There are no shortage of drawers in our apartment, but surprisingly enough I feel pretty good about their organization and had trouble picking a candidate for a good cleaning. That’s not to say that some of my drawers aren’t quite full, but I know what’s in all of them and can get to the things I need to without dumping everything on the floor in a mad game of hide-and-seek. So I took the easy way out and cleaned the drawer of the cart from the pantry assignment.

Things that stayed: spare batteries, butane lighters, scissors, straws, small collection of plastic cutlery (corralled in a tray), pack of chalk (for writing the contents on our coffee jars), and a tiny tool kit.

Things that went: extra chopsticks, extra plastic cutlery, a set of four glass coasters that I never use.

A handful of other items got relocated to their proper homes elsewhere in the apartment. I also fixed the drawer itself, which at some point got something wedged into the seam between the back and the bottom of the drawer, causing the bottom to buckle and the drawer to stick. Now the drawer slides easily, and there’s just a single layer of useful items in it. Hardly life-changing, but it’s an improvement.

While I had hoped to be the proud owner of a set of pristine new pantry shelves full of promise and possibility, or at the very least the hopeful owner of several plastic sacks of shelf components, instead I am the slightly crestfallen owner of a packet of papers describing in detail the elfa system I envisioned.

As it turns out, the Container Store doesn’t routinely stock all of the components available for use in the elfa system, and even if they did, they’d probably be sold out due to the very sale that prompted us to undertake this project. So instead of walking in and throwing things into a cart while delightedly checking things off my list, we waited until an associate was available to walk us through the design process. What I thought was a complimentary service provided as a courtesy to people interested in purchasing a shelving system—and perhaps a required step for anyone looking to use their installation service—is actually a necessary step for placing an order for parts. Huh.

Don’t get me wrong, the sales associate was a kind and helpful person who plugged all of our information into the computer and turned it into a proper order as efficiently as possible, and I have no complaints about her service. But having to ask for help when I didn’t really need it sort of took the wind out of my DIY sails, you know? And while she was quite speedy, it still took longer than I’d planned, which I suppose is just one of many, many reminders I’m going to get about how few home projects are done within the original schedule and/or budget.

Anyway, everything should arrive neatly shrink-wrapped at our local store this Saturday. Whether we get it all installed Saturday or Sunday will depend on how late in the day we have to pick it up. But by Monday, there will be no more non-perishables in my living room. I can hardly wait!

I do a surface sweep one to two times a week, but usually it’s at the point where I’m already starting to feel bothered by the clutter that’s accumulating: four or five days’ worth of mail, a couple of glasses that were filled right after the dishwasher got loaded, stray pens or a pair of scissors, and, since we’re in the winter months, a scarf (or three) draped hither or thither. I’d like to get in the habit of doing it every day or at least every other day, to avoid that build-up of daily detritus that tends to fester into a Mess (and all-too-often ends up a Total Disaster). I’ve seen three strategies to do this quickly:

1. Make a series of passes through the whole apartment, dealing with one type of item on each pass. This is my usual method, and I find it’s really helpful for getting all of the wayward dishes and stray socks end up in their respective loads for cleaning. It does mean retracing your steps a lot, though.
2. Grab a basket, put everything that’s out of place in it, and then make a stop in each room to put things back. I’ve never actually done this, but I know some people love it. It saves walking back and forth through the whole house ten times, but I worry that I’d end up with so much stuff in the basket that I’d have to spend time sorting everything out in each room. A side benefit of this approach is that if you get interrupted mid-tidy, you can just shove the basket out of sight. (Of course, the drawback to that is that it’s easy to get in the habit of just shoving things into a closet rather than finding a permanent home for them. See: my office closet right now.)
3. Grab things from the room you’re in now, take them to the room they belong in, and pick up fresh things when you get there. I do this from time to time, usually when there are just a few stray things, and usually when I’m cleaning up between larger tasks like waiting for water to boil. Although not terribly efficient, it can be oddly motivating, since each time you’re in a different room you’re challenged to find something to put away. And if you’re like us, there’s always something.

Do you use just one of these methods, or some combination of the three? Do you have a tidying strategy you swear by?

Cleaning the kitchen is easily my least favorite deep-cleaning chore.¹ Cleaning just about any other room of the apartment consists mostly of tidying, with dusting and vacuuming to finish it off. Cleaning the bathrooms, although I’ll drag my feet on it, usually doesn’t take as long or use as much energy as I dread it will. Cleaning the kitchen is always a serious undertaking, filled with scrubbing and fumes and rearranging everything in sight in order to clean under and around it. Even with a small galley kitchen the prospect is daunting, and I always feel wiped afterward, so trying to throw it in amidst other chores will guarantee that nothing else gets done.

The assignment instructions emphasize improvement over perfection, so I decided to tackle only two of the three big chores they recommend—I cleaned out the fridge/freezer and cleaned all surfaces but postponed the cabinets because I think they’ll need a whole day of their own—and instead added in a couple of chores that I should probably do more regularly but often overlook:

• Clean the range hood. Although this isn’t particularly difficult, I’ve usually avoided it on the grounds that I don’t have a cleaner that can cut through the greasy, gummy, dusty grime that accumulates up there. This time I tackled it by thoroughly soaking it with multi-purpose surface cleaner and then letting it sit (and drip, because there’s no way around it) for 15–20 minutes. That seemed to do the trick. And if I can remind myself and Justin to wipe it down more frequently, the extra-long soak shouldn’t be necessary in the future.
• Oil wood cutting boards. We have a trio of bamboo cutting boards that have served us well since we first got married five years ago, and I’m ashamed to admit that although I’d bought mineral oil to treat them with, I’d never actually used it. (Not for that, anyway. It has oodles of other household uses.) I’m afraid at this point there are some early signs of splitting that can’t be repaired, but at least I’ve staved off worse damage. I need to write down a reminder in my planner to do this once a month.
• Sharpen knives. Last year for Christmas my parents gifted us an electric knife sharpener, which is a huge boon because I’ve been completely unable to learn how to effectively use a sharpening steel despite my best efforts. We try to sharpen the knives as we notice them becoming dull, but since I was in the kitchen anyway it seemed like a great opportunity to do all of them at once, including the steak knives and paring knife.

Other chores that I didn’t need to do today but that are easy to put off or forget are cleaning the coffee maker, changing the water pitcher filter, and rinsing out the utensil canister that sits on the counter.

What are smaller household tasks that you find easy to skip but make a huge difference when you do them? What about chores you can’t stand—how do you motivate yourself to tackle them?

¹ My least favorite daily chore is doing the dishes. My childhood home and my first apartment with Justin didn’t have a dishwasher, and I loathed dishes. Working in food service for three years just reinforced my hatred. Having a dishwasher now certainly helps, but I’d sooner find two other chores to do than load it, or hand-wash anything. Justin gets dish duty a lot.