Power Housekeeping

After several weeks of intense housecleaning, de-cluttering, and re-organizing (Project House Beautiful, Rachel and I call it), the house looks and works infinitely better. But I still wonder, How do people keep their houses clean? My lifelong approach has been to let things go until they are so gross I can't stand it. Unfortunately, as my standards have become increasingly lower, so has my house become correspondingly dirtier. Because I can't resign myself to living in filth for the rest of my life, I'm developing a Systems Approach to housekeeping.

The problem is not an inability to order my house; the real problem is my inability to maintain that order. So the key is knowing our habits, and creating order around them. For example, why spend your life opening drawers to search for kitchen tools when you can hang them up right in front of your nose? I continue to make refinements on my kitchen, so that I can do various tasks without constantly opening cupboards and drawers or walking all over the room. The rest of the house has been more difficult, but we're making progress. My brother-in-law Dan tells me that Frank Lloyd Wright tried to design houses so that people could live in them. It's a similar approach.