” he said.
The house he has designed features toilets that are above floor level, so dirt is easier to clean. The tile in his house matches the red dirt of Hawaii, so you can’t tell whether it’s clean or dirty.
“I ought to have figured out how to do this over the last 40 years,” he said.
