It goes without saying that to be able to clean well to the music, it has to be something that you enjoy, if you can sing along to it all the better. Always make sure the tempo of the music matches 1, the mood you’re in, and 2, cleaning. If you’re anything like me the music needs to be a little bit motivational – this is totally subjective.

But a common mistake of mine is choosing an album too short for the job at hand. For example: Cleaning my kitchen the otherday was roughly a 2 hour job (dishes, benches, walls, and floor). If I were to have picked a short album like , Tom Petty’s ‘Damn the Torpedoes’ I would have to break for my work and choose another album. Instead what I listened to was The Smashing Pumpkins ‘mellon collie and the infinite sadness’ which filled the time almost perfectly. And because I was finished cleaning about 2 songs before the album finished I felt as though I had finished within the allowed time . Always a good feeling. Equally important is not choosing an album too long for the job. Like vacuuming the lounge does not require Handel’s ‘the Messiah’ to get through.

Of course none of this applies to those of you who make playlists or put the ipod on shuffle. Personally I like to listen to my music as complete albums, otherwise I sometimes feel that I’ve picked up a book and only read a chapter or two. But thats just me.

Since the intention was to have a bbq that night and perhaps invite our friends Elliot and Hillary around for a drink and a hot dog, I decided to ask the clerk at the checkout whether the gas bottle would fit on the bbq, he said it would so off we went. I filled the gas bottle on the way home at the gas station.

By the time we made it home the sun was dropping behind the hills and it was a bit cold to have a swim so I set up the bbq to get it ready for dinner. Only when I got to attaching the gas bottle I found that it didn’t fit! I called up the warhouse to ask if they had a part that would make it work- they didn’t. Instead they told me that I should have bought a 2kg bottle for that bbq! I would have loved to! I explained what happened to them and that it was all their fault and they told me that they would accept a return of the full gas bottle and replace it with a 2kg bottle when they get more in stock. 5 days later still nothing. apparently they will have some in today sometime.

Last time I shop at a place like that! they ruined my dinner plans!

my desk and surrounds (the way it usually is)

These are here as ‘before’ pics, so you can see how far I’ve come when I eventually get there.

good cleaning albums:

• Tracy Chapman – (self titled) – great for vacuuming!
• Zwan – Mary Star of the Sea

Live albums also seem to be awesome for cleaning, currently listening to ‘beethoven was deaf’ from morrissey whilst doing the washing. Sunny days also kick ass for doing washing! not only do I get outside and get some vitamin D in me but I get clothes dryed heaps quicker too!

three loads of washing done today so far! man this place is getting real tidy!

I am a househusband – sort of. by sort of I mean that I’m not married, and I do work. But I do live with just my girlfriend (and love it). She works days 8am – 6pm while I work nights in a bar, and study part time. What this means is that I’m at home all day – usually bored. And with my girlfriend working long days, I am the one with the time to clean up.

I used to kill the boredom by playing online games, eg: cs1.6, then WoW, then TF2. Those games ended up taking a lot of my time and I tended to neglect a lot of other areas of my life eg: homework, girlfriend, housework, friends, fitness hygene… yeah it got pretty bad for a while there. But yeah the house is a mess from months and months of neglect.

<– my desk (the clean part)

So now I have given them up and I am trying to clean up a little. My grades at university have already started to improve a whole bunch, so now I’m focusing on housework and which in turn leads to better hygiene. Motivation for this could possibly be credited to the property inspection this coming weekend. I guess I’m going to take an active role in improving the quality of life of myself and my girlfriend. We tend to be pretty lazy in respects to tidying up after ourselves, and we don’t often have visitors over as we live so far from the middle of the city, thus little motivation to clean up. So here is my mission -

• Tidy this house to a point that I would be happy to have the freakin Queen over for tea.
• Keep it tidy
• Have friends over and stuff (improve the social life)
• Maybe start working on a landscaping project out the back (we currently have a bush – and not the good kind)

So those are the goals. I will of course add more as time goes by. I am going to attempt to make housework fun for myself and become one of those houseproud people. We’ll see how I go…