Organization & Cleaning
What’s your cleaning personality? Find out with 7 Quick Questions.
Photography, dysoncanada.ca
Organization & Cleaning
What’s your cleaning personality? Find out with 7 Quick Questions.
Everyone has a different way of keeping their spaces clean, and that’s evident by their choices of cleaning tools, cadence and more. We’ve asked online clean queen Melissa Maker from Clean My Space to help you discover your cleaning personality and optimize your clean routine.
Take our Quiz:
Q1. How often do you clean your home?
a) I wait for things to become really dirty before I’ll drag out the cleaning tools.
b) Once a week or once every 2 weeks.
c) Every day.
Q2. How many cleaning tools do you own?
a) I might have a broom somewhere?
b) The standards: vacuum, mop, and a few household cleaners.
c) I have EVERYTHING… in my favourite colour and scent.
Q3. What is your least favourite place to clean?
a) Everywhere, ugh.
b) I try to keep on top of daily messes, so it’s only the big effort jobs I dread like pulling out the sofa or cleaning the area around the toilet.
c) Not applicable! I find joy in every space I clean.
Q4. What’s your cleaning strategy?
a) If it’s dirty enough for me to notice and get emotional about it, I’ll clean it.
b) I don’t have a set cleaning schedule, but I try to focus on monthly, weekly and daily tasks that work together and keep me sane.
c) Let me consult my cleaning matrix…
Q5. How do you feel when you’re cleaning?
a) I get distracted easily, try to make excuses or rush through it because it’s dreadful.
b) I know it’s a means to an end, so I just get it done and try to make the best of it.
c) It’s a form of meditation and/or therapeutic release for me.
Q6. How do you feel when you’re finished cleaning?
a) Relieved it’s over; thank you, next.
b) Satisfied and proud of myself.
c) I want to do more; admiring my work and showing anyone who will look.
Q7. Do you worry about what guests might think of the cleanliness of your home?
a) Yes, and that thought is what typically spurs a frantic cleaning session before I host.
b) Not really, I might give the bathroom a quick tidy but overall feel pretty good about my home.
c) What exactly would I have to worry about?
Photography, dysoncanada.ca
Results:
🧽️ Mostly "A"s - The Bare Minimalist
You’re not a cleaner by default, but you’re not alone! This is interesting: According to Dyson's Global Dust Study completed earlier this year, 2 in 5 respondents globally said they clean their homes at least five times a week, while only 1 in 6 Canadians do. As with regular cleaning, Canadians are the least frequent deep cleaners, with only 36% doing so at least once a month (vs. 71% globally, 86% of Mexicans and 46% of Americans).
I know, as a lazy person who likes a clean home myself and still dreads the work, I am always looking for ways to make cleaning easier without cutting corners. So, I've found that a few things help including tidying as I go – a habit my whole family works on doing, keeping my most important areas – what I call MIAs – perpetually maintained. For me, this means kitchen, bathrooms and front entryway.
Also, we vacuum several times a week because we have a cat who sheds everywhere and a 5-year-old. If we don't vacuum, the floors become filthy. I used to despise vacuuming until cordless vacuums with long battery life and powerful suction came along. They take a lot of the dread out of the chore, hold a long charge and are comfortable to use. Right now, I use the Dyson Gen5outsize™ for my home.
🧽️ Mostly "B"s – The Functionalist
You keep on top of your home’s cleanliness, but it’s not your preferred task. You know that one of the most overwhelming things to deal with when it comes to cleaning is figuring out where and how to start. Because you keep things generally clean, spaces in your home never get out of hand. Some harder-to-see messes that can get out of hand quickly are air quality, hidden dust (e.g., under the bed, behind the TV, behind the sofa, etc.) and pet messes.
If you’re someone who keeps their windows open at home or you have a pet at home, all sorts of small particles can be floating around, like pollen, pet dander and other forms of dust. I am a huge proponent of using HEPA filtration to clean indoor air – using both vacuums and air treatment. We’ve got to vacuum regularly since many of these microscopic particles are heavy and will eventually fall to the ground. You can also use an indoor air purifier and run it during the day or at night. I use a Dyson purifier that captures 99.97% of all fine particles and run it frequently at home, because it can heat, cool and humidify a space, too.
🧽️ Mostly "C"s – The Elite Cleaner
You’re all over your cleaning routine and have a tool for every task. Level up your cleaning routine by deep cleaning those places that many Canadians don’t think about: your mattress and under the bed. According to Dyson's Global Dust Study completed earlier this year, 80% of Canadians do not regularly clean their mattresses despite them being a hotbed of microscopic life.
Caring for your mattress and area under the bed is easy to do as part of a regular cleaning routine. Take a small, motorized attachment head (I love using my Dyson cordless vacuum to do this) and vacuum in a W pattern — straight down, angled up — and have a look at your canister as you go. You'll be shocked to see how much comes up off the mattress! You want to do this quarterly at least, and a few times in October and May, when dust mites are the worst. This helps quell the population.
Dust under the bed can become quite a force over time and I find cordless vacuums particularly useful for this task too, because of ease of maneuverability. It can be hard to spot dust in dark spaces and to make sure you've gotten rid of all of it, which is why I've found it most effective to use a Dyson cordless vacuum like the Gen5, V12 or V15 that has the Fluffy Optic cleaner head, which illuminates every piece of dust and dirt using green light.
Photography courtesy of Melissa Maker
🪄 Melissa’s Top Picks:
Melissa Maker has grown the Clean My Space YouTube channel to 1.87 million subscribers. And Melissa’s ever-growing fan base, spread across 165 countries, tunes in to her personal Instagram, the Clean My Space Instagram page, the Clean My Space Facebook page, the Clean My Space website, the email newsletter The Dirty Dish, and (the newest addition) the Clean My Space TikTok to learn all things cleaning. This includes everything from developing a daily cleaning routine to how to deep clean to cleaning hacks and secrets for decluttering and organizing your space.
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