I tried the ‘one spot’ cleaning technique and it made cleaning my kitchen less overwhelming

Even the best cleaners can find it overwhelming to get started when mess and clutter build up. Looking at a pile of mess or a room in complete disarray can make you want to surrender before you have even started. 

That is where the ‘one spot’ cleaning method comes in to help find a way to clean that doesn't feel completely overstimulating, helping to strip back the tasks to a bare essential that might help you to get motivated to clean. 

I came across this simple cleaning tip on social media and decided to give it a go to help tackle my overwhelming kitchen. I couldn't believe how simple it made such an overwhelming task seem.

The ‘one spot’ cleaning trick

Cleaning when you feel overwhelmed can seem like an endless circle of trying to tidy up, feeling more stressed, and ending in you abandoning the task – only for the mess to get worse, beginning the cycle again. 

The ‘one spot’ method breaks this cycle by allowing you to focus on one thing and one thing only, preventing you from spiraling into stress.

When I fall into these types of ruts, it can feel impossible to get out of them and tidy my home. This was especially true of trying to clean a kitchen over the last week. My small kitchen is almost always cold in winter meaning I don’t want to spend any more time in there than I have to. 

The result? Piling dishes, sides covered in crumbs, and a fridge I haven't cleaned out in at least a week. It was overwhelming, to say the least. 

When it became nearly impossible to cook due to mess and clutter, I had to do something – so I gave the one spot method a go. The idea is to go into cleaning focusing on only one spot, almost giving yourself tunnel vision. There is no kitchen spring cleaning checklist here, just one task and one goal – clear up one area.

I decided to focus my efforts on cleaning the kitchen sink, the spot that had arguably fallen into the worst mess. Instead of thinking about having to tackle the sink, then clean the fridge and counters, and so on, I just had to do the sink. 

Like putting blinkers on a horse, I worked on the sink and didn’t let myself look around the kitchen at any other surface. Starting with the worst area made a massive improvement to how the space felt and, much like my beloved Ski-Slope organizing method where you work on one spot before allowing yourself to move on to the next, it was oddly motivating.

Once the sink was clean and the dishes were washed and stacked up neatly, the kitchen didn't feel as cluttered and the rest of the space felt much simpler to tidy up. One area down, I widened my tunnel vision a little and moved onto decluttering countertops and giving them a wipe-down with an anti-bacterial spray. To avoid getting overwhelmed, I kept this to a quick clean, rather than pulling out all of my appliances. This could always be done another day – at least I was making a start. 

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If you find yourself still feeling a bit overwhelmed after dealing with one spot, you can always take a break and then try the method again later on another spot, applying the same ‘tunnel-vision’ rule over and over until the room no longer stresses you out.

FAQs

Cleaning in this way may not be the most rapid method to cut kitchen cleaning times in half, but it sure is ideal when you can’t break through the feeling of being overwhelmed. Now my kitchen has been reset, it is simpler to get back into the routine of doing daily things to keep kitchen counters clear.