Organising hard surfaces – Home Cleaning and Arrangement (Senior 3 Home Science) | Ganzaa

Home Cleaning and Arrangement

Lessons

Senior 3 · Home Science

Home Cleaning and Arrangement

4 lessons

Lesson 4 of 4

Organising hard surfaces

24 min

Let's begin

Ishimwe and his younger brother share a bedroom of 3.0 m by 3.5 m. Their parents have bought two single beds, a small desk and a wardrobe. Pushed in wherever they fit, the furniture blocks the window, the door bangs against a bed and there is nowhere to sit and study. Placed with a plan, the same four pieces leave a clear walkway, a desk in daylight and room to sweep under everything. Nothing new was bought: only the arrangement changed.

This lesson covers the hard surfaces of a home: furniture, shelves, worktops and tables. You will learn the principles for placing furniture, a method for clearing clutter, and how to organise storage so that a home is easy to clean and safe to live in.

Definition

Arrangement: the way furniture and objects are placed in a room in relation to each other, the walls, doors and windows.

Traffic path (circulation route): the route people walk through a room, for example from the door to the bed or to a cupboard.

Zone: an area of a room kept for one activity, such as sleeping, studying, cooking or storing.

Focal point: the feature that the eye goes to first when entering a room, such as a window with a view, a wall hanging or a television.

Clutter: things lying about that are not needed, not used or not in their proper place. Decluttering is sorting and removing them.

Principles for placing furniture

Purpose and zones. Decide what the room is for and give each activity its own zone, so a desk is not used as a wardrobe.
Keep routes clear. Leave a walkway from the door to each zone. A common guide is at least 60 cm for a minor route and about 90 cm for a main route. Never place furniture where a door swings open.
Light and air. Do not block windows or vents. Place a desk or work table where daylight falls on it.
Balance and focal point. Arrange seats to face the focal point and to face each other for conversation. Spread large pieces round the room so one side does not look heavy.
Scale. Choose furniture that suits the size of the room. A huge sofa in a small sitting room leaves no space to move.
Easy to clean. Leave a gap under beds and cupboards, or raise them on legs, so that a broom reaches underneath.
Safety. Fix tall cupboards and shelves to the wall so they cannot tip onto a child. Keep heavy items on low shelves, run cables along walls rather than across walkways, and lock away medicines and cleaning products, out of children's reach.

Worked example

Worked example 1: will it fit, and how much floor is left? Use the room in Figure 4: 3.0 m wide and 3.5 m long. Each bed is 0.9 m by 1.9 m, the desk 1.0 m by 0.5 m and the wardrobe 1.0 m by 0.55 m.

Width left between the beds: $3.0 - 2 \times 0.9 = 1.2\,\mathrm{m}$ . The 1.0 m desk fits between them under the window, with 0.1 m to spare on each side.
Floor area of the room: $3.0 \times 3.5 = 10.5\,\mathrm{m^2}$ .
Area covered by furniture: $2(0.9 \times 1.9) + 1.0 \times 0.5 + 1.0 \times 0.55 = 3.42 + 0.5 + 0.55 = 4.47\,\mathrm{m^2}$ .
Free floor: $10.5 - 4.47 = 6.03\,\mathrm{m^2}$ , which is $\frac{6.03}{10.5} \times 100 \approx 57\%$ of the floor.
Conclusion: more than half the floor stays free, enough for a clear route and for sweeping, provided the door swing is left empty.

Decluttering: the four-box method

Clutter makes cleaning slow, hides dirt and pests, and causes trips. To clear a room, a shelf or a drawer, take everything out and sort each item into one of four boxes:

Box	What goes in	What happens next
Keep	items you use and need here	clean them and return them to a fixed place
Give away or sell	good items you no longer use (outgrown clothes, spare dishes)	pass to relatives, neighbours or a charity
Recycle or reuse	paper, bottles, tins, cardboard	separate them for collection or reuse at home
Throw away	broken items that cannot be repaired, rubbish	dispose of them in the household refuse

Then follow the rule "a place for everything, and everything in its place": every kept item gets a fixed home, so it is put back after use.

Organising shelves, worktops and tables

Clear surfaces. Keep worktops and tables nearly empty; a clear surface takes seconds to wipe.
Group like with like: cooking spices together, school books together, cleaning products together (and apart from food).
Height by use and weight. Items you use daily go between waist and eye level; heavy items such as sacks and large pots go low; things used rarely go high.
Label boxes and jars, with the contents and, for food, the date.
Use vertical space: hooks for cups and bags, shelves above a desk, boxes under a bed.

Worked example

Worked example 2: a cluttered study desk. Keza's desk holds: her S3 textbooks, last year's exercise books, three broken pens, a working lamp, empty juice bottles, a borrowed novel, a phone charger and a pile of clean clothes. Sort them.

Keep (with a fixed place): S3 textbooks on the shelf above the desk; the lamp at the back corner; the charger in a drawer.
Give away or return: the borrowed novel goes back to its owner; last year's exercise books can be passed on for revision or recycled.
Recycle or reuse: empty juice bottles.
Throw away: broken pens.
Clothes belong in the storage zone, not the study zone: fold them into the wardrobe.

designchickee: an interior designer explains how to arrange furniture. Listen for her advice on walkways, on choosing a focal point and on pieces that are the wrong scale for the room.

Warning

Common mistakes. Pushing all the furniture against the walls without thinking about routes; blocking a window or the swing of a door; putting heavy things on high shelves; storing cleaning products on the same shelf as food; and running an extension cable across a walkway. A tall, unfixed bookcase or cupboard can tip forward if a child climbs it.

Tip

Memory hook: "Zone it, route it, light it, fix it." Give each activity a zone, keep a clear route from the door, let daylight reach the work area, and fix anything tall to the wall.

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Practice

Define a traffic path and a zone.
Give three principles to follow when arranging furniture in a sitting room.
Name the four boxes of the four-box method and give one item that belongs in each.
Why should heavy items be kept on low shelves?
A kitchen is 2.5 m wide. A cooker 0.6 m deep stands against one long wall and a cupboard 0.6 m deep against the opposite wall. How wide is the walkway between them? Is it wide enough for a main route?
A sitting room is 4 m by 5 m. The furniture covers 7 m². What percentage of the floor is free?
Gatete places his desk facing the wall in the darkest corner, so that the window side can hold a large cupboard. Evaluate his plan using the principles of arrangement, and suggest a better one.

Show answersHide answers

A traffic path is the route people walk through a room, such as door to bed. A zone is an area kept for one activity, such as sleeping or studying.
Any three: keep clear routes and the door swing free; do not block windows; arrange seats round a focal point and towards each other; balance large pieces; choose furniture that suits the room's size; leave space to clean underneath; fix tall pieces to the wall.
Keep (a textbook in use), give away or sell (outgrown clothes), recycle or reuse (empty bottles), throw away (broken pens).
They are less likely to fall and injure someone, the shelf is more stable, and they are easier and safer to lift down.
$2.5 - 0.6 - 0.6 = 1.3$ m. Yes: 1.3 m is more than the 90 cm suggested for a main route.
Area $= 4 \times 5 = 20$ m²; free $= 20 - 7 = 13$ m²; $\frac{13}{20} \times 100 = 65\%$ .
Poor: a study zone needs daylight, and the cupboard blocks the window, darkening the room and cutting off air. Better: put the desk under or beside the window, and place the cupboard against a solid wall away from the window, fixed to the wall.

1Principles for placing furniture

2Decluttering: the four-box method

3Organising shelves, worktops and tables

Principles for placing furniture

Decluttering: the four-box method

Organising shelves, worktops and tables