Want a Clean, Organized, Peaceful Home? Melissa Dilkes Pateras Says It's Easier than You Think
Watch one of Melissa Dilkes Pateras's viral videos about house repairs or cleaning, and you may think she does this for a living; of course, she's great at keeping a tidy home! But a deeper look proves something different. Pateras is not a professional housekeeper. She is a person with a busy life—filled with a career, wife, and kids—who wants to make the task of keeping a tidy, inviting home a bit easier.
"When I first started doing it, it was just for fun," she tells us of her early days posting her laundry and home repair tips. "But then I started reading the comments and saw that people don't know how to do some of these things. And I thought that was so interesting because if you weren't taught, how on earth would you learn?"
Her non-judgmental ease (and hilarious dry humor) makes Pateras, known on social media as 'The Laundry Lesbian,' fun to watch, and her book, A Dirty Guide to a Clean Home: Housekeeping Hacks You Can't Live Without, a joy to read. She meets you where you are. Because, as she tells us in our conversation, our homes needn't be perfect Instagram-worthy spaces. They simply need to feel good and support us so we can live our lives to the fullest.
A CONVERSATION WITH MELISSA DILKES PATERAS
A big part of your message is about removing the shame that often comes with caring for our homes. As adults, we may feel we should automatically know how to do certain things, like laundry or maintenance. How has this inspired the way you offer people tips?
Our parents and our grandparents just seemed to know things— they knew how to do finances, how to do laundry, how to cook, how to bake—and we never really asked how they knew all the things. I was fortunate to have my [grandmother] Nan, who taught me so much. She was such a role model who passed on knowledge to me. She sat there and showed me things. But many people didn’t have that, and I see that in the comments I get regularly. That is why I expanded from doing laundry [videos] to cleaning, repairs, and everything else. Also, there are lots of products out there. You walk into a grocery store, look at this wall of products, and think, how do I know what I need or how to use it? People want a clean house, and they want it to be easy and fast the first time. But nobody really knows how to use these products. So, I started going through the very basic science of cleaning products, as well, to explain how they work and what they do.
You believe a kept home is a form of anxiety relief and self-care, but this does not mean we must have perfect, immaculate homes. Tell us more.
Yes, this comes back to the shame and guilt part. I've watched people in videos who have said, 'I don't know how to clean; I wasn't brought up like this, and I'm embarrassed.' I've also had so many people comment and say this. We put a lot of expectations on ourselves as people and parents. We over-program our kids, do 50 activities a week, and don't necessarily even have time to make dinner, let alone clean the house. But we feel like we're supposed to live the way people think people are living. The key is that people aren't necessarily living as easily as you think. We have social media where people always show you their best life, but that is just one tiny corner where they're taking the photo. It's really important to keep that in mind. I don't believe in Instagram perfection. I believe in what works for you. That's the main thing.
I have severe ADHD. I find, when I have visual busyness all around me, it adds so much to my busyness in my mind, all in conjunction with thinking, how am I ever going to get this done? Where do I start? How come I can't find things? It can get overwhelming. We do mirror our environment, to a degree. So it is a form of self care.
How do we get in our way when trying to keep a tidy home?
A lot of people think I'm going to do the whole place. Then they get discouraged because it becomes way messier than before, and you think, now what do I do? So, I like to break it all down into small bits and pieces. The book's theme is to keep up instead of catch up. It seems like a lot of work on the front end, but it's easier in the long run when you're keeping up and doing little things here and there. For instance, I never wanted to be a laundry day person. Because how on earth do you live your life? How do you get enjoyment when you're just putting it all on this one day? Who would look forward to the weekend if you're just cleaning on Saturday and doing laundry on Sunday? So, I try to help people space it out and do simple, little tasks throughout the week.
The main thing I want to say is that I know it can seem overwhelming, it can be a mountain, but let's just get started and let's start small. And it's about what works for you in your space.
So where's the best place to start?
If you're living in what you feel is overwhelming clutter, the key is to start somewhere. Just start. This doesn't mean organize your entire house. It can be one small drawer. It might be a junk drawer in the kitchen or your T-shirt drawer. Just start there and then work your way along. And I say 'along' because it might be one drawer in your bedroom today, and then it might be a section in your closet tomorrow. It's easy for me to say, 'Pull out everything from your closet!' But that is unrealistic because I don't know your timeframes. You could be a single mom with three kids with no support. So start small. And set the goal for what you really want in your home. I don't care how long it takes you to get to your goal. Set it for what works for you, and start small.
How should we approach tossing things and reducing clutter?
You don’t have to be a minimalist. What I like to say is be thoughtful about your things. Think about each thing you have and consider, Do I need it? How do I feel if I keep it? I want to encourage people to think about everything they're storing, cleaning, and moving from one house to the other. I want people to think about things they haven't used in the last 10 years, but they keep for that 'maybe one day.' So be thoughtful.
Now, it’s not that hard to throw out mugs. Teachers may get 50 best-teacher mugs or ornaments. What do you really do with all of those? But when it comes to things that are very important to you, keep it. I'm not asking you to throw out your childhood blanket.
It’s important to remember that we are consumers, and we always want to upgrade to newer and shinier things. But then suddenly, we have six slicers. So again, this is about being thoughtful. Before buying something think, Do I need it? Do I have room to store it? Why am I buying this? If we don't think about it, we eventually end up with all this clutter of things that we don't know what to do with. It can be incredibly claustrophobic with all the stuff you've accumulated and feel you must keep. Clothes are a big one. We often keep clothes in our closets that still have tags. But it's not giving you your money back by keeping them. So again, I don't want you to live in a vacant building. I just want you to be thoughtful and mindful. After we've cleaned and decluttered, you can feel like you can breathe.
What do you hope people ultimately take away from your book?
One of the things that I constantly say is the only way you can learn is to make mistakes. Try it and fail. Many people, especially women, are afraid to try any type of home maintenance or DIY or anything. They think I could never do that. Or we become reliant on men to do it, for the most part. On the flip side of that, I feel incredibly sorry for men, because men have this huge expectation that they're all supposed to be general contractors and know all these things. They all are supposed to know how to fix everything or they’re failures. Even something as simple as caulking. I make a lot of jokes about caulking, but really, it's as simple as it takes some practice, it takes a couple of times, maybe you make a mess the first time, and then you learn. That is the only way to learn. That's how I learned all of these things—how to clean, do laundry, organize, renovate, all of it—by learning from my mistakes.
Melissa Dilkes Pateras is an author who creates viral videos with housecleaning tips and tricks. She also works in social services, which she's done for over twenty years. She lives in Ontario, Canada, with her wife and three children.
