"The Clean Age" is Overdue: Cleaning as a Multi-Disciplinary Industry will save us
People aren't taught to clean. Cleaning and organization skills are assumed to be "natural" because they've often been subsidized by 1 person in our homes such that we would never know their full weight. By integrating cleaning industry concepts with traditional architecture and building infrastructure, Obsessive Cleaning Disorder can solve the mental overload crisis that endangers our peace of mind persistently and that is made worse in down economies. Appliances are designed poorly for cleaning. Storage space is never enough. We run circles around our clutter. "Stuff" has replaced our peace. Attention is a commodity. Time is not renewable. Cleaning time feels inefficient and overwhelming. Yet, we still assume that cleaning should be "quick." Why? Given that cleaning and organization are a constant flow of tasks that permeates every bodily movement we make...our hand washes, the hair that falls from our heads as we walk, dust from the natural world, or the glass we used for hydrating ourselves 8x per day....its interesting how little credibility we give cleaning as a dealbreaker for how productive our day will be, or whether we fight with our spouse over the dishes after an already exhausting day at work. We collectively have failed to recognize the impact cleaning has on our peace. High expectations of what our homes should look and feel like - big goals that we envision for our personal spaces - combined with lack of knowledge and resources around achieving those goals (that we are "setup to fail") leaves many of us feeling guilty, inadequate and turbulent. In reality, the task of "cleaning" spans across 6 industries, each of which is a complex business system on its own. It starts with construction and architecture planning. (Does the space itself, lend itself toward storage and functionality?) A functional, and breathable space then marries chemistry with interior design (did you intend to have to re-seal your marble shower every 6 months so that caustic chemicals won't damage it?) and it requires space plannning for organizational ease so that tidying becomes second nature instead of a mountain of dependencies ...where one task can't be completed until another one is first. The prepwork and planning needs to happen before "cleaning" can begin, which is the part where we utilize chemistry and technology to remove unwanted debris from a surface. (That's what we've spent years doing!)