Songs to Help you Clean Your Apartment
Usually, an apartment requires a thorough cleaning about once a week, depending on how many roommates you have. This is, however, not exactly everyone's favorite activity. The hardest task is typically not the cleaning itself, but mobilizing yourself and your roommates to partake.
I have found that musical motivation is the best method to get everyone to pitch in and do their share. The proper auditory accompaniment can transform a reluctant bunch of roommates into Del Fontaine and the Cleaning Fontones. Perhaps that's a bit exaggerated, but I've found that certain songs just bring people together and make cleaning the apartment less of a chore and a bit closer to being a therapeutic exercise.
photo courtesty of Mia Mabanta
Now, it is difficult to find a single album that truly encapsulates and drives an apartment cleaning. Thus, I have taken the liberty to recommend some songs that match up particularly well with some of the more common chores.
Your first task will be to get everyone up and ready. If it is Saturday morning, you'll have to get everyone off the couch or out of their rooms. Put on I've Got a Feeling by the Beatles. The version from Anthology 3 is the best, but the Let it Be version will suffice. This song is perfect for opening up the windows, letting in some fresh air and dance-walk-gliding over to the cleaning cabinet under the sink. You'll be so excited that you will take out every product available, thus ensuring the thorough use of each.
Other choices that also build initiative for joint cleaning ventures are Thank You by Barry and the Remains or Can You Get to That by Funkadelic.
Most cleaning starts in the kitchen; as the center of food preparation, it is advisable to keep this room as hygienic as possible, and since it is a communal area it is likely to be the messiest. When doing the dishes, you are going to need a song to which you can sing and subtly groove, since dancing is constrained when you are washing the pots and pans. Put on Oh Yoko by John Lennon or Roberta Flack's Reverend Lee.
Once you start mopping the kitchen you can really let loose. I've personally found that a mop makes a great dance partner, especially to such gems as Take your Mama Out by the Scissor Sisters, The Bar-Kays' Too Hot to Stop, or if you are really into mopping, Midnight Voyage by Ghostland Observatory. Be careful with this song, as it may result in the destruction, rather than the cleaning of your kitchen. This song has a notorious and well documented history of engendering spontaneous parties and rerouting good intentions.
There are absolutely no songs that are good for cleaning the bathroom. This should not be taken as an excuse to avoid cleaning the bathroom.
During vacuuming, listen to Close to Me by the Cure or This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) by the Talking Heads. Vacuuming, in some inchoate and vague way, reminds me of the eighties and these tracks represent the best of that decade's musical output.
With this list of songs at your disposal, you'll be able to transform yourself and your roommates from complacent couch potatoes into a whirlwind of melodic cleaning activity.
Do you have suggestions for the list? Get back to us with what tunes you listen to while you do your chores. Also, your feedback on the above list is appreciated. For more tips on cleaning your apartment, especially before you landlord does a walk through, check out the MyNewPlace apartment guide!
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April 2nd, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I'm fairly certain I was listening to something like this when that photograph was taken…so funky!
http://www.seeqpod.net/search/?plid=ec9e03bbfc
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I like to clean my bathroom to “I'm too sexy" by Right Said Fred, it keeps me motivated while in the presence of so many mirrors. Also by the end of the song I've stripped off enough clothes to go ahead and get in the shower to cleanse my self of the sweat I mustered up in cleaning the grime from my shower!
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Indeed, Mr. Phil, a veritable Picasso of getting down and proud owner of valentine's underwear, is the visual star of this article.
I anticipate many comments asking for the whereabouts and number of such a renaissance man.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
The best cleaning music? I'd have to go with Calvin Harris. That and the Lotus remixes album.
Iron maiden can work too.
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
like sirens calling out to couch-strewn bodies, nothing incites action like the Jackson 5, “I want you back."
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:29 pm
When Jill Is decides that it is high time to throw down on some scrubba dubba, she ALWAYS puts on Ain't Got No Home, by the Band.
Not only does it remind her of the previous night's revelry, but Levon on the skins, keeps her keepin' on through any amount of cleaning.
LEVON!
April 4th, 2008 at 6:51 am
For the most part I'm partial to classic rock when I clean my house. Some suggestions: Canned Heat ‘On the Road Again', Blue Swede ‘Hooked on a Feeling', Elvis Presley ‘Suspicious Minds', Franz Ferdinand ‘Jacqueline', Janis Joplin ‘Me and Bobby McGee', Rolling Stones ‘Tumbling Dice' and anything by Tom Petty, CCR, and Grateful Dead will do the trick. These have all been tested to great success.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
anything but ‘input output translation'
April 9th, 2008 at 8:32 am
actually, i think the song responsible for those moves was this: http://www.seeqpod.com/search/?plid=a669de593e.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Beck - “Go It Alone"? (If people don't wanna help out)
April 10th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Miss Mia Mabanta, on whom we rely for many of our more personal photos on articles on “Roommates," that certainly is the anthem of curmudgeons unwilling to pitch in and help with melodious mopping and dancing disinfecting.
FYI, your seeqpod embed code leaves the would be linker wanting. (no song played for me) I was severely disappointed.