Comic Strips

Done this before and I'm in the process of doing it right now.

Moved in three months ago and I'm about 95% unpacked. A family member is visiting in six days and I need to complete unpacking and do a good cleaning.

I've come up with the most cursed business idea in history.

I envision founding what is effectively a suspiciously cheap home-cleaning service. Like a cleaning service, we'll require access to your home. We'll need a key or door code. However, we don't actually ever send anyone to clean your house.

Instead, we let you do the cleaning. We don't DO the cleaning. We INSPECT your cleaning. When signing up for our service, you're signing up to have a cleaning inspector show up to your house at any random time between 8 AM and 5 PM. It will be completely at random. It could be months between the random inspections, or you could get inspected 3 days in a row.

The inspector will be a form of your choosing. You can sign up for an angry boot camp drill-instructor type. You can sign up for someone who will more have the vibe of a grossed-out boyfriend/girlfriend. Or they can send a team of older inspectors that will make it feel like you're being berated by your parents. The choice of shame is up to you!

The inspectors will go through your home, call you a slob, and belittle your cleaning ability. We won't make it too ridiculous. By default, they would just expect you to keep things clean and neat, not lab-grade sterile. But if your laundry pile grows, you need to dust, or the bathrooms are a mess? Well you're going to hear about it! If you are present, they will shame you in person. Regardless if you are there or not, you will be sent a report documenting in disgusting detail all the messes and cleaning errors in your house. The report will be filled with professional-grade photos of your filth. And to provide further damning motivation? The report will be posted on the public internet for anyone to view for free.

Note: customers who are clearly using this as a sex thing will be dropped from the service.

Ooor just get yourself a service sub.

Last minute panic is a legitimate strategy

Even then, it only ever goes into "acceptable" levels of tidyness

Shame cleaning is the only reason my apartment doesn't look like a scene out of Hoarders

Just have to clean up just enough to look like you didn't just clean.

I save my podcasts for cleaning. If I don’t have a podcast to listen to I am not cleaning.

There's even a word for that called scurryfunging.

I used to live in a corporate apartment that had cleaning service once per week. Ended up shame cleaning every week. It left me traumatised for life.