Learn a New Skill: Keeping House

I believe that keeping a clean house is a learned skill.  Some people are taught very young the ways to clean a house.  They have good role models to learn from, and so find the transition from student to master of the skill with seeming ease. Children seem to learn with ease.

Some people have to learn the skill when they are older.  Just as with any skill, it can be harder to learn as an adult.  A man named Noel Burch developed a hierarchy of learning, a set of stages that everyone goes through in order to learn a new skill.

 The four stages are outlined here.   Basically, it comes down to first: being unaware that you don't have a skill. Second: being aware that you don't have the skill. Third: being aware that you have a skill. And finally: being unaware that you have a skill.

When it comes to keeping house, you may have all the cleaning skills down pat - you know how to clean a bathroom or to do the dishes.  The skill you need to learn still is how to put it all together into a cohesive whole which leads to a clean home.  I was at this stage for quite awhile.  I didn't really know I didn't have the skill to make it all work together, but I did clean.  My home still was never neat, never all clean at the same time.  I got very frustrated.

When I started researching methods for cleaning house, I came across Flylady.  That website had a model for keeping house.  It utilized cleaning zones and daily chores, and through it all, the website suggested baby steps.  Well, I realized there was a skill I didn't have.  Common wisdom says this is the point where most people wind up.  They realize they don't have a skill, that it's hard to learn that skill, and that repeated attempts keep failing.

For years, easily 12+ years, I attempted and failed to establish a cleaning routine utilizing zones and daily cleaning efforts to keep my house neat.  Maybe I couldn't do it because I had too many distractions in the form of young children.  Maybe I allowed myself to be distracted by my crazy internet friends.  I had lots of "reasons" not to learn the skill.  Who knows which ones apply.  Maybe they were all excuses.  Maybe they were legitimate.

Last year, in the summer, after a rough spot with my husband, I was spurred on to finally learning this skill.  I researched online - you'd think I had the idea by now, right?  Still, I needed a mentor or two.  I can't remember all of the sites I visited then. It was a lot.  Through the course of this research, I built up a set of skills.

I figure I'm now in the stage of knowing I know the skills.  It's part of why I'm so willing to crow about them to anyone who will listen.  I feel accomplished and proud of my newly neat and clean house.  Maybe in another six months, I will be able to mindlessly utilize the set of skills I've learned.  For now, I'm still excited and I want to share.