You'll Never Mop Your Floor Again

Here's a dirty little secret: I don't own a mop and bucket. I never have and I never will. 

You shouldn't own them, either, and Jamie Lee Curtis would back me up on that. The actress has been profiled in magazines and on television as a modern domestic diva, who has meticulous organizing routines that include a flat-frozen soup filing system.

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She means business when it comes to running a household. She's all about:

• Buying Christmas presents in August
• Using black binders with plastic sleeves to store movies and CDs
• Pouring baking supplies and cereal into homogeneous containers to maximize esthetics.

On being organized, she also says: "If the external life is super-organized, but the internal life is a mess, then everything is completely out of balance, and your life just looks good." Her common sense on an organized life is the most refreshing, non-Martha, perspective I've heard yet.

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In a nutshell: I want to be Jamie Lee Curtis. 

So, her gravitas when it comes to an organized life is just one of the many reasons I was sold on her "no mops" floor-washing routine. I first saw Jamie Lee demonstrate her floor skating routine on the Nate Berkus Show several years ago, and I was smitten. Not only was she demonstrating a time-effective way of cleaning the floor, she made cleaning look ridiculously fun, too.

Here's how you do it:

1. Get some white rags that have a little scrunge* to them. You must use white rags if you want to see what you're picking up from the floor. Seeing the grime will only strengthen your resolve to annihilate it, Jamie Lee-Style.
2. Fill your sink with the no-rinse floor washing fluid of your choice. This can be a vinegar-based wash, or any store bought version that makes your heart sing. Make the water as hot as you can!
3. Soak two cloths in the sink solution and ring them out.
4. Put the cloths on the floor like skates. Take off shoes and socks. Wiggle your toes (just for fun), and try not to smile because you feel like cleaning shouldn't be this joyful...
5. Now, "skate" across your floors with your bare feet on the cloths. Feel free to add a soundtrack of your choice to really maximize this clean-up/workout. Singing "Spoonful of Sugar" is also recommended cleaning protocol for the young at heart.
6. Rinse, and re-load with your sink solution as needed.

*scrunge: a scrubby-like texture that grips grime, grease, and goo on your floors. No super soft cloths, svp.

Adding Jamie Lee's floor skating cleaning technique to your domestic arsenal is a simple tweak, that will make a load of difference to the way you feel about washing your floor. In fact, I'm having some friends over for lunch today and I am already looking forward to this part of the post-lunch cleanup. My floor skating playlist is queued up, and my white cloths and vinegar are at the ready.

And, if you need a little Jamie Lee inspiration to kick-start your adoration for her perspective on tackling domestic drudgery she has said:

"There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this."

If "how to do this" means cleaning my floor while saving time, staying active, and having fun, then count me among the trailblazers. Happy floor skating, fellow mop-haters!

If you love Jamie Lee as much as I do, you'll love to badmouth Martha just as much! Plus, here's a great vinegar recipe for cleaning your floors.