Cleaning Quotes

“Eric moved the broom experimentally and made an attempt to sweep the glass into the pan while it lay in the middle of the floor. Of course, the pan slid away. Eric scowled.
I'd finally found something Eric did poorly.”
― Charlaine Harris, Dead as a Doornail

“Instead of communicating "I love you, so let me make life easy for you," I decided that my message needed to be something more along these lines: "I love you. I believe in you. I know what you're capable of. So I'm going to make you work.”
― Kay Wills Wyma, Cleaning House: A Mom's Twelve-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement

“Excuse the mess, but we live here.”
― Roseanne Barr

“My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?”
― Erma Bombeck

“normal person's weekly chore list:
1. clean kitchen.
2. clean bathroom.
3. clean entire rest of domicile.
cleaning impaired person's weekly chore list:
1. don't get peanut butter on sheets.”
― Dave Barry

“As I would soon learn myself, cleaning up what a parent leaves behind stirs up dust, both literal and metaphorical. It dredges up memories. You feel like you’re a kid again, poking around in your parents’ closet, only this time there’s no chance of getting in trouble, so you don’t have to be so sure that everything gets put back exactly where it was before you did your poking around. Still, you hope to find something, or maybe you fear finding something, that will completely change your conception of the parent you thought you knew.”
― Roz Chast

“Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters.”
― Robin McKinley, Sunshine

“She was a woman with a broom or a dust-
pan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You saw
her cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or you
saw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in,
cool, at dusk. She rang porcelain cups like a Swiss bell ringer
to their place. She glided through the halls as steadily as a
vacuum machine, seeking, finding, and setting to rights. She
made mirrors of every window, to catch the sun. She strolled
but twice through any garden, trowel in hand, and the flowers
raised their quivering fires upon the warm air in her wake.
She slept quietly and turned no more than three times in a
night, as relaxed as a White glove to which, at dawn, a brisk
hand will return. Waking, she touched people like pictures,
to set their frames straight.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, “Respect me; I’m a respectable grown-up!" and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death.”
― Wendy Wasserstein

“Her mind is a mess, and she has no intention of cleaning today.”
― Alfa H, Abandoned Breaths

“The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, "I want to love, I want to live...”
― David Sedaris, Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays

“The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it - the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“...I have to go home and get a few things done. If I don’t get out the Pledge soon, the dust bunnies are going to be leaving tracks on my furniture...”
― Carla Foft, Addressing Spirits

“My mother
despises what can never truly
be done so she does not care for cooking
or cleaning.”
― Faith Shearin

“Approach the spaces in your home this way:
First, your living room and family room.
Second, your own bedroom and the other bedrooms in the house.
Third, all the clothes closets.
Fourth, your home's bathrooms and the laundry room.
Fifth, your kitchen and dining areas.
Sixth, your home office.
Seventh, your storage areas, including your toy room and craft work spaces.
Eighth, your garage and yard.
...this represents the easier-to-harder progression.”
― Joshua Becker, The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life

“Here's five energy drinks, go clean the universe.”
― Nuclear Circus, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“At nine o'clock on Tuesday night, halfway through an episode of Bordertown, which I'd been paying no attention to, I came abruptly to the conclusion that all my problems would be solved if I tidied my flat. At nine thirty-six on Tuesday, I came abruptly to the conclusion that this had been the worst idea ever. I'd started trying to put things in places, but the places where I wanted to put the things were already full of things that weren't the things that were supposed to go in those places, so I had to take the things out of the places, but there were no places to put the things that came from the places, so then I tried to put things back in the places but they wouldn't go back in the places, which meant now I had more things and nowhere to put the things, and some of the things were clean and some of the things were very much not clean, and the very much not clean things were getting mixed up with the clean things and everything was terrible and I wanted to die.”
― Alexis Hall, Boyfriend Material

“As you embark on this journey, I invite you to remember these words: slow, quiet, gentle. You are already worthy of love and belonging. This is not a journey of worthiness, but a journey of care... Because you must know, dear heart, that you are worthy of care, whether your house is immaculate or a mess.”
― K.C Davis, LPC

“Expect minimizing your storage spaces to take time. These spaces are filled with items that took years to accumulate, so it will take more than one day to get through it all. For me, it was a multiweek process to minimize our basement in my spare time. Set a realistic schedule for yourself.”
― Joshua Becker, The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life

“It's a completely different feeling when I return from work now. There are practical benefits: finding things quickly, being able to walk around the car without squeezing against boxes, and feeling less anxiety about the garage that I knew needed to be cleaned.
But the benefits go beyond that. My minimized garage helps me to feel more in control of my life.”
― Joshua Becker, The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life

“Minimizing your garage and yard is likely going to be hard work for you. But at the same time it is going to be rewarding because the yard is on display for you (along with everyone else in the neighborhood as well as your guests) to see, and the garage is probably the first place you encounter when you come home.”
― Joshua Becker, The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life

“You can say what you want about housework--dusting, vacuuming, mopping, and so forth-- but besides having dinner together every night, there's nothing more valuable to a household than order. A tidy home provides structure for family life and an oasis from the chaos of daily living. And these sorts of household chores keep us in touch with our possessions, ideally in a constant state of measuring their value in our lives. Housekeeping chores are made for divvying up among family members-- cleaning gets done more quickly, everyone is invested in the care of the home, and good habits are established and shared all the way around.”
― EllynAnne Geisel, The Apron Book: Making, Wearing, and Sharing a Bit of Cloth and Comfort

“You don't exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you.”
― K.C. Davis

“For those who set out to clean the dirt of the world, the best broom is their own clean morals, because you can't clean the dirt with dirt!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Lońka, oprócz tego, że ma te porady i wróży, to sprząta.
Sprząta i mówi, że dzięki sprzątaniu trzyma się w formie.
I że sprzątanie oczyszcza umysł.
Że sprzątanie jest jak Bóg, bo ma charakter transcendentny.
Co oznacza, że nie ma początku ani końca.”
― Salcia Hałas, Potop

“I get up slowly, quietly, and creep to the bathroom. I turn the water on full and step in without waiting for the hot to kick in. The tub is cold against my skin. I reach for the soap and a washcloth and rub myself all over. Hard. I scrub and scrub until the water warms up and rises over my ankles, my shins, my knees. I scrub until my skin feels raw and the water is so hot it stings against my skin.”
― Jo Knowles, Lessons from a Dead Girl

“…you could never clean a thing so infinitesimally that it didn’t need to be cleaned again the instant you were done.”
― Don DeLillo, Underworld

“The fish is in no hurry to take a bath.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“Nothing got cleaned just because it got to the laundry room.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough