Notes for a Queer Homemaker: How To Clean Your Kitchen

Welcome to your second class in worldmaking 001! Last time, you learned how to deep clean your bedroom, and today, we’re getting into the only other room in my house that I always have struggled with keeping clean: the kitchen.

The kitchen is such a vital place in the home. Notorious gentrifiers and purveyors of well-priced linen-cotton blend duvet covers Chip and Joanna Gaines have been known to say that the kitchen is the heart of the home and the thing is, they’re right! It’s where you often start and end your day, it’s the place where the things that materialy nourish you are housed.

In the play, black girl love by Ari L. Monts (lol), one character reflects on the importance of a clean kitchen as an “I’m-too-nervous-to-tell-you-I-want-to-make-out” tactic:

HONOR
You have good books too. Books are important. John Waters, you know that crazy ass white dude who made Hairspray? I remember reading like a GQ or a Vanity Fair interview with him where he said something like “don’t sleep with someone if you go over their house and they don’t have any books,” or something like that. My mom also thinks you shouldn’t sleep with someone if they have a dirty kitchen because you know…what if you’re cuddling in bed after and you go to get a drink and they got roaches? Like can you fucking imagine?! Oh my god I would die. And you’d probably be butt ass naked and just…(she shudders, and peters out.)
Silence.

Is the moment over?

Because the kitchen is so used, it’s one of the quickest rooms to get messy. I’ve always said washing dishes is the most unsatisfying chore because as soon as you finish, you have more dishes to wash! It literally never ends!

My hope in crafting this guide for cleaning your kitchen is that it makes the task never feel daunting, even when your kitchen is absolutely a mess – and believe me, your kitchen will be a mess more than once if you use it as it’s intended to be used. Which is also a beautiful reminder about housekeeping in general: mess is a sign of a home being used. What’s more beautiful than that! So, take a deep breath, put your rubber gloves on, and without further ado:

The Kitchen

1. Make a List

You did not think I’d forget about lists, did you? Your list will keep you on track. You list will keep you happy. Your list is your friend!

2. Tools

Lots of these tools are repeats! Which means you can look back into the bedroom cleaning guide if you need specifics. I’ll let you know if you should use something other than what I suggested for bedrooms.

• Timer: for keeping you on track

• Microfiber towels: for stovetops, windows, your stove/oven, and any other shiny things

• A bunch of rags/paper towels/recycled newspaper/recycled paper bags

• Sponge(s), bottle cleaners, and anything else you’ll need for washing dishes: I believe you should have at least two sponges for dishes (one for scouring things, one for pots/pans with coatings that cannot be scratched), and one for counters. .

• Trash/recycling/compost bags/bins/whatever your home uses: Here’s the thing. Yes, you need bags with which to remove trash from your home. Also: I think the trash should be taken out every single day. Maybe many times a day. I think trash cans inside of a house are incredibly gross to me! I do not like having a trash can inside of my home, but I live with someone for whom it’s important. Which means that when I deep clean my kitchen, and when you deep clean your kitchen, you will need to not only take out the trash, but clean the trash can. WHICH IS WHY I am anti-trash can. I know. It is unpopular and inconvenient, but it is my inconvenient truth.

• Broom

• Vacuum (small handheld one if you have it, for getting into cabinet corners)

• Mop

• Appliance specific cleaner (if needed): If you’ve got an induction-top stove, you might want to bring along a box cutter, and the specific cleaning solution suggested by your stove manufacturer. If your oven doesn’t have a self-cleaning setting, you might want to bring some oven cleaner. I would suggest trying DIY oven cleaner before buying it; you’d be surprised how easy it can be to clean an oven with heat and time. This website offers you some great suggestions, and guess what, the winner is baking soda and water.

• Glass cleaner

• Pipe cleaner situation

• Scrub brush: If you’re going to use it on the floor and the counters, I’d suggest getting two!

• Dish soap or dishwasher liquid

• Favorite room scent if that’s your thing (incense/candle/etc)

• Baking soda

• Favorite AP cleaner

• If you don’t have a split sink, a wash bucket for dishes: I’ve recently learned people disagree with using a dish bucket, but I don’t understand how one can properly wash dishes without soaking them! So, unless you have a split sink, I really think you should try it! Look for a “dishpan” or a “dish basin” or a “bus box” that fits into about half of your sink. If you’re really feeling fancy, get two buckets, or a split bucket, so you can have a wash sink and a rinse sink.

• Vinegar

• Favorite sanitizer: to sanitize things. Lysol, bleach, or your favorite sanitizer from the store.

• Favorite tile cleaner (or a floor cleaner for whatever kind of floor you have): to mop your floors. The great thing about tile floors is any all purpose cleaner will do. Read the instructions (which usually specify dilution), or use the vinegar/water/dish soap mix I suggested in the bedroom guide.

3. How To

Okay, I’m thinking about the kitchen kind of like a hierarchy of needs situation; at the top: clean dishes. It’s impossible to always have clean dishes and therefore that need is never fully met, but it’s what we’re always working for! In the middle, we have the reminder to always check our dates and make sure we don’t have old food. Food goes bad! It is our job to slow that down, or dispose of the food in a way that keeps our kitchens clean once that’s happened. And at the bottom are floors so clean that one could eat off of them. Again, impossible! But clean floors make an entire kitchen feel clean, and I think keeping a clean floor is the thing to aim for if you can do nothing else.

Sanitizing and Prep Work

• Boil any old sponges: When I dropped the claim that you should maybe have at least three sponges, maybe you thought, why? The reason is because the counter sponge should not be used to wash dishes and the dish sponges shouldn’t be used to clean counters. Ideally! But we live in a society and maybe you don’t want 3 sponges. The solution (and honestly something you should be doing even if you have three sponges) is to boil your sponges as often as possible after use. Sponges are nasty. They hold on to disgusting things. Boiling water can and will safely clean them. Drop them in boiling water for about 3 minutes after using them (and at least once a week) and then dry them somewhere where they’ll be able to air-dry completely (so, not flat on the counter). If you’re doing this at the start of a big clean, you want to do this early so the sponges can cool off enough for you to use them if needed.

• Take out the trash/recycling/compost: Do this now, even though you’ll probably have to do it again at the end. It’s good to start with as blank a canvas as possible.

• Fill sink/dish tub with HOT water and soap (and soak the dishes): This is, for me, the first step to washing dishes. You especially want to soak anything with something hard/crusty/old stuck onto it. I use enough soap for the soaking dishes to look like they’re in their own little bubble bath

• Fill rinse sink with cold water and vinegar: Cold water and a cap-full of white vinegar will rinse your dishes until they squeak and will help them to dry quickly.

• Sanitize any windows, doorways, etc: Similarly to in the bedroom, this is a quick step to remember to clean the high touch areas which are easily forgotten. Cabinet door handles, fridge handle, doorways, key hooks, window-sills, etc.

• Start cleaning the oven: Put down whatever oven cleaning method you’ve decided upon, and let it sit for at least an hour. Alternatively, start the oven self-cleaning function! I LOVE a self-cleaning oven! But beware that most (safe) ovens with a self-cleaning function will lock the oven for up to five hours because the entire range gets way too hot to safely use. If it’s summer, crank the AC or turn on lots of fans.

Quick Tidy

Pull out your timer for this quick cleaning portion.

• 15 min gather dishes from around the home: If you are like me, there are always mugs where they don’t belong and random spoons on dressers. Go grab them, and put them in the sink to soak with any other dishes getting washed!

• 15 min removing non-kitchen items from the kitchen: Same thing as above, just opposite! Has a magazine been living on the counter for a few weeks? Move it. Mail piling up? Sort through it and give it to the appropriate housemates, or recycle it! Dirty kitchen linen pile taking over a cabinet? Bring the linen to the laundry basket.

Spot Cleaning

• Clean stove exhaust fan: I’m gonna hand this one over to Melissa Maker.

• Wipe down/check smoke detector: Please do not be like me and keep your smoke detector stuffed into a drawer. If you’re using it well, it makes sense that you’d need to take it down, wipe it down and test it every few months. Make sure the batteries work and make sure there aren’t any stains from that soup you overboiled last week.

• Clean window screens + windows: The bedroom guide has all the nitty gritty if you need it.

• Spot clean spills on walls/ceiling: Pull out your favorite cleaning rag, your favorite all purpose cleaner, and get to work on those walls. Kitchen walls, especially near the stove, are honestly dirtier than you think, and it’s good to give them a little wipedown. If you have painted walls, you’ll need to be mindful of accidentally wiping off the paint, and you should start with something more mild, like soap and water before moving to a more intense cleaner.

Cabinets/Fridge

• Take everything out: Yes, everything! And if we’re really deep cleaning, you should take any refrigerated food out and put it into a cooler on ice, because you then want to unplug the fridge. The first step to actually cleaning a container that holds something is to remove the things it holds. For me, this is a big difference between cleaning and tidying.

Cleaning is a little bit disruptive! You’ve got to remove everything from where it goes, and then really look at the space and determine whether or not you’re using it well before putting it back together. The second step of this cleaning process is therefore the re-evaluation step.

• Re-evaluate: Do you really need three boxes of Cheerios? Is there a way to consolidate them, or can you give some away? After you’ve removed everything, really get in there and ask yourself why you have what you have, is it still good, is the way they’re being stored helpful or harmful, and what to do going forward. If you don’t already, I’d suggest keeping a roll of painter’s tape in the kitchen to keep the dates on things you cook so you’ll know that you aren’t storing food longer than the FDA says is safe. The re-evaluation step is really just a reminder to make sure you actually want what’s in your shelves and refrigerator.

• Wipe down: Food can make things sticky! Get out a rag and some AP cleaner and go at it.

• Re-organize: This can be as intense as deciding you need to buy acrylic bins for everything, or it could mean that you use the old jam jars you’ve refused to throw away to store all your snacks so you actually know what you have. We’ll talk more about organizational systems when we talk about the home office but just know, it doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s organization system. If you feel organized, that’s good enough.

Dishes

We’ve made it almost to the end! I wash dishes very close to last because like I said, dishes are never-ending and if you wash them at the beginning, even if you don’t stop, somehow, there will still be dishes at the end. So just let them soak throughout, keep adding any stray dishes into the pile, and wait. When it’s time to begin, dump out the water, rinse the vessels the dishes have been sitting in if there’s debris, and pile the dishes up next to the sink by type (plates, cups, bowls, silverware, etc).

• Cleanest to dirtiest: Wash your dishes cleanest to dirtiest. This not only keeps whatever sponge/dishrag situation you’re using the most sanitary, it also makes your life easier. Think about it, the soapy water will still be usable after washing a few spoons, but after washing the pot you made shakshuka in, it probably might not be! In order to lessen the need to replace the water you’re using to wash dishes (the warm, soapy water, I suggest washing cleanest to dirtiest. This usually means in my home we wash cups first, then silverware, then bowls, then plates, then pots/pans/cooking utensils, then baking dishes.

Don’t forget to wash things like your water bottle and spoon rest, they are filthy.

time for my quarterly reminder to bleach your water bottle it’s filthy

— bat v’lo ben. bat v’lo isha. (@alaraemnts) September 20, 2020

To actually wash your dishes, start with adding a dime sized amount of dish soap onto your sponge/dishrag and circularly clean your dish. Dunk it into the soapy water a few times throughout the process to help begin to rinse (this is not the final rinse, as soapy water would leave residue). Use your fingers to feel the item you’re washing–does something feel oily, or crusty? Then it’s not clean! get to scrubbing! Use the scouring side of your sponge to really get in there if you need.

• Rinse in vinegar/water solution: When you’re sure the dish is clean, then rinse it in the cold water/vinegar solution. It should take 2-3 dunks. Set the dish on a drying rack or towel until you’re ready to buff the dishes dry.

• Buff dry: If you can, I think it’s always better to immediately dry off and put away your dishes. If they need to sit out, the world will not end! But when I want a clean kitchen, drying dishes doesn’t fit the vibe. Use a fluffy towel and dry until you don’t see any more streaks! If you use the vinegar trick, this will be quicker than you think!

• If you have a dishwasher, loading it well is the key to getting your dishes clean. Here’s one way of going about it:

Closing

You’re basically done! Just like we cleaned our bedroom from top to bottom, you want to do the same in the kitchen which means we end with sweeping and mopping our floors. You should also wipe down your oven if you haven’t already! You learned how to do that in the bedroom guide, but there’s one more step that without it, I think you can’t have a truly clean kitchen.

• Clean Your Sink: I shit you not, there is nothing I love more than cleaning my sink after washing dishes. I have a long, trauma-related history with dishes (I know it sounds weird to say!) where a deep source of pain has become a healing/resetting ritual that I have written about before. And cleaning the sink is the final part of that ritual. I use bleach, because I love bleach. I spray down the entire sink and even the space around it, I make myself a cup of tea that I will take with me when I’m done cleaning the kitchen, and I light a candle. Then, after the tea is made and the candle is lit, I take my sponge and using the scouring side first, scrub down the sink (if you have a porcelain sink, don’t use the scouring side! it will scratch the coating). Then I rinse it down and wipe down any remaining suds towards the drain. I put away the sponge, I take my tea, and I turn on the little light above the stove. The kitchen is clean.

And now we’ve reset. The future is new and exciting.

Notes for a Queer Homemaker: Welcome to the Worldmaking Series

worldmaking 001: for ppl who have no clue where to start

About the Series

I always struggle with what to write about each month, because homemaking is such a big and personal subject! There are things that I think are important that other people do not think about at all, and there are things others find vital that I never bat an eye at.

I’m also terrible at a deadline (Vanessa, my editor, I am so sorry and I love you so much), and thought that some sort of series, where I knew months in advance what I’d intended to write, would be helpful as I tried to respect my editor more and submit things on time (this month, it did not work and again….I am so sorry and I love you so much). And thus, this series was born. Welcome to Worldmaking 001: For People Who Have No Clue Where to Start. This series is going to be practical. Yes, making a home is making new worlds, but how do you do it? How do you make your bed? How do you shine your furniture? When can you DIY it and when should you buy something extra strong?

I haven’t offered too much practical information because as I said, homemaking is personal! So a caveat for this week and every week: these are my opinions, and I’d love your opinions too! I’m imagining that we’re deep cleaning each room in Worldmaking 001–which means, you’re probably not going to need to do each of these things each week or even each month! Maybe you do some of these things only once a year, but it’s important that you have the know-how.

And now, let’s dive in, with the place most of us have access to and are responsible for cleaning:

The Bedroom

1. Make a List

If you take nothing from this series, please take my virgo insistence that you must make a list! You absolutely must make a list. Without a list, it’s so easy to get super fixated on one thing for too long and end up accidentally “tidying” your desk for 3 hours and somehow at the end, the desk is clean but the room is worse than you started with. A list helps; it might not fully prevent you from hyperfixating, but it’s a good motivator not to get too stuck on one thing!

2. Tools

• • Your favorite sanitizer: My favorite sanitizer is some sort of bleach solution. Here’s how thee bleach girl, Clorox, suggests you make your own sanitizer with bleach (applicable even if you’re using the bleach from the dollar store, which you absolutely should because it’s $1). Maybe you like the wipes, or some sort of spray pre-mixed in a bottle. Do you! But sanitizing is not a step to skip.
  • Laundry Tools
    • • Spot Remover: a good DIY version is 1 part Dawn dish soap (not to be a shill to corporations, but whatever the girlies in the labs at Dawn are doing is different than other dish soap. If I specify Dawn, know the only other suitable alternative would be an equal amount of Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds, and not another dish soap) with 2 parts 3% hydrogen peroxide. If you’re not into making one on your own, the Instagram mommies love Miss Mouth’s Messy Eater Stain Treater.
      • Laundry Detergent: I’m a sucker for Tide Simply. It’s got the power of Tide, which I’ve always found dependable, but it’s like $6 cheaper than the orange bottle Tide. I’m also beginning to use Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds for laundry and it’s working surprisingly well for something I can use so little of! Plus all my clothes smell like the mountains.
      • Dryer sheets/dryer balls: I’m not here to tell you not to use scented dryer sheets because it’s your life! And if that brings you joy, then do it! But maybe try wool dryer balls. They fluff your clothes in the same way you hope dryer sheets will, you can put essential oils in them, and you buy them once and can use them forever(ish)!
  • Microfiber towels: I buy them from the dollar store, use them until I absolutely cannot To keep them longer, wash cold on the gentle cycle with vinegar in the wash, and don’t put them in the dryer. They’re necessary for dusting.
  • A bunch of rags/paper towels/recycled newspaper/recycled paper bags: For wiping down surfaces/windows. Use what you’ve got.
  • New Lightbulbs: if any of your bulbs aren’t LED, now might be the time to think about replacing them!
  • New Batteries: Make sure any remotes, toys, toys, and gadgets are powered up.
  • Timer: to prevent hyperfixating.
  • Glass cleaner: Windex is that girl, and the stuff from the dollar store works just as well. If you want to make it at home, just use 1 cup of rubbing alcohol, 1 cup of water, and 1 tablespoon of vinegar in a bottle.
  • Pipe cleaner situation: for getting into tiny corners. This is a deep clean, remember!
  • Favorite room scent if that’s your thing (incense/candle/etc): you need to set the mood!
  • Baking Soda: for litter boxes, carpets, mattresses…the list is endless.
  • Favorite all-purpose cleaning solution: I like 1:1 vinegar and water with a squirt (loosely defined) of dish soap. Store-bought will do just fine here!
  • Steamer (if you’ve got it) or just plain old boiling water: Boiling water is the most powerful, and most dangerous, non-toxic cleaning tool you have.
  • Broom: try and get a good broom. Nothing makes you want to not sweep more than a bad broom. I find that my back prefers a push broom; your local Home Depot will definitely have something for you.
  • Vacuum: Even if you have mostly hard floors, I urge you to get a vacuum, even if it’s just handheld. There are some things that just are so much easier with a vacuum. Over the past five years, these are the vacuums I’ve accumulated that I would absolutely suggest (with the caveat that they are expensive; I suggest buying refurbished ones on eBay or someplace similar!). The Dyson Ball Animal 2 Upright Vacuum has a super long cord, works on carpets, hardwood, tile, and linoleum floors. It’s the only thing that gets all the litter out of my rugs. I use it about 2-3 times a month. The iRobot 694, which I affectionately call Brooma Sarah, is used daily in my apartment. It is…not amazing. But! It does an equal or better job than I would of sweeping the entire house. And it does it every single day, and I don’t have to lift a finger.
  • Mop: You need a mop if you have hardwood/vinyl/tile/not-carpeted floors. My favorite mops are microfiber spin mops, where you fill a bucket with water. I also mop pretty infrequently! My roommate loves the microfiber reusable Swiffer style mops, and she mops much more frequently! Get what works for you.
  • Favorite floor cleaner (if you have non-carpeted floors): I like Murphy’s Oil Soap. It’s a workhorse, will clean any floor, and smells amazing. The basic tools for a DIY floor cleaner are very hot water, castile soap or Dawn, and vinegar. You will need to do a rinse mop (using just water) after using these though, or the vinegar can leave your floor kind of streaky.
  • Favorite carpet cleaner (if you have carpets/rugs): For general deoderizing, this is baking soda. But here’s the thing, you and 3-5 local friends should absolutely go in together on a carpet cleaner. For anywhere between $150 and $400, you can get something really powerful that will pull things out of your carpet you never knew could be there. When I had carpets, I used the BISSELL ProHeat 2X Revolution Pet Pro once a month just because it was so fun seeing how gross carpets get in a month. I’d also suggest investing in some sort of oxygen-based stain remover specifically for carpets if you’ve got pets. I like anything from Nature’s Miracle, and my crunchy-dykey vets do as well.

3. How To

Okay! You’ve made your list! You have your tools! Now let’s get to actually doing the do!

Sanitizing and prep work

I start with these tasks because it’s easy to get out the way and makes a big difference in making it feel like you are in the process of cleaning. Set the timer for 25 minutes and go!

• Strip the bed:
  • Remove your duvet/comforter. If you’re using a duvet, remove the duvet from its cover
  • Take all the sheets off your bed
  • If your mattress protector is one that can be laundered and it’s been over 6 months since you’ve last done that, take that off too!
• Set the mood:
  • Put on your cleaning playlist
  • Light some incense or a candle
  • Set an intention and take a deep breath. You’ve got this.
• Start laundry loads
  • Definitely throw your bedding into the laundry (keep 1-2 pillowcases in the room) and start some other loads if you need to. Laundry can be a good excuse to step away from cleaning for 5 minutes when you need a break. Doing another task can help be a reset.
• Sprinkle baking soda on carpets/rugs so it can do its job while you do yours.
• Open windows and let in some good, fresh air.
• Sanitize door handles/windowsills
  • If using wipes, just wipe everything down until any visible dirt is gone. Let air dry.
  • If using a spray/solution:
    • Clean off any visible stains
    • Spray down areas
    • Wait 7-10 minutes
    • Wipe with damp cloth
    • Dry
• Change any dead lightbulbs

Tidying and Organizing

This is probably what you’re doing each week. I don’t know why, but I tend to start at the space farthest from my door and slowly move towards the door. Your mileage may vary.

• 15 minute pickup:
  • Set a timer for 15 minutes and pick up everything that you know is somewhere it doesn’t belong and put it on the now-empty bed.
  • Look on top of shelves/dressers, under the bed, in drawers, in your closets.
  • Now is not for putting things back! Only discovering what’s in the wrong place and putting in a new wrong place, your bed.
• 15 minutes of putting things back
  • Set a timer for 15 minutes and begin to go through your pile on your bed. Put things back in their right place, even if you know you’ll need to clean later.
  • I use this time especially to move things (plates, cups, books) that don’t belong in my room back to their spaces in the home
  • Start some sort of trash bag during this time and keep it near your door
• Re-evaluate bookshelves/storage
  • Set a timer for 30 minutes
  • Look at your bookshelves
    • Books to give away?
    • Tidy bookshelves in disorder/wipe down dusty books
    • Dust behind books
  • Look at your storage
    • Anything that should be out of storage, take out
    • Anything that should be put back into storage, put back
• Clean desk
  • Set a timer for 5 minutes: make a list of the things you need on your desk
    • On my desk:
      • Reference books
      • Language textbooks
      • Pen and pencil cup
      • Lamp
      • Flowers
      • Candle
      • Picture of Buffy
      • Planners
      • Post-its
      • Laptop
      • Catch-all space
  • Set a timer for 15 minutes
    • Remove everything from your desk
    • Clean your desk using a wood cleaner or all-purpose cleaner
    • Look at your list: only replace those things on your desk
• Set a timer for 10-20 minutes
  • Find a new space for anything extra that you used to keep on a desk

Dusting/Windows

Dusting and cleaning your windows will make your space feel fresher and brighter. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a noticeable change whenever I do these two chores. Give yourself 45 minutes to an hour for this, no more.

• Dust the fan
  • Use those 1-2 pillowcases you didn’t immediately throw in the laundry to dust your ceiling fan, which I’m sorry to say, I know, is gross. Mine is too, it’s okay. Here’s a nice white lady explaining how you can dust your ceiling fan.
• Clean out AC/ducts
  • Use whatever pipe cleaning situation you found to grab any visible dust
  • If you have an air filter, be sure to change that regularly
  • Wipe down the surface of the ducts or AC with a damp cloth and all-purpose cleaning solution
• Clean window screens: did you know your window screens are also air filters? They grab lots of larger particles and can get super dusty, and you should clean them!
  • Using a damp towel/rag (I would not suggest anything paper for this), vigorously rub against the window screen
  • You should see dirt/dust pilling up and falling off the screen
  • Vacuum up the gross little dusty bits
• Clean windows: It’s more involved than you think!
  • You should have already sanitized the windowsill!
  • Boil some water, or get your steamer going
  • Spray down the windows with window cleaner
  • Immediately, either squeegee the window in a downward motion, OR, use an old newspaper or microfiber towel to buff the window in circles, starting from the top.
  • Wipe up any wet, dirty water that may have accumulated at the bottom of the window.
  • Vacuum up any dried dirty/debris that’s made its way into the bottom of the window
  • **CHECK FOR NEIGHBORS BELOW BEFORE DOING THIS STEP** Using the narrow tip attachment, steam the bottom of the window to force out any debris. If you’re using water, gently and slowly pour boiling water into the corners of the window to try and flush out debris.
    • Use a pipe cleaner situation/toothbrush to really scrub any tough corners.
  • When the surface is cool enough, wipe it down with a microfiber towel until dry.
• Dust lights/tops of things: There are two schools of thought about dusting: microfiber towel or feather duster-style.
  • Microfiber towel
    • Start high, move low–dust your tall lamp before the low altar near your window.
    • Remove items from their surfaces and wipe them down, especially the bottoms.
    • Using either something like Pledge wood spray or a light misting of warm water, moisten the surfaces you wish to dust.
    • Using a figure-eight pattern, dust diagonally from the back left to the front right corner
    • Repeat with a dry microfiber towel
    • Replace items
• Feather duster-style
  • Start high, move low–dust your tall lamp before the low altar near your window.
  • Remove items from their surfaces and wipe them down, especially the bottoms.
  • Using either something like Pledge wood spray or a light misting of warm water, moisten the surfaces you wish to dust.
  • Using gentle back and forth patterns, quickly move across the surfaces from the back to the front
  • Replace items
• Mirrors: Clean them like you clean your windows!
  • Take a selfie because you look cute!

Displays

Your displays are so personal and special that I don’t want to tell you how to maintain them; your needs are not my needs!

The top of our mother’s dressers were alters, too.

— her name is cyn ☀️ (@cynfinite) January 14, 2021

• Nightstand
  • As long as you wipe down the surface of the nightstand, adorn it however you want. I know some people who believe a nightstand should have the book you’re reading, a lamp, a clock, and a special picture on it. And then there are the beautiful queers who submit to one of my favorite Instagram accounts, Queer Nightstands.
  • My one nightstand rule: if you can, put your phone somewhere else. Even if you’ve got to use it for your alarm, unless you absolutely need it on your nightstand, I find it to be an unnecessary distraction to my sleep hygiene.
• Vanity
  • I live like a stereotypical professor and there’s stuff everywhere all the time. I do advocate for knowing where things belong.
  • My general rule for my vanities is all the post-shower doodads (serums, toner, q-tips, etc) go in the bathroom, and I keep final touches, like lotion, deoderant, fancy body oils, and perfume on my vanity.
  • Jewelry goes in an organizer; for the longest time, it was just a used tiny jewelry box, which works perfectly.
  • If I wore makeup more often, I’d keep it in a drawer in my vanity, because light can be detrimental for certain formulas.
• Altars/Displays/Etc
  • Keep your altars clean or your ancestors will haunt you.
  • This is so personal, and so cultural! Reach out to some cultural workers in your community for suggestions about altar cleaning.
• Desk/workspace
  • You should’ve already done most of this, but as you moved things around, it’s possible you may want to rearrange things. Keep your list that you made about what you want on your desk in mind as you revamp it! Do NOT use your desk as a catchall, you’ve got to work there!

Closets/Clothes

We’ve all got clothes, and they last longer when we maintain their upkeep. It’s important for you and your clothes that you keep them clean and store them well.

• Fold clothes:
  • How to fold everything
• Revamp the closet
  • Pick things up that have fallen on the floor–has anything fallen that should be hanging?
  • Vacuum or sweep your floors
  • Give your clothes a little fluff, make sure they’re on the hanger correctly
• Upcycle/recycle/donate stuff you don’t want
  • Old t-shirts/cotton bedding make great fabric rounds for toner/serums
  • Do not try to donate your old underwear or socks. No one wants them and you’re making extra work for someone.
• Clothes into/out of storage?
  • Has a season changed? Make sure what’s in your closet reflects what you need. If you have 10 sweaters out of strange and it’s pushing 75º each day, rethink how you’re using your space!
• Fabric spray? Launder? Steam?
  • Give clothes that don’t need to be washed some love, either with fabric spray or a steamer. It’ll help prevent wrinkles!
  • If anything smells rank, throw it into the laundry.

Floors, etc

Floors are not clean, there’s a reason we don’t tend to eat off them! But they can be clean enough. You do your floors last because all the dirt/dust you’re kicking up will eventually land here, so why not tackle it last?

• Litter boxes/pet stuff
  • Throw away all used litter.
  • Clean out your litter box with soap and hot water.
  • Sanitize your litter box using your favorite method.
  • Take all your pets’ food bowls into the kitchen and wash them.
  • Add any soft toys and pet bedding to the laundry.
  • Sanitize any hard toys, and be sure to rinse them well before returning them to your pets.
• Baseboards: you’ve been shaking up a lot of dust, and your baseboards can use some love. Don’t forget about them.
  • Using soap and hot water with a damp rag, wipe in circles all around your baseboard.
  • Keep a dry towel handy to prevent streaking/dripping onto the floors and dry immediately after cleaning a section of baseboards.
  • Use your pipe cleaners for tight corners.
  • Be gentle! Paint is not permanent, and if you scrub too hard, you can begin to wash away the paint.
• Sweep and/or vacuum
  • How to sweep or vacuum:
    • If you’ve got hardwood or vinyl flooring, follow the grain! Regardless of the type of flooring, imagine your room is a sheet of ruled paper and sweep or vacuum one line at a time; don’t skip any lines.
    • Once you’ve swept all the dust/debris to one slide of your room, sweep it into a dustpan or vacuum it up!
    • Do a second run-through if you’re not sure you got out all the baking soda you used to deodorize your rugs!
  • How to mop and/or carpet wash:
    • Fill your mop bucket/spray canister with hot water and your cleaning solution
    • If you’ve got a mop you wring out, let it sit in the water for a few minutes before beginning.
    • The process of mopping should be done in a similar style to sweeping/vacuuming, imagining your floor ass a sheet of ruled paper.
    • Do not use an overly wet mop! It might ruin your floors, but even if it doesn’t, it will not make them cleaner, it will just make more work for you.
    • For stuck-on crust to your floor (oh hello cat barf under my bed I just found!), use a cleaning brush and gently scrub at the spill until it comes up. Wipe it down with a towel after to prevent water damage to the floors.
    • Let everything dry. Let your mop dry before returning it to the closet. Let the bucket dry. Let your floors dry before walking on them! AKA, take a break!

Bed

Once you’re making your bed, you’ve made it. You’re so close to being done. Set a timer for 20 minutes and go. There are many styles to making a bed! Maybe you like a precisely made bed, maybe you like it to feel airy and loose, maybe you like turndown service! Do what feels good.

• Make the bed
  • (Get someone to help you) Flip your mattress (or do it by yourself if you’re me and like suffering).
  • Put on a mattress protector. I think even the cheapest mattress protector is vital to your mattress’ longevity.
  • Add your fitted sheet
  • Add a top sheet
    • How to do hospital corners
      • Evenly lay your flat sheet over your fitted sheet
      • Start at one corner at the foot of the bed and slightly lift the side of the mattress and tuck hanging fabric along the foot of the bed.
      • Hold the excess fabric, lift it up and place it on top of the mattress, making the edge of your sheet form a 45-degree angle with the corner of your mattress.
      • Hold the fabric forming a 45-degree angle and tuck in hanging fabric along the side of the mattress.
      • Shift the edge of the sheet to the corner of the mattress and tuck it in.
      • Repeat on the other side of the bed
  • Put your duvet insert into your duvet and drape it gracefully atop the bed: Pro-tip, do it like this video suggests.
  • Add your pillows, fluff them
  • Lay down

4. Relish in the fruits of your labor!

Light a candle, take a nap, invite over someone you might want to share the bed with! You did it. You deep cleaned your room, and it wasn’t so hard, was it? Yes, it took effort, but look at all the fun skills you’ve gained, and doesn’t it feel good to have a fresh and clean bedroom? I’m so proud of you!

Also, if you’d like to download the list and tools as a PDF, you can do so here.

Notes for a Queer Homemaker is a regular column that publishes on the fourth Friday of every month!

Notes for a Queer Homemaker: States of Being, Not Moral Designations

If you know me personally, even a little bit, it’s no surprise that my “guilty pleasure” is following stay-at-home moms and homemakers and other women who are forging new relationships with things considered “traditionally feminine.” I’m Jewish, and so lots of those women are Jewish, many of whom see following the Jewish laws around family purity, or niddah, as important to the way they structure their lives. The laws of niddah center around behavior determined by whether one is in a state of ritual purity or impurity. TL;DR, misogyny has transformed these states of being that determine how one acts into moral designations that have made folks who have periods (and historically, specifically women who have periods), feel as if they are lesser because they bleed.

What the Instagram ladies are really into debunking right now (and what I’m going to connect to housekeeping and domesticity, I promise), is this idea that a state of being is or should be a moral designation. This was a powerful moment of unraveling for me as someone who often finds that I determine my worth by how clean and tidy my home is, as if a mess is an indication that I am somehow a bad person. What my hobbyist’s interest in the laws of niddah has opened up for me is the danger in morally assigning value to a physical state.

It is so easy for me, especially as a cat owner and roommate (after living alone for five years), to feel like my mess is an indication that I’m a shitty person who doesn’t care about my housemate having a positive living experience. When someone tells me that they can smell my cat’s litter the first thing my brain goes to is thinking that I’m a terrible person. This not only isn’t true, it often stops me from being able to find a solution; instead, feeling overwhelmed by shame.

And, of course, we know the reason behind this is misogyny! Alongside misogyny comes the binarisation of work, and when you’re not good at domestic life and you’re a woman (or someone who was raised to see themselves that way, or you have a complicated relationship with being a not-a-woman-but-of-women’s-experience), then you become a bad woman, a bad person. The state of our work, of the things we do, has become attached to our worth in a way that I don’t think it has for cis men. Let’s make housekeeping one of the places we begin to intentionally unstitch these things from one another.

As we queer homemakers deconstruct our relationship with domesticity, part of it is a reminder that it is not a way to morally designate ourselves as better than anyone we know, it’s a way to make our homes our own. It’s worldmaking. It’s creating little utopias for us to practice in while we continue the work of building a better world. So we shouldn’t see the state of our homes — whether they’re pristine or filthy — as indications of who we are as people. Some of the best people I know have roaches (I’m not eating over their house but that doesn’t make them bad people).

I wish this had more practical tips in it, more ways for you to clean hard things that sometimes lead to you feeling like a shitty person, but that’s the thing. You’re not shitty. Even if your roommate passively-aggressively vacuums at 9:43 pm in front of your door. Mess happens. Disorder happens. And it requires us to behave differently — not having folks over if/when you just need to wallow in piles of dirty clothes — but it doesn’t mean we are bad people.

And the thing about it is that we never stay in one state of being forever — just think about the dishes. As soon as they’re all clean, you use one, and then suddenly your sink is full. I want you to be the best housekeeper you can be. And if and when you can’t, I want you to know more than anything, that you’re still a good person.

Notes for a Queer Homemaker is a regular column that publishes on the fourth Friday of every month!

Notes for a Queer Homemaker: When Company Comes Over

It’s that time of the year! Or at least, historically, now is the time of the year when we put on our silly little velvet dresses and add glitter to our eyeshadow and find sparkly tights that make our legs look great and travel from house to house for some form of holiday frivolity. Instead of focusing on the fact that we’re going on season three of a pan dulce, why not go back in time with me.

Picture it: 2019, all your friends and a new hot friend of a friend you want to flirt with are coming over in three days to toast for the new year. And you couldn’t help but wonder, is your house clean enough for guests? What steps do you need to take your home from a place that’s clean enough for you to live in to a place that uses cleanliness (amongst other things) as a sign of welcome and hospitality towards your loved ones?

1. Smells matter

Have you ever walked into someone else’s home and it’s not dirty, per say, but it just… doesn’t smell like your home? Our noses are so, so sensitive, and whether or not it’s conscious, they affect our ability to be comfortable. Think about the comforting smells of your favorite pie cooking in the oven. Now think about the smell of New York City on a hot August afternoon. I imagine that one of these smells (pie) makes you feel more cozy and comfortable than the other (garbage city).

I’m not saying your house smells like rotting garbage in the summer to someone else! But I am saying, what may feel like a neutral smell to you is not neutral to someone else. When preparing for guests, think about how you can neutralize the smells in your home, or even make them more pleasant. A quick and easy thing that everyone can do is turn on all the fans, open some windows, and air out the home for 30 minutes before guests begin to arrive. If you’re like me, and have pets who live with you, think about getting an air purifier. I have noticed that things smell so much less stale when I run it for even 20 minutes a day (pro-tip, run it after scooping litter if that’s a thing you do).

While keeping in mind that some guests might be scent sensitive (always check in), another thing you can do is light some candles or set up an essential oil diffuser. I like to stay away from things like chemical air fresheners before guests come because it can be a bit overpowering, but in a pinch, 15 minutes before, they can be really useful as well.

Are you cooking dinner? Set up your schedule so that something really delicious is in the oven or simmering on the stove when folks come over. Nothing feels heimish (homey) quite like the smell of soup boiling and bread baking.

2. Lived in, not a museum

I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it: a museum house is not a fun place to visit! Do you ever go over to a friend’s place and it’s so clean that you just like, sit on the edge of the couch and are too afraid to ask for water and sit on the toilet on your phone for just a few seconds too long because you just need a moment to let loose?? Yeah, don’t be that friend’s house!

Leave a half-finished puzzle on the table — your guests can work on it while you put the finishing touches on dinner. The few toys your kids or your cats left on the floor are charming, do not take them away. Now, if the entire living room is covered in toys, please try to wrangle them somewhere before any company arrives, but signs of life in your home remind people that this is a home! It should feel home-like.

3. Okay but do clean your floors

I know I just said it’s okay to have things on the floor, and yes, it is. But if you’re like me, and you ask people to take off their shoes before walking through your home (because the streets of New York are disgusting and my cats eat off the floor of my home), then please at least sweep before folks come over. I’d love it if you could mop, I really would, but I also recognize that may not be an easy task.

My general rule is that if the floor is not clean enough that someone will either leave with noticeably dirtier socks/feet then the floor is not clean enough for guests. And I should clarify, I’m talking like a dinner party — so five or more people. If my floors aren’t pristine and a friend is coming over, honestly, I’d just lend them a pair of my clean socks. Being hospitable doesn’t have to mean pulling a 90s suburban mom.

4. Offer an (easy) task for early arrivals and folks who stay late

I hosted some friends for Shabbat in early September, and after talking around the dinner table for literally three hours, someone got up and started washing the dinner dishes. And then someone else was like “okay where’s your tupperware,” and then before I knew it, all my friends had cleaned my kitchen and we’d talked for 45 more minutes. They didn’t want to leave! And I needed to clean the kitchen before bed. I could’ve said “no, no, I got it,” but then they would’ve left before they were ready to leave, and I would’ve prepped to host, hosted, and cleaned up after.

A lot of what I was taught about hosting and being a good homemaker/housekeeper by observation was “do it all by yourself.” There was this idea that needing help around the house meant that the host wasn’t good at hosting, that they had too much on their plate. What if instead we changed the way we thought about hosting as a way to invite someone into your life at home.

What if instead of trying to have it all, you purposefully left the table unset and let someone else do it when they arrived? When a guest asks you how they can help, have a few options for them! There is no gold medal for doing it all on your own, and life together is so much more fun anyway.

5. When all else fails, close the door

Sometimes, you just need to close the door to a room and say that it is off limits for guests. When I lived in a townhouse, that was my entire second floor. The first floor was pristine. Shiny floors, clean walls, smelled amazing. The second floor was where I threw literally everything that stood in the way of presenting a clean and welcoming home.

Throwing things behind a closed door is not a permanent solution to untidy living, but it can be a solution to cleaning up before guests arrive. And here’s the reason: everyone doesn’t need to know your whole life! Inviting someone into your life doesn’t have to mean inviting them into your entire life. If you’ve just got too much clutter to truly clean up but you really want people to come over and watch When Harry Met Sally on New Year’s Eve, this is permission to shove a bunch of stuff in your room/under your bed and host.

Opacity in life is healthy. Keep a little mystique. I know I love to give a little tour when my friends come over, but babe, nothing ruins the vibe like an absolutely filthy room. So just close the door, point to it and say “that’s my room” and keep it moving.

Hopefully these tips make hosting feel more accessible to more people (although, please heed the guidelines of your local health authorities right now about hosting because Miss Omicron is truly everywhere). I wonder what are your go-to tips for hosting? Do you enjoy inviting people into your home life? If not, what stands in the way of that? What did I miss???

Notes for a Queer Homemaker is a new column that will publish on the fourth Friday of every month!

Notes for a Queer Homemaker: Tips From Someone Who Loves You

I got a good enough education in housekeeping. I grew up with a mom who valued tidiness, I had chores like washing dishes and washing clothes and cleaning my brother and my bathroom every other week. I also am not and was not afraid of asking “hey how the hell do you do that?” about things I didn’t understand from well loved and trusted homemakers.

I have become the person people turn to when they wonder how to clean their cast iron or the best way to revive their wooden spoons. I love that. I love that I get to be a trusted person to help people achieve domestic bliss. And the more I’ve become the go-to friend for housekeeping tips, the more I’ve realized that a lot of the things I consider the basics of housekeeping were never taught to some folks! Not everyone had a loved one teach them (usually over and over again) how to do a housekeeping task.

Many of us are getting into the season of hosting and cleaning that comes with the holidays, and I hope that this makes preparing for company feel a little easier and brings a little order to what can sometimes feel like an unhinged time of year.

1. “I don’t care if you use my stuff, just put it back where you found it.” – Persephone Hall (aka Mom)

This is the key to my mom’s skill as a homemaker. She said this to my brother and I more times than I can count (when she was really angry she’d say “shit” instead of “stuff” and we’d all try really hard not to laugh). Whenever she takes something from the place where it lives, she puts it back. Almost immediately. The lesson here is: everything has a place, and should remain in its place. The majority of mess in my apartment is because I take something out and never put it back. If you’re always putting things back where they belong, you’re never gonna have to take hours out of your day to clean things up because you never let the place get messy.

2. Clean bed, clean head.

I’m sure you’ve heard some form of this; it’s a touch cliche, but it’s an important mantra in my life. When my bed is full of books and vape pens and my phone and random socks I’ve taken off in my sleep and the sheets are akimbo, I don’t sleep well. When I don’t sleep well, I’m more likely to become unorganized. When I’m unorganized, I’m messier. The choice to not keep my bed made and uncluttered can result in my entire apartment falling into disarray. It takes me around 4 minutes each morning, and there is a noticeable difference in my day when I do it.

3. “Throw a little bleach in that dish water!” – Margaret Monts (Granny)

Listen, do this at your own risk. I am not saying this is safe!!! But! If you don’t have kids or pets and aren’t forgetful and it won’t damage your dishes and you happen to have the luxury of a split sink, maybe try it. At the top of each morning, my grandmother would put away all the dishes she dried last night, fill one sink with super hot water, a squirt of dish soap, and a cap full of bleach, and would drop rinsed dishes into that water throughout the day. At the end of the day, she’d drain the water, refill the sink with fresh hot water and soap, and wash the dishes (you should wear gloves — she probably did not). Her process helped prevent the water from getting murky and sanitized the dishes. On days when I’m throwing a dinner party, it’s a nice way to keep a huge stack of dirty dishes piled up, and makes it easy to do a quick load when I’ve got a free moment.

Also, clean your sink (and honestly, as much of your kitchen as you can bear) at the end of the night. Morning you will be deeply grateful.

4. The best way to fold a towel is in thirds.

I do not make the rules I just follow. Fold your towel like a brochure, and then fold it over itself into thirds again. This keeps them nicely compact and your towels look nice displayed in a drawer or linen closet.

5. Stop soaking your dishes for 4 hours.

Hi, I love you, and you’re soaking your dishes for too long. If you’ve got a stuck on food situation, here’s what you do: add VERY HOT WATER to cover the dish, a squirt of dish soap, and let it sit while you wash all your other dishes — 10-15 minutes max! And then, use some elbow grease and clean that dish. Do not let that thing soak all afternoon, you will not be more excited to wash that pan at 8pm than you were at 4pm, I promise.

6. Vacuum in lanes (also you should cut your hair similarly).

This tip comes from my Grandpa, a barber of 60 years, who will tell you with all seriousness that the way to vacuum and cut grass is exactly like how you cut hair. Don’t go all over the floor with no plan, use clear lanes. You don’t want to miss anything, and you’ll get those super satisfying vacuum lines when you’re done. It’s a good tip! I am not a barber though, so don’t trust me telling you how to cut your hair.

7. Your home is not a museum.

A home should be beautiful, whatever that means to you. Your home should generally be tidy and well organized and clean enough. But your home should not be a museum. It’s easy to go from someone who doesn’t enjoy cleaning to someone who just shoves everything away and leaves only bare spaces. But that’s not a lived-in home! That’s not comfortable or cozy. Keep your book on the coffee table. Let the cats soft toys be on the floor. Making a mess shouldn’t be the end of the world, it’s okay if there are imperfections. Those often end up becoming the charming spots your guests remember fondly.

8. Wash your sheets more.

I do not want this to turn into a place of judgement. This is a safe domestic space. But the thing is, we do not, as a society, wash our sheets enough. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but I do want to encourage you to maybe wash your sheets like… 1.5 times more often than you do. And wash your pillowcases each week. We do a lot of skin shedding and farting and drooling and other body stuff on our sheets. To help us stay healthier and keep our spaces feeling and smelling fresh, let’s wash our sheets a little more frequently.

9. Sweep with the grain of the wood.

Plus, use boiling water when mopping (please be careful), old t-shirts are great for replacing dry mopping, and iRobots will get themselves caught in floor cords if given the opportunity.

10. Your clothes will last longer if you separate them by colors; also don’t use the dryer if you really don’t need to!

I split my laundry into six different groups. Whites, lights, brights, darks, kitchen linens, bed linens. The difference between lights and brights is something I do wholly because my mom did it. Lights are like, khakis, lighter greys, pastels. Brights are really just… any non-muted color. If I’m feeling really fancy, I will also split out all my denim into their own load. And I don’t really put anything into the dryer except kitchen linens and towels. Everything else gets hung to dry. It saves electricity and it also makes your house smell like your fabric softener! Free air freshener!

11. Buy yourself flowers. Keep fresh flowers in as many rooms as possible.

Because you deserve luxury.

What other tips and tricks have people you loved taught you? What are the housecleaning / housekeeping / homemaking / domesticity 101 tips that you also think everyone should know?

Notes for a Queer Homemaker is a new column that will publish on the fourth Friday of every month!

Notes for a Queer Homemaker: Spells and Potions

If homemaking is world building, the tools you use to complete your little domestic tasks become the magic that makes world building happen — like spells and potions. How you use them depends on what you want to get done, but you need to have a well stocked potion cabinet in order to build the world you want.

Start With the Basics: Dish Soap and Hot Water

The truth of the matter is that all you need to clean your home well is dish soap, very very hot water, and some sort of cleaning rag. That’s it! Dish soap and hot water can are the tools to clean the majority of surfaces within your home. And maybe that’s enough for you! Maybe you didn’t know you could clean your bathtub with just soap and hot water and now you’re done learning. You can absolutely stop reading here! Go clean that tub! But with a few other key tools that’ll cost you less than $10 total, you can begin to build a DIY cleaning arsenal that will offer you everything you need to feel like an adept homemaker.

A Quick Note on Natural vs. Chemical and Cleaning Solution Safety

A quick note on some ever present queer questions whenever I bring up my love of cleaning solutions: Are they chemical free? Are they safe? Will my pets die if I clean with them? No, these tools aren’t chemical free, because I’m pretty sure everything has chemicals in it (chemists, back me up). They are as safe as any cleaning solution can be, and if you handle the materials with care, I can almost guarantee your pets’ safety.

While I’m all about natural cleaners — primarily because they’re cheaper and I love a bargain — “natural” doesn’t mean “safe,” and that’s important to highlight. Bleaching absolutely can happen naturally, but even the most natural form of bleach isn’t “safe,” but it absolutely can be used safely, and if stored correctly is not inherently dangerous to have around. I always suggest cleaning in a well insulated environment, not only because of the fumes that any chemicals you might use may produce, but because your home is probably musty as hell! When was the last time you purposefully facilitated a cross-breeze, hmm? As a matter of fact, go love yourself a little and crack open a few windows before you finish reading.

Let’s Talk About Vinegar

If you want to advance a little further from soap and water, vinegar is the first place to start. White vinegar to be exact, but I have absolutely used ACV in a pinch. The best vinegar/cleaning solution recipe I have found is: 1:1 vinegar to water, a squirt of dish soap, and your favorite essential oil. Vinegar is great for every day stuff — wiping down the counters between meals, cleaning up a quick spill. It is also very good for buildup. Soap is a great tool, but soap can, if you aren’t great about rinsing, create a film sometimes. Maybe your floors look a little cloudy after you mopped; throw some vinegar in the mopping water next time. Towels gunked up with hair supplies and lotion and laundry detergent? Add some vinegar to the wash and watch them come out like new.

Vinegar does NOT sanitize, so if you’re immunocompromised and/or need to think about sanitation, vinegar is not that girl! But she will help to get rid of that weird gross smell in your sink and get rid of the spaghetti sauce stains on the wall behind your stove. My favorite use of vinegar is when washing dishes. I like to have two sinks full of water: one with scaldingly hot water and soap, the other with cold water and about ¼ cup of vinegar for the rinse. They dry quicker, my glasses aren’t streaky, and you can really feel when the soap gets off.

Here Comes Rubbing Alcohol

You’ve added vinegar to your under-the-sink collection of cleaning supplies and you’re loving it, but you’re also a little concerned about germs! Sometimes something really absolutely nasty comes into your house, and you want to make sure you’re killing any gross things that might harm you. Here comes rubbing alcohol!! Specifically, Isopropyl Alcohol 91%. The antiseptic can be used as an antibacterial cleansing agent for your cuts and scrapes, and it can also be used on high touch areas like doorknobs and window ledges.

Personally, I choose not to use alcohol where I cook, I use it mostly in the bathroom on the faucet and handles and for a once a week (or more if I’m sick) wipe down of high touch areas. Have you ever cleaned around your doorknob? It’s absolutely disgusting there, pal. Just… absolutely disgusting. Go right now and mix a 1:1 solution of alcohol and water and wipe off your doorknobs. You deserve it.

Alcohol also has two other amazing uses around the house. Nothing cleans windows quite like rubbing alcohol and a recycled newspaper. Add a little dish soap to the 1:1 solution you just made, and spray and wipe down from the top to the bottom of the window. Windows are also unfortunately another thing that get surprisingly dirty, just like the doorknobs, so maybe this weekend do TWO nice things for yourself and take care of them both. Other than windows, as all good glass using stoners know, alcohol is the go to for cleaning out a bong. Rubbing alcohol, kosher salt, time, and maybe pipe cleaners if you’ve got some really stuck on resin. But remember how I said I don’t use alcohol where I cook? The same thing applies for the pieces I smoke out of. If I clean a piece with alcohol, I rinse it out with boiling water and then let it completely dry. Yes, completely, you do not want to risk inhaling rubbing alcohol fumes. Maybe spend the time it’s drying learning how to roll joints?

My Favorite Cleaning Supply: Bleach

The big boss of cleaning supplies is bleach. Is bleach safe? No! Is bleach my favorite cleaning supply? Yes! And none of my cats have been harmed because of my use of it. What can’t you use bleach for! It unclogs pipes, it whitens whites (to an extent), it sanitizes. Bleach is what I use in my toilets and bathrooms, it’s what I use to scrub out the cats’ litter box every 6 weeks, and every single kitchen linen I own has been bleached at least once because I’m constantly just like “eh, can’t hurt!”

You do need to be safe when cleaning with bleach though — just as you need to be safe cleaning with anything! Clearly label anything you have bleach in. Absolutely open the windows and/or turn on some fans when you’re using it. Find something to busy your pets with something more fun than being around you while you clean. Always, always, rinse off a surface you’ve bleached with clean, hot water, especially if you’ll cook on it. Never mix bleach with ammonia or any other cleaner. Always wear gloves.

Put Intention Into Your Cleaning and Build a New World

So you know you want to build a new world, you have all these potions and spells under your sink, and now what? There’s this idea in Jewish rituals of hiddur mitzvah, that we purposefully choose beautiful items to conduct our rituals with in order to elevate them to higher statuses. Sure, you can clean your home with the recycled spray bottle from some old Lysol, or you can make the choice to buy matching, beautiful glass spray bottles. You can use the essential oils you keep on your altar, or the rind of a citrus fruit you ate on a perfect date and add it to your solutions before your weekly day of rest. You can recycle your favorite tattered shirt and use it as a cleaning rag.

Putting intention into your cleaning gives it purpose. You aren’t just cleaning your space, you’re making it more liveable, you’re making a world where you feel like you can breathe deeply and be your whole self. Put some love into it.

Notes for a Queer Homemaker is a new column that will publish on the fourth Friday of every month!

Notes for a Queer Homemaker: Polishing Silver and Panoptical Perches

Hello and happy new year (if you’re Jewish)! If you aren’t Jewish, just think of it as the “back to school” new year. That works too. This year is a shmita year! A year of release. And this year, we’re releasing things that have held us back, things like heteronormative ideas about homemaking and domesticity. And what do we get instead? Peace in our homes, a feeling of calm and comfort that comes when you sit on the couch knowing the sink is clean. We get to feel like we are responsible for making our homes places of refuge for ourselves and our communities.

I think caring deeply about domestic life is a queer endeavor. Domesticity is world-making! It is the act of deciding what and how you want your home, as its own world, to feel and creating rituals, moments, pauses, spaces where you tend to that world you’re trying to create. I do not think domesticity is working a full-time job and scrubbing your hands raw, washing the dishes, or polishing silver (although polishing silver is really fun and we should talk about it). I don’t think domesticity is archaic or tied to gender.

We all have a role in creating the world we want to live in, and I am a proponent of practice. What better way to use our homes than as a lab where we practice creating the spaces that make us feel our best? And yes, some of our role in this work is cleaning something gross, or learning how to keep things tidy, but don’t think of this as work meant to keep you busy or keep you relegated to the private sphere. Learning how to keep your space clean and tidy is an important skill, and one that I believe we can each do. I want to offer you domestic skills in a way that makes you feel empowered to complete them, not guilty for ignoring them.

So where do we start? With a little introduction to how you might want to approach your domestic life and a bonus on housemate etiquette.

There’s a deeply dangerous criminological theory called the broken windows theory which suggests that policing smaller crimes prevents larger ones from being committed and creates an atmosphere of order. Now I’m not one to suggest that you police yourself or your housemates. Please, do not; that is not good housemate etiquette. But I am suggesting, just a bit, that you have a panoptical view about any spaces in your home you feel responsible to clean. Take a step back and look at your home as if you’re directly above it, able to see it all; begin to think about what spaces might need your attention.

What areas tend to get the dirtiest the quickest? For me, those are the couch/coffee table area where I work, the kitchen which I use constantly, and the corners of my rooms. Identifying what areas initiate mess and unease in your home will help you know where to look to begin a cleaning project.

How do those areas get dirty? Are they dirty, messy, or just untidy? The couch/coffee table gets messy; a few cups are often left over, papers that could be in the trash get left about. The kitchen gets dirty; water splashes on the floor, the stove gets used, dishes have to be washed, trash gets full, etc. etc. etc. The corners of my room are just untidy. I use these spots to put things down instead of putting them away. I find differentiating between dirty (a space that needs to be cleaned or sanitized), messy (untidy spaces with a few things that belong in the trash/laundry/sink (think, your desk after a four-cup day of coffee)), and untidy (a space with things outside of their rightful places) helpful. Not every space is dirty. Maybe you just need to take your shirts off of the shirt chair and put them in drawers. Maybe you just need to close your drawers!

Next, think about when you can pay attention to these spots? I like to clean up the couch area at the start of the day, the kitchen at the very end of the day, and pick up my room around lunch, or right when I get home if I’m working from the office. Build tidying up around the day you already have. I clean up the living room in the morning because I probably left a bunch of stuff there the night before that I now need for work, and now, I have a clean room for the start of the day! If you putz around every morning for an hour before getting ready for your day maybe that becomes your tidying time. Maybe you only bring three things to their right spaces, but you start to build the habit.

Touching on housemate etiquette: the best way to ensure there aren’t passive aggressive arguments about cleanliness is to do your part to keep the home clean. Really do your part. If you see something disrupting the energy of a space you are cooperatively making a home in, fix it. Sure, it would’ve taken your housemate 30 seconds to wash their cup, but it’ll take you 30 seconds to wash it when you wash your cup! And now there are more clean cups for everyone to use and a cleaner kitchen! Look at the world you are building!

I love the domestic arts in all their forms. I care deeply about how to fold hospital corners and which spoons to use when setting the table for a semi-formal dinner party. But you do not have to care about these things in order to have a more domestic life. You’ve got to just pay attention. What nags you about your living situation and what can you do to make it better? Usually the answer has nothing to do with spending money or getting something new, it’s just about directing energy toward your space in an intentional way. And who knows, one day you too might have a google drive folder dedicated to cleaning schedules! Even if you never do, think of the new world you’ll begin to create within the walls of your home.

Next month, we’ll talk about cleaning supplies. What do you already have, what do you need, what can you make, how to keep your pets safe. What other queer domestic goodness do you wanna know about?

Notes for a Queer Homemaker is a new column that will publish on the fourth Friday of every month!