I hate cleaning. It's not that the cleaning part is what I hate, I hate the fact that things get so dirty so quickly and then I spend so much of my weekend trying to get everything back to a clean state again. I've been thinking about this a lot recently and thanks to a Lean@Home group I've been participating in, I've been thinking about how I can use the Lean concepts to help solve this frustration. The first thing I can incorporate is the idea of 3S - Sort, Shine, Standardize.
To incorporate this into my daily life, I've created some daily reminders for myself. I constantly have my phone near or on me, and usually my smartwatch hangs around as well. I've got an Android phone, so downloading Google Keep is a great place to start with this. Keep is an app that allows you to make shareable lists, to-do lists, shopping lists, and in my case standard work lists. Each list is presented in a card or note type form, and each card has many variables that can be adjusted. For instance, I can color code the lists - red for incomplete, green for complete. I can pin these daily lists so they are always easy to get to in the app. I have also created reminders that will pop up on my phone, and will notify me on my smartwatch when I've got that on. These alerts occur just about the time I come home each day from work.
I have grouped each of these tasks into about 30 minute sections. When I come home, I would rather not spend a whole lot of time cleaning, so I've created the groupings to not last any more than 30 minutes at the worst. Each individual task takes no more than 10 minutes, and since each note can be shared, so too can these tasks.
When I was growing up, my parents made a chore list that we kept on the side of the refrigerator for me and my brothers. The list contained daily and weekly chores that had to be completed and each Sunday my mom would write our names down to all the different chores for the week. Some daily tasks were setting the table for dinner, cleaning the table after dinner, and cleaning the cat litter. Each weekend we had a cleaning task and/or a yard work task. To clean the house, we would be assigned with dusting, vacuuming, or wiping down the glass (windows, doors, and mirrors). If it was Spring, Summer, or Fall we would also be asked to help out with yard work. I think I started at the age of 8 pushing the mower around the yard. My grandmother who had lived just around the block from us, also needed yard work done. So we would also go over to her house to cut branches, mow the lawn, and rake up yard waste. Now, this all happened in Florida, in the middle of the heat and humidity so none of it was quite fun. However, once we were done our reward (other than allowance) was jumping in the pool! I remember being beat after all that yard work, and how refreshing it was just to jump into the cool water of the pool. Thinking back to this, I realize now that I was learning work ethic and the value and pride of that work. There would be times my dad would stand out in the front yard and look at all the hard work we did. I would join him and spend those moments proud of our accomplishments. I still do this today, whether it's something I've done in the yard, in the house, or at work.
Technology has allowed me to take these concepts and expand upon them. I can take my knowledge of Lean and enhance these tasks as standard work, add photos to each task card of what the ideal state should look like (which I will do this week for each day when it is completed). If I had children, I could also use this to share each task with them, giving them the opportunity to not only complete their chores, but add a photo to it to show their own pride of work. Plus, we could easily see as a team what has been accomplished or who might need some help. This system not only helps simplify the tasks of cleaning, but also allows for team building to occur, creating much stronger families.
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