Do you like doing household chores? If you want your life to be of high quality, having clean, comfortable and fresh house is a must.
I encourage all of you to do house work duties by yourself instead of hiring expensive house cleaning & maid services. Why? Not only because it will help you to save money on health and hygiene, but in that way, you can fully control how clean your apartment or house is going to be. Therefore, you will not have to do all housecleaning tasks again fixing problems, if you are not happy with the quality of the service provided by the maid. Because it is just you, and nobody else, who is fully in charge of the whole cleaning process.
And, it is an amazing feeling to be a 100% in charge of as many things in your life as possible when it is becoming more uncommon worldwide to do things on our own because a few companies, which are owned by a few richest people, have already controlled so many aspects of our lives.
You can also treat doing house work duties as an exercise, and as if you practice mindfulness – staying at one task for a few minutes avoiding distractions.
Some of my basic household chores
Every Saturday morning, I obediently do my chores with no slacking, no excuses. I do them early in the morning right after I wake up to make my apartment nice and tidy. I try to finish all cleaning tasks by noon making sure that my apartment as a whole is clean and organized when I am finished. Because later in the afternoon, I usually go shopping for groceries.
Cleaning the kitchen. I start cleaning the apartment around 9 am by carefully cleaning the kitchen, and that includes: cleaning the fridge; wiping down kitchen cabinets, the stove top and all kitchen appliances. I also make order with oil bottles, packages of herbs & spices, bean containers and different kinds of flours. I usually clean the floor in the whole apartment at the end.
Washing the dishes. I never wash the dishes in the morning, but do it each evening right after dinner, so the sink is always clean and there are no dirty dishes when I wake up.
Cleaning the bathroom. Once I finish with the kitchen, I move to the bathroom where I clean the bathroom sink, the sink tap, toilet and the shower zone. To clean the toilet, I use a strong disinfectant for complete and full microbiological sterilization. I also wipe the mirror and throw away garbage from bathroom and kitchen dustbins. At the end, I mop the floor in the bathroom, and then I change the dirty water.
Removing dust. Before I start mopping the floor in the rest of the apartment, I first clean dust from the dining table, four chairs, a couple of shelves and a long windowsill. Then, I pick up from the floor any objects, for example, boxes or shoes, and temporarily put them in one place, so the floor will be empty for sweeping.
Cleaning the carpet. There are two carpets in my apartment which, at this stage, I bring outside for beating out dust. I also wash the carpets from time to time.
Watering flowers. I water flowers twice a week, the first time on Saturday and the other time during the week.
Mopping the floor. When everything is ready, I mop the floor three times using warm water with a cleaning detergent in it. After I finish mopping, I let it dry for around 10 minutes before I bring clean carpets and other stuff back and put everything again on the floor.
Shopping for groceries. After I am done with cleaning the apartment, it is shopping time. As I mentioned before, I go shopping for fresh vegetables and fruits in the afternoon together with my wife, unless we have some other important things do to or scheduled appointments. We spend around two hours in the supermarket or the local fruit and vegetable market.
Doing laundry. When it comes to laundry, I used to wash clothes in the night between 11 pm and 7 am because the electricity is the cheapest at that time, so I could save some money on utilities. After moving to another apartment where we currently live, the electricity fee is the same throughout the day and at night. Then, I hang all the wet clothes on the clothes drying stand. I do not use an electric dryer, neither I have a dishwasher.
Ironing. I iron our business shirts and other formal clothes, if they are really crumpled or in case of important events that we are about to attend. I sporadically iron other casual clothes. I do not do much ironing in winter though.
Paying bills. We pay our electricity bill once a month. We spend around RMB200 per month on electricity during winter months and around RMB100 during summer months. To heat the water, we use the electric heater. We spend more money on electricity in winter because we have longer shower and use hotter water. In summer, I usually shower and brush my teeth in cool water. We pay for water every couple of months because it is very cheap. When we moved into our apartment a couple of months ago, we paid the Internet fee for the whole year in advance.
Other household chores. We do not have a car, any pets or a garden to take care of, so there is not a need to regularly mow the lawn or rake the leaves in the yard. But, we would like to one day live in a house on our own land, so we can plant our own trees and vegetables.
As you can see, I live a simple, uncomplicated life, which I really enjoy, trying to do as many things on my own as possible.
Do my hands get dirty while doing house work duties? Yes. Do I sweat a lot? Yes. Am I tired after cleaning the apartment? Yes. These are all unavoidable side effects.
But I am perfectly fine with doing a few chores every week because once I finish, my apartment is spotless.
