I often hear people describing their house in terms of "clean" and "neat" being two separate battles. I would agree with that. There are homes that LOOK orderly and uncluttered but the surfaces are dirty and the floor hasn't been swept in a year. There's dog hair on the rug such that the rug colors are muted. But otherwise--everything has a place and everything is in it's place. It's NEAT, but not clean.

Then there are those whose homes look like a tornado hit it, but you could eat off of any exposed surface: clean, but not neat.

These two states of being really feed one another. We are all familiar with the difficulties that come with a home that's disorderly. You can't find something when you need it, it's hard on the eyes, it's embarrassing when a repairman (or a policeman!) show up at your home, and things are ruined because they're kept in inappropriate places. But you also can't ACCESS the spaces that need cleaning. One person argued that effectively, her disorder was keeping a large portion of her home clean by "sealing it off" from the dirt and dust that would accumulate there. That's someone eager to rationalize their chaos!

But let's take the first situation I described--the neat but not clean home. It would really be very easy to go about cleaning a home where all of the surfaces are exposed and accessible. In this respect, focusing on "neat" will only make focusing on "clean" far easier. If you are living in a space that is not neat AND not clean, tackle neatness first. As long as the cleanliness problem is not contributing negatively to your health or safety, try to tackle being neat first. Create a habit of neat. Then tackle clean.

It's worthwhile to do some research on how to live more orderly--especially if disorder is a constant recurrence in your home. Learn to organize your space around how you actually live instead of trying to live around some ideal you've set up for how you want to organize. Don't fight who you are, work with it. When you've managed to keep your spaces neat for a month and it's become routine, then start creating routines of cleanliness. The last thing you want to do is start building cleanliness habits that will be destroyed by your inability to maintain the space.

Clean and neat are different. But you need both for long-term cleanliness of your home.