The quiet habits that keep a home clean — without spending your weekends on it.

I am not a cleaning expert. I am a man whose home has simply never been messy.

My name is Kenji Tanaka. I am sixty-eight years old, a retired salaryman, and I live with my wife Yuki in a small home in Kyoto we have shared for thirty-eight years. We have never owned a storage unit, never hired a cleaner, and never lost a weekend to cleaning.

The home stays clean because of what we do in the first thirty seconds after we walk through the door, and the five minutes before we sleep. That is the whole secret — and it is the kind of thing no one can sell you, which is exactly why no one has told you.

Kenji & Yuki Tanaka.

I worked thirty-five years for a company that made industrial packaging. The most interesting thing about my career is that it is over. I am an ordinary man who lives in an ordinary home — but the home is always clean, and the reason has nothing to do with effort.

My mother taught me six habits before I was ten years old. Yuki perfected them over thirty-eight years of marriage. I have spent the last few years writing them all down, because I have watched too many good families spend money they did not have on products they did not need, fighting messes that should never have formed in the first place.

— Kenji Tanaka, Kyoto