Speed Cleaning

There’s a catch to using this book.

The Clean Team has timed and tested every sequence, technique, and product. They know what works. They tell you what to do. And they are The Boss.

They teach you a simple system for the whole house. They give you diagrams that help. They lead you step-by-step. They threaten you if you do it wrong!

The result is a sparkling clean home in under half the time you used to take. Very clean. Very fast. Very easy.

What’s the catch? You do it their way. No arguments. No discussions. No compromises.

Why? Because it works!

S
PEED
C
LEANING

FOR THOSE WHO WOULD RATHER BE DOING PRACTICALLY ANYTHING ELSE

SPEED CLEANING
was first published in 1987. More than ten years later, and just like the well-known batteries, it’s still going strong.

I’ve been told that a book’s average shelf life is only three weeks or so. That means
SPEED CLEANING
has endured approximately 173 times longer than average. Why? I believe it’s because it makes such good sense in today’s busy world. It will teach you how to do housecleaning in the very best way possible and in the most efficient way possible. And not by working harder. Just smarter! The result? You will reclaim that spare time that has vanished from your life.

SPEED CLEANING
was and is the first comprehensive solution to the housecleaning chores that each of us copes with and must find time for virtually every week of our lives.
SPEED CLEANING
finally paid attention to the fact that almost no one in our culture is actually taught how to do this. We seem to assume that if you drop someone in the middle of a dirty house, she (or he) would instinctively know how to go about getting it clean: sort of a cleaning gene at work. However, for those of us who arrived without the magic gene,
SPEED CLEANING
provides the very first step-by-step set of instructions on housecleaning. It’s a proven method that furnishes even the most profoundly cleaning impaired the wherewithal to clean in the smartest way possible.

SPEED CLEANING
also takes very, very seriously the amount of time that housecleaning consumes and the limited amount of time in which we have to do it. It’s about time someone respected all those hours you spend scrubbing, dusting, and vacuuming. Whatever housecleaning skills most of us have were handed down by our mothers or grandmothers, who were able to do the work on a full-time basis. Given how our society has changed—now that so many women in America are working, commuting,
and
keeping house—those full-time cleaning methods no longer work. Full-time techniques won’t fit into a weekend. Besides, not many of us look forward to spending precious weekends cleaning house. It’s like going from one job to another.

SPEED CLEANING
teaches new skills. Learning how to clean (or do anything else) the very best possible way can change how you feel about the activity. As you get better and better at a task, you move closer to the cutting edge of your attention. (Just watch a kid play a computer game.) As you get closer to that edge, it’s nearly impossible to dislike what you’re doing. When you learn how to shave off unnecessary steps, motions, and repetitions, you’ll move closer and closer to full attention. You’ll become a pure cleaning machine—a Ninja warrior of cleaning, if you wish.

If you already enjoy cleaning, the payoff is that you’ll have a thoroughly clean house in as short a period of time as possible. It you
don’t
enjoy cleaning, that’s still not a problem. You’ll get the same clean house, the same extra time for other activities, and you’ll dislike it less.

I used to work for the telephone company. My work efforts were forwarded to various departments in paper form, and several weeks or months later a phone system would be installed—an event I might not even know about unless something went wrong. At its very best, I had precious little feedback for my efforts. By contrast, housecleaning offers a much more direct payoff. First the house was dirty and now it’s clean, and whoever did it gets all the credit. Most of us don’t stop to gloat over every item that gets cleaned, but each new bit of cleanliness provides a dose of straightforward positive feedback—the kind that’s becoming increasingly rare.

Becoming an expert at what you do makes the activity itself easier. It’s much easier to use a computer the 100th time or to change the oil in the lawn tractor the second or third time. When it comes to cleaning, it also turns out to be easier to work clockwise around a room once, cleaning from top to bottom and from back to front as you go, than it is to make fitful stops and starts and countless trips back and forth and up and down.

Being an expert is also a morale booster. It’s downright depressing to have a dirty house and not have the time to clean it. An almost universal lament in America has
become: “I love a clean house, but I just don’t have the time.” In this situation, you either (a) give up and get depressed or (b) keep trying to catch up, but never do, so you’re robbed of any satisfaction for your efforts.
SPEED CLEANING
allows you to do the cleaning well and to do it as quickly as humanly possible.
It will give you back your weekends.
You can reclaim time for other things that are fun, relaxing, or otherwise rewarding. And you can enjoy a clean house in the meantime.

Although
SPEED CLEANING
methods have stood the test of time, cleaning products change, are invented, and are improved continually. When
SPEED CLEANING
was first published, I started receiving letters (by the thousands!) from readers demanding to know: “So where’s this fancy
cleaning apron
of yours?” and “I want to try some of that
Red Juice
you’re so proud of.” The Clean Team Catalog was created to satisfy those readers and to make professionally tested cleaning products available to consumers everywhere. The catalog has grown over the years, and we now test products from around the world to be able to offer the best homecare products available. If you would like to receive a free copy, please call us at 800-717-CLEAN (that’s 717-2532), and we’ll be happy to oblige. That telephone number is also a cleaning hot-line, so whenever you have a housecleaning question of any kind, call and we’ll do our best to answer it.

Our method was developed by The Clean Team—San Francisco’s preeminent housecleaning service. For over eighteen years we’ve kept records of every visit to thousands
of households in San Francisco. We used time-and-motion analysis and an endless comparison of cleaning products and equipment to develop a method that would save every step and every moment possible. The result is a thoroughly tested system of cleaning without a wasted motion. Besides being fast, we’re very, very good: Our waiting list has, at times, been six months long.

SPEED CLEANING
is a weekly cleaning system for areas that need attention every week or two: a thorough cleaning of the kitchen and bathrooms, including washing the floors in those rooms and dusting and vacuuming throughout the house. Our second book,
SPRING CLEANING,
covers the jobs that you don’t tackle every time you clean but that you shouldn’t ignore forever, either: jobs like washing windows and waxing floors. Daily cleaning tasks and household organization is the subject of our third book,
CLUTTER CONTROL.
It provides instruction on organizing cupboards, drawers, closets, magazines, and much more. Book four,
TALKING DIRT,
answers the 157 most frequently asked cleaning questions we’ve collected over the last ten years.

Because of our professional experience, we get to be The Boss for the time being. Maybe you’ll develop your own system someday or customize ours for your own situation, but for now we’re going to relieve you of the burden of making decisions. No arguments. No discussions. No compromises.