The “Cleaning Alpha” is the person in your household who cares the most about how things look and/or how tasks are done. This person sets the standard for “how we do here,” and anything short of this standard, for any given task, will not be tolerated—either implicitly or explicitly. As in, either the other individuals in the constellation will hear about it and be asked to redo their work, or the Cleaning Alpha will quietly redo the work others have done so that it is to their taste/comfort level. Or some sort of mix of both.

Here are a few signs you might be the Cleaning Alpha (Note: Me = these things IRL):

You have told your partner YOU ARE FOLDING TOWELS WRONG, *THIS* IS HOW WE DO IT.

You find yourself constantly picking up spaces (begrudgingly or otherwise) to maintain a certain level of tidiness.
You insist on being the one to make the bed/change the sheets because you like a bed configured in a particular way.
You lose your temper when you come to use the kitchen and find dirty counters and dishes in the sink.
You fantasize about creating a seminar—with mandatory attendance—on how to properly load the dishwasher.

Feel free to turn this into flyers that you post around your home.

Cleaning Alphahood often includes a strong preference around the timing of when something is done. For example, a person might prefer a very clean kitchen and will clean it exquisitely, but they are also OK doing it whenever they get around to it, letting dishes sit in the sink for a period of time while their partner (the Alpha in this scenario) quietly froths at the mouth because the dishes have been sitting around for said period of time.

As for the provenance of this trait, firstly, it’s likely that somewhere along the way, the current Cleaning Alpha got imprinted by another Cleaning Alpha, and that Cleaning Alpha now is the voice in the current Alpha’s head. That voice is what dictates why towels must be folded Just So, corners must be cleaned, etc. I myself always think of my mother jokingly invoking Leona Helmsley, the Clean Queen of Mean or whatever* from the 80s hotel industry, as a measure of my cleaning performance. “What would Leona say if she were to inspect this toilet?” she would ask.

*Not a good role model

Secondly, Cleaning Aphahood is probably tied to various aspects of temperament—how one is wired can be tied to how one prefers things to be (PS if you are curious about the specifics of where your temperament meets your household landscape, take my Housekeeping Temperament quiz). Some examples:

If you skew high on the sensory-sensitive end of things, you are easily overwhelmed by sensory information and therefore have strong opinions about how things should be kept in your space. (I personally get overloaded when crumbs stick to my feet, which is why I’m vigilant about keeping my floors clean.)
If you are less flexible (and a Questioner!), maybe you figured your best way for things to be organized and can’t tolerate deviation from that. (I once watched a friend mop up water from a broken dishwasher and lectured him on how he was mopping up wrong. I know, I’m fun.)
If you are an active person, always moving around and doing things—puttering, if you will—you may be naturally inclined to be always tidying because you pointed yourself at that task. (I will almost always choose puttering over… basically every sedentary to-do item.)

Altogether, whether or not you are the Cleaning Alpha is probably a combination of nature + nurture—your instinctual preferences combined with how you were raised.

An additional layer in play might be how much cleaning was tied to your emotional survival in some way. Like, if you are a sensitive person who grew up in a chaotic environment, keeping things in a particular way might have made you feel calm and in control, and that has (either consciously or unconsciously) been brought to bear on your current environment. Or, conversely, maybe if someone was sharply on your case about cleaning, you might feel rebellious about keeping to a set of habits, just to feel control over things.

A word of caution for all you Alphas (reminding myself here as well…): Take care that your proclivities don’t overreach into disempowering your people to the point of their weaponized incompetence. Weaponized incompetence is where someone willfully won’t learn how to do something because they either subconsciously or consciously like the fact that you are doing it for them and so they seem to constantly “forget” how to do that task or basically go limp around being able to do it. It’s a maneuver taken from the Passive-Aggressive Playbook—I don’t wanna do it, ergo Imna pretend I CAAAAAN’T do it. (Or you, Alpha, have put too much pressure on me to do a thing perfectly and this is how I’m rebelling against that…)

As for the Betas out there, sorry for being on your case, but also, you’re welcome for keeping the house nice. But also sorry for being Leona H.

Love,

The Fun One

Who is the Cleaning Alpha in your home?