Seiso or Shine. By now, we hope that you are already happy with the two steps. Your space should not be cleared of all the unnecessary items. If it is still not yet, then probably you could review the unnecessary item criteria here. With that, we hope that by now, your space is only running with a minimal item for you to do your work. Be it in the kitchen, bedroom, living room or even office and study room. All should be managed in low a low waste condition and arranged in a perfectly well fashion. For a review on how to do reduce waste do visit here, and for a review on how to strategize your room arrangement do visit here.
Once all that is done then the next step is to make your place to shine. A place to where you will enjoy being, a place of tranquillity. The space you are in is not de cluttered and only essentials are supposed to be within reach. The rest has been store together nearby for those needed quarterly, or at a distance for those needed once a year. Please visit the criteria again here.
Clean and shine
When we want to do it a shine thinks of it like this “Clean your space and give a shine.” You want the place not be clean but also to shine to sparkle as my kids usually said. So, it is more than just cleaning it is to make sure that it is always clear, sparking clean. But, this requires a new thought process as a Japanese. It is not easy, but it is possible. The more we make it a habit the more satisfying it become. Do bring along the whole family and friends with the new philosophy. And, to be able to do it, everyone of us need to be humble and need to say that cleaning is MY JOB, and not somebody else
First impression is everything, see it through the eyes of the visitor. Every one of us is a cleaner, clear all the way every time.
SBAH
In doing the cleaning, we need to think about not only cleaning on a daily basis but also to start thinking about what are the sources of contamination. This is also as important is cleaning. A simple question to think. Do want to clean every day or do we want to clean on a weekly basis, monthly basis or even better yearly basis. That is the question!!!
CLR
But, before we move into the answer above, let’s see how we could approach cleaning. In this case, when we say cleaning, it is not a complete process. What we need to think about is cleaning, lubrication and retightening or CLR in short. Since, for the space to shine, we not only need to clean, we also need to do lubrication so that there is no squeaking sound as well as re-tightening so that nothing falls. That is when our space is in pristine condition. A condition of peace and tranquillity.
So how do we approach CLR, we move from macro to micro or from large areas or spaces into our individual spaces. How do you feel when you see a table in superb is spotless while the rest of the space is in a rut. Selfish perhaps.
Main spaces / Macro Areas
Common area, walls, ceilings, lights, storage areas, toilets, “junk yards”, shelves, filing cabinets etc.
Individual / Self Area
Workstation, chairs, drawers, computers, cabinet, shelves etc. Clear away things beneath your table.
Micro / Tools
Telephone, keyboard, mouse, calculator, hole puncher, stapler. etc
On top, performing CLR from common area to personal tool, it is also recommended if we could add a schedule and identify the schedule for our CLR. For a space at home, this may not be mandatory, but for an office it is seriously recommended.
Next we will be covering on how we could further improve our CLR process.