Unf * Ck Your Habitat Made Me Finally Start Cleaning My House
My office is a mess. To be honest, it’s the same in many parts of my house. I don’t like cleaning, so I try not to bother with cleaning books. Even if they motivate me to clean up, everything gets dirty again and, well, what’s the point? But then I met Unfuck Your Habitat .
At Unfuck Your Habitat, there is no long weekend brushing , no pulling all your clothes out of the closet, and no thoughtful thinking about each item. Instead, the book is designed to get you moving right away.
Somewhere in the first few chapters, the book had a small task: take a picture “to” the nearest flat surface, and then take five objects. Well, I could do it. Later in this chapter, after justifying the need to get the job done in 20 minute bites, the task arose to spend 20 minutes on the same surface. Okay , I thought. I will play this game once .
Twenty minutes later, my desk was cleaner than I’ve ever seen, and I had plenty of time to rearrange things on the nearest bookshelf. The work was short and self-sufficient enough that I didn’t have time to overwhelm it. And now I have finished the day. I thought that I could live with this.
Who is this book for?
Unfuck Your Habitat is for people who are overwhelmed by their clutter, whether small or large. And if there is a lot, that’s okay . You don’t have to pretend like you’ve washed the floors … ever.
On the other hand, if you are already a neat person but want to take minimalism to the next level, this book is not for you. Instead, go to the of The Life Changing Magic of tidying the Up .
Writer Rachel Hoffman understands that her audience includes people with a wide variety of reasons that can overwhelm her. In addition to being just a busy person, you may struggle with depression or physical disabilities that make it difficult to find energy to clean up, or you may have emotional problems such as being the child of a hoarding store.
While the book is highly inclusive, it distracts from the traditional housewife role that many cleaning books and systems have in mind. Kids get two pages in Unfuck Your Habitat , but living in a dorm room is a whole chapter.
What do you get
Much of the value of this book is that it inspires you to sort out the mess in little pieces and keep doing good work even when the things you’ve been cleaning give you away – horror – getting dirty again .
Hoffman does not detail the mechanics of cleaning and points out that you can Google it yourself . Instead, it provides a general overview of how to bring living space into some semblance of order and maintain it that way. It’s more about managing your time and your attitude than learning about the chemistry of cleaning products or a particular way of sorting knick-knacks.
Here’s a chapter breakdown:
- Getting Started: This section looks at all the mental blocks that can keep you from losing your temper and starting to contribute to your clutter. Also introduced is the 20/10 system: 20 minutes of cleaning followed by a 10 minute break. Taking a break is optional, which seems shockingly wasteful at first, but the idea is to prevent you from cleaning the benders that will make you not want to clean anything again.
- Get Rid of Your Own Habitat: This section provides basic information on what to clean (anything that might smell gets priority, followed by tables and countertops), as well as tips for organizing and building habits.
- Troubleshooting: Communicating with others in your ruined space: This is where the human factor comes in: how to deal with a dirty roommate and how to give or receive help.
- Special Occasions: There are two great step-by-step guides here, one for emergency cleaning when a company is approaching, and one for dealing with a move. It also includes chapters on tidying up your digital life and applying the principles of the book to vast amounts of work or study.
- Conclusion: The best part of this section is the chapter on the basics of Unfuck Your Habitat , which might have worked better if it had been introduced earlier in the book – but anyway, here it is.
- Appendices: This resource section includes a set of checklists of what to do daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonally, as well as room-by-room lists to give you a plan of action when you see a dirty bathroom, say, and put it on. I don’t know where to start.
After you swallow the book, do not forget to look in Tumbler Your Habitat Unfuck , who inspired you to creating the book. You will find a advice column , a range of problems , and a bunch of before and after photos that people have submitted. Hoffman recommends taking lots of photographs to document progress.
One piece of advice you’ll take away
Aside from breaking down your work into 20-minute chunks, the most valuable advice in this book relates to daily cleanliness.
The most laconic of them all: put things away , not down . As soon as I read this, I realized that I was an inveterate abuser. Why put a book on the shelf when I can just put it on the table here? Why submit documents when I can just lay them on top of this book? Soon this habit leads to … well, that very situation in my kitchen that took me three 20/10 to get rid of last week.
But with the new rule, it turned out to be surprisingly easy to keep surfaces clean after initial cooling down. I’m a big fan of the tumblr list that didn’t make it into the book: Things You Think Take Forever But Actually Take Less Than A Minute . For example: Throwing trash in the trash can instead of throwing it on the counter.
Our opinion
Unfuck Your Habitat is the perfect housekeeping guide for those overwhelmed by their clutter and can’t figure out where to start, or for those who always start marathon cleaning projects just to see things go to hell again.
My biggest gripe with the book is that I wish there was more of it: a guide to working with kids, working in the yard, messing up your car, how to schedule your time when you haven’t finished your clutter, but you need to start maintaining what you’ve already cleaned up. I cannot blame the material that is there. I believe that as a solid member of the target audience who has tried the whole system for several weeks.