More on "Spring Cleaning"

For those of you who used to do spring cleaning at Fairwood, you need to know that our system has been totally revamped by the indomitable queen of Fly Ladies, Mary Aldrich! Yep, we can describe these cleaning days as "pre Mary Aldrich days" or "present Mary Aldrich days." And I will tell you as one who has gotten to enjoy many years of cleaning, that the "present Mary Aldrich" cleaning days just rock! They are so much fun.

We are divided into teams of 3 people/team. There is a "Broad stroker," a "detail" person, and an "odds and ends person" on each team. We try to assign jobs based on the personality of the person. The broad stroker does all the dusting of all the walls, furniture, baseboards, heating units, etc. etc. etc. The detail person usually cleans the bathroom and the other person does wastebaskets, light fixtures, windows, etc. Then you all converge on whatever is left to be done at the end--like finishing the vacuuming, replacing the furniture neatly, etc. It is great fun to go as fast as you can and get done as quickly as possible.

Now a humorous (to me) couple of incidents that occured this last week. A friend of mine who is a staff person and who is the world's greatest broad stroker, got placed on a team with not one, but 2 detail people! For those of us who can be either detail or broadstroker, that is a fate worse than death! You start the day with high hopes of finishing your assigned area in record time, only to have your hopes diminish with each passing moment, as you see that one of the detail people is still cleaning the same bathroom after half an hour, then after an hour, then barely finished it by lunch time. Frustration #1.

Not to be thwarted, aforementioned friend kept a good attitude and kept charging on. Bathroom detail person #1 finally finished the bathroom and moved on to help other team mates. In fact, their team even finished their whole area and moved on to help another team. My friend charged into one of the rooms to do his broadstroke dusting, completed the job and began to move on when the staff member from the other team came in behind him and re-did what he had just done! I said, "Didn't you tell him that you'd just done that?" He replied that if the other person didn't like the way he did it and wanted to do it over again, that was fine with him. He said, "I just left." Men!! But such are the joys of the team cleaning approach. It's great fun, but can be greatly frustrating as conflicting personalities rub shoulders with each other on the same or adjacent teams. Good thing we all love each other!