Mini-Souji

The new year holiday season trash collection schedule is important, so make sure you check it and plan accordingly.

It's been a while since I moved to Japan, and now I think I'm more into oosouji than my Japanese husband. My first new year in the country, I cleaned up and left town for the holidays, but nothing that I would call a big clean. I have a habit of leaving things tidy in general, especially before going out of town. This is something I picked up a long time ago when a housemate mentioned that it was so much nicer to arrive home after a vacation when the house is clean.

Since that first year, I've picked up a little on what most Japanese people think about the tradition. No one actually likes it and it might only be an excuse for housewives to get their kids to help clean up. But in theory, I think it makes a lot of sense.

There are traditions like making resolutions and the new year is a chance to get a fresh start. It's no secret I like to tidy up (Konmari fan), but I'm not into cleaning.

I have gotten into a routine of doing chores most mornings this year. It's something I learned from a book for women with ADHD, and it actually stuck. The book recommended doing one to three easy chores each morning, depending on what amount of time you're working with. I have ideally started a load of laundry and vacuumed or cleaned up something small and taken out the trash on weekday mornings since then.

A time limit is also important. For most people, that's getting to work on time, but I just set a time that I should stop and work on personal things. Some days I honestly barely finish cleaning up after breakfast by that time. But this routine helps me to stay on top of things more than before.

So then, the big clean.

I decided to work on a few things that are infrequent chores or chores that I don't want to do in general. I also decided to break those into a few Mini-Souji sessions because if I spend all day cleaning I'll hurt myself.

We started last weekend by cleaning off our desks with a timer set for 30 minutes. It was spent finally finishing up some projects cluttering up the desks and then wiping off our desks after the timer went off.

Some chores are better done together. For example, I wanted to dust off the ceiling lights today, so I combined it with two other dusting tasks and after that I did regular vacuuming. 

The two chores left as of now are windows and floors, which are both not fun nor easy on the back. I think we will do that as a team with fun music.

Another thing to keep in mind is your local new year season trash pick up schedule. We have about six days with no trash pick up, so I'm going to plan on getting as much out before the end of the year as possible, meaning that cleaning will have to happen sooner. There is also the last non-burnable trash pick up of the year and I have a bag ready to go next week. It's been slowly filling up over the year with broken electronics and used up batteries and lightbulbs. Yay for decluttering the entrance!