Tips & Tricks for Spring Cleaning

The beginning of a new year and new season is the perfect time to start cleaning and make some adjustments around your home. And many times, people don’t end up cleaning because they feel overwhelmed or have too many other things going on. Although it can be tough to clean an entire home with a busy work schedule, we have a few tips and tricks to try to, hopefully, make things easier. So, before you start to binge-watch another television show – as tempting as that may sound – try hitting the store to pick up some cleaning supplies, and then we can walk you through the rest.

Cleaning the Kitchen

The kitchen in your home is most likely one of the places in the house that sees the most volume of traffic, especially if you have children that are constantly eating and running around. In the kitchen, there seem to be constant crumbs and messes happening. From taking food in and out of the fridge all day to cooking your favorite meals, the kitchen can become a battlefield of chaos within minutes.

Here are a couple of spots in your kitchen that might need a deep clean and how to get to them, according to Country Living:

• Cleaning inside and around appliances: In order to make efficient use of space, many times refrigerators, ovens, and other kitchen appliances are put into tight-knit places around the room; but unfortunately, this makes a perfect place for dirt, pet hair, and dust particles to accumulate. It can make a big difference to pull out the fridge and vacuum the coils, sanitize the dishwasher on the sanitize setting, and clean out the oven.
• Wash the windows: By taking a mixture of two parts of water to one part of white distilled vinegar, you can make a solution to create the perfect smudge-free window cleaner. Wipe the inside of windows from side to side, and the outside of the windows from top to bottom, which makes it easier to see which side needs any further cleaning.
• Get rid of old food: We are all guilty of letting some food products sit for too long in the back of the pantry, and need to do an inventory of what needs to be tossed. Go through the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer for foods that are past their expiration dates or those items you know you’ll never use, and throw them away. If you have cans and jars of food that you know you won’t eat but have not expired yet, you can donate them.
• Organize your pantry & inventory small appliances: Use old wooden crates or wicker baskets to keep bottles and packages standing upright. And, that mixer that you got as a wedding gift that you’ll probably never use, donate them.

Cleaning the kitchen is a great way to get a big start on your spring cleaning as it’s probably one of the biggest, most time-consuming areas in your home. However, that doesn’t mean you stop there. Let’s head to the next room: the bathroom.

Taking Care of the Bathrooms

Unfortunately, cleaning the bathrooms typically get a bad rap. It’s usually the room in the house that can get the dirtiest if not cleaned on a regular basis. Luckily, there are ways to make cleaning the bathrooms more efficient, easier, and maybe more enjoyable once they’re clean.

Here are a couple of tips and tricks for cleaning the bathroom during your spring-cleaning process:

• Try to get organized: Organize cabinets and drawers, even if that means using clear plastic drawers or small crates to keep everything together.
• Disposing of old medications: We’ve all been there, right? You buy a bottle of medicine that you need for two days and then never use it again. So, take this opportunity to go in and find old medications that have expired and dispose of them properly. This concept also applies to old toiletries that might have expired by now.
• Wash and scrub tiles and surfaces: Scrub down the shower, the bathtub, the countertops, as well as the toilet and tile around it. It’s also good not to forget to wash down the shower curtain and the wash and/or shake out the floor mats.

Now that your bathroom is clean, you can feel better about taking a shower, a bath, or even having guests over to use your guest bathroom. Let’s move on to the next room of the house: the Bedroom.

Tidying up the Bedrooms

Tidying up the bedrooms can feel overwhelming to clean sometimes because there’s bedding to clean, organizing closets and clothes, and other miscellaneous things. So, where do we start?

Here are a few things you can do to get your bedroom a little more clean and organized:

• Wash all the bedding: Sometimes, we don’t always wash our bedding as often as we should probably be doing; so, during our spring cleaning time, we should be sure to was comforters, blankets, pillowcases, sheets, etc. And, it may be time to swap your heavy comforter for a lighter one as the warmer months approach.
• Dust and organize: It may come as no surprise, but the bedroom, along with other rooms, should be dusted from top-down. Start with cleaning walls and the ceiling fan, move to the baseboards and finally sweep up all the dust. As far as organizing goes, try to go through your clothes, shoes, etc., and purge anything that you no longer need. Then, find ways to store your clothes nice and neat, whether that’s by hanging more stuff or getting bins.

Now that your bedrooms are cleaned and organized, let’s head to one of the last rooms on the list: the Living Room.

Sprucing Up the Living Room & The Rest of the Home

Hopefully, for most people, the living room is probably one of the easiest to clean. Mostly, all it takes is a bit of getting under cushions and making sure to vacuum crevasses and under furniture. However, you will still need to dust ceiling fans and light fixtures, clean windowsills and window tracts, vacuum curtains and window blinds, as well as wipe down any cobwebs that might be lurking around.

After cleaning much of the house, you should start to feel refreshed and maybe even a little less stressed knowing that you took care of important things around the house. And, according to Molly Maid, you can even get the whole family involved. Starting as early as age 3, children can start to clean by showing them fun strategies to help out. Molly Maid suggests showing them how to “slam dunk” dirty clothes into the hamper, turn up the volume on some favorite music, create a chore chart and make re-arranging their room a part of the clean-up so they can get excited about their new surroundings.

So, the next time you think about putting off your spring cleaning, try not to get overwhelmed and just go for it. You might be surprised at how much better you feel after it’s all said and done.