Do you guys remember The Big Comfy Couch?
Unless you’re a masochist or have a younger sibling, I’m guessing not. Basically it’s a children’s show about a woman named Loonette the Clown who has a giant couch and gets up to crazy antics around her clown house. It’s not all that exciting unless you’re about 10 years old, but I remembered it the other day and thought to myself…
I wonder if Lunette ever got naked.
It’s a fair question. After that show crashed and burned in 1993, who knows what she got up to? Actually, her name is Alyson Court, and apparently she went on to voice Claire Redfield in some of the Resident Evil games, but still!
Anyway… Loonette was famous for a cleaning method she called the Ten Second Tidy. See that picture of her twirling around on the floor? That’s not a sex move I’m afraid, it’s her winding up to clean her entire clown house in just 10 seconds. An impossible feat for a mere mortal, but for Loonette the clown? NBD.
What the fuck is your point??!?
If you’ve held out this long, bare with me another moment here because I’m actually going somewhere with this story. You see, a while ago I wrote about what I call the Dirty Dishes Theory, the theory that if you leave a few dishes around, suddenly you’ll find yourself with more and more dirty dishes because there are already a few, so why not a few more?
I offer some concrete tricks to avoid that, but I wanted to follow up with another little trick I use to make cleaning less daunting. I call it the Ten Minute Tidy, and it goes a little something like this.
Step 1. Set the stove timer for 10 minutes
Step 2. Clean until the timer goes off
That’s it. See, I told you I was going somewhere with this.
Revolutionary? No. Simple and effective? Yes. Try it and let me know what you think. In fact, if there’s other work you know you should do, but really don’t want to do, then try setting a short timer for that as well. I have a feeling you’ll be pleased with the results.
