Read an Excerpt
So before you fall in love with cleaning, you have to start liking the dirt. Dirt, dust, grime—whatever you want to call the guy. Right after, you have to accept the fact that you don't always have the energy. You don't always care or want to. Fortunately, the ideology continues a little more hopeful: You don't always have the energy, but soon the day will come again when cleaning, like seeing a friend, becomes more natural. Even better: you really start to miss it.
Since dirt must be regarded as a friend, its demonization must stop. It sounds quite toxic to have a friendship where you believe that the other person is more or less destroying the environment. There are very few homes where one would have to worry that a cluttered condition would break the structures of the house and the health of the occupant.
“I go to filthy homes every week. That’s why I also dare to say that nothing will happen even if you don’t wipe the light switch for a year,” Auri says.
"We are exposed to all kinds of grime all the time. As a child, we stuffed mud in our mouths, and nothing happened to us. The common areas are full of dust, and the bacterial content in a corner of a home that has not been cleaned is no match for a mobile phone that is in the palm of your hand all the time. Dirt is everywhere.
“There are and will continue to be places on this planet, and yet the world will not crumble. Perhaps some materials become brittle more easily, but that's really it. It's a bit like life moving forward, even though some stretches of road are in horrible condition and nobody ever drives on them. Everything in the world should be taken care of, but not everything is taken care of, and it doesn't have to be.”
