Spring cleaning tips for the season

With temperatures on the rise across much of the country, many people are looking at their cluttered house wondering, what spring cleaning tips can help get me motivated this year?

Spring cleaning tips are more than just how and when to begin. There are a host of ideas for room by room cleaning, organizing and overall breathing new life into your winterized home. But let’s start first with the why and the when.

 

Why put spring cleaning tips into action?

According to Chrissy Halton of OrganiseMyHouse.com, spring cleaning tips were traditionally used to rid the home of the dirt and musty grime that built up during the winter as a result of open fires to heat and cook. Today, we don’t usually see that same problem. But something about throwing open the windows to the warm air and sunshine makes us want to present a clean house to Mother Nature — you know, as a thank you for the fact that winter has come to a close.

So when should you start? We say, whenever you get the itch you better scratch it.

• Tackle smaller cleaning jobs on a daily basis so you don’t feel overwhelmed.
• Block out a chunk of time for distraction-free cleaning for bigger jobs.
• Pick a time when you feel most energized. If you’re a morning person, get up and get going right away. A night owl? You may get your best cleaning done after the kiddos are in bed.

 

Spring cleaning tips

1. Make a plan.

Do you want to focus on the interior or exterior of your home? Is it better for your schedule to clean one room each day? Or would your rather categorize by genre, as in — today I’ll do all the bathrooms. Another day, it’s all the appliances. Whatever you select, following spring cleaning tips means you’ll plan rather than just wandering from one task to another, never really finishing any of them.

2. Gather your supplies

There’s nothing worse than when you’re all geared up to put your spring cleaning tips to good use and you have to keep running downstairs for the dust rag, and then out to the garage for the cleaning solution. You have a couple of options when putting spring cleaning tips to good use.

• Use a cleaning supply caddy.

A box or caddy of some sort with a handle that contains every cleaning supply you think you might need is great. Then you can just move from room to room, or project to project and tote the caddy along with you.

• Try a cleaning apron. A large pocketed cleaning apron can help keep the things you need close at hand, as well as keeping some of the dust and grime from makings its new home on your clothes.
• Add some music via headphones or stereo as one supply to keep you motivated. Or dial up your favorite podcast. Anything that helps to keep your spring cleaning tips at the top of your energy list.

3. Know how to work a room

Sure, this is no cocktail party, but one of the important spring cleaning tips is knowing how to work the room.

• Go from top to bottom. This ensures you won’t be cleaning the same things more than once. For an old school movie reference, it’s little like the famous orphan Annie said when she arrived at Daddy Warbucks’ house. “First I’ll do the windows. Then the floors. That way if I drip…”

It’s good advice because, let’s be honest, as nice as it would be to have the Daddy Warbucks staff taking over your spring cleaning tips, it’s not likely to happen.

• Start cleaning the area where you walk into the room and then work in a clockwise fashion until you’ve made it back to where you began.

4. Gather items to return later

If you’re trying to save time and stay on task, one essential spring cleaning tips is to stay in the room where you are working. Nothing derails a project than leaving the space in order to put away something that belongs in another room. Before you know it, you’ll be cleaning in the room you just entered, and the original space will remain unfinished.

Instead, have a box labeled “put away.” Here you can toss any items that don’t belong in the current space. Later, you can deliver all the items to their proper homes at the same time.

5. Declutter first — and as you go

Speaking of boxes. You’re going to need a couple more. Having three boxes labeled, recycle, donate, toss. As you come across various items during your spring cleaning tips day, put the items in the appropriate bin and keep moving forward.

Put the deep clean into spring cleaning tips

If we’re talking about true spring cleaning tips — and we are — then we have to move past the every day chores such as vacuuming, dusting, laundry and dishes and get to the nitty gritty core.

The stuff we don’t always even think to do. Stuff like:

• Carpets and upholstery — vacuum, of course. Shampoo, most likely.
• Doormats — shake them out. Sweep around them. Replace if they’re getting too worn. It’s among the first things people see when they approach your home. If your doormats look dirty, the rest of your house reflects that. And if they actually are dirty, the rest of your house will reflect that too — because the dirt will be tracked in.
• Ceiling fans. How on earth do ceiling fans collect so much dirt if they are never in the off position long enough to allow the dust to gather there? Good questions, and the answer is, we don’t know. What we do know is one of the spring cleaning tips is to clean the blades and get rid of the many dust bunnies who have taken up residence on the blades.

  

• Wash the walls, baseboards and doors. It’s amazing how much cleaner a freshly vacuumed or mopped floor will appear if the baseboards surrounding the space have also succumbed to this spring cleaning tips. As for the walls, sometimes you don’t even realize how dirty they’ve become until you clean one. So beware — washing one wall or door may create a domino effect. But in the end, your house will look, feel and be, so much cleaner.

For some people, spring cleaning tips can only take you so far. If you’re looking to actually get into a fresh home altogether, we can help. Check out these amazing listings in Ivins, Utah and get used to having a new space to enjoy… and keep clean.