Keep it clean

I wouldn’t say I was partic­u­larly tidy, but I do like to keep my living envir­on­ment clean. I spent a few years work­ing in restaur­ants when I was young­er, and a big part of the job was keep­ing the restaur­ant and bar as clean and pleas­ant as possible. Espe­cially at the end of the night, you can’t go home until everything is spot­less, so you get used to clean­ing things as effi­ciently as possible, and in a way that makes sure it all looks shiny as well as being hygien­ic. This has also been useful in making not-so-nice rented places in London a lot more pleas­ant to live in. (It has also given me the side-effect of find­ing house­work to be an effect­ive hangover cure)

I’ve come to real­ise lately, a surpris­ing number of people find house­work diffi­cult and turn out not to know things about laun­dry, unblock­ing drains etc that I thought every­one knew. It still seems a bit patron­ising for me to write these tips (but also quite milit­ant in my aver­sion to dirty tea towels and unrinsed wash­ing up), because they’re obvi­ous to me, but I know now they’re not obvi­ous to a lot of people, and New Year seems an appro­pri­ate time to write them.

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