Spring cleaning, that annual rite of preparing for the end of the long winter indoors, has changed since your grandmother's day. You may even remember your own mother scrubbing walls, and stripping and waxing linoleum floors.
Today's homes are so much easier to care for. Our spring cleaning takes less time and uses more convenient and safer cleaning products than a generation ago, but it's still a task we face each year.
Even if you give your house a good fall cleaning every year, you’ll want to get ready for warmer weather by spring cleaning. Have the inside of the house spic and span by the start of summer, and you’ll feel better about spending more time outside planting, gardening, and sprucing up your home’s exterior.
What Should You Clean?
- Have the fireplace professionally cleaned and safety checked. Replace your furnace filters.
- Clean the insides and outsides of windows, window wells, and sills.
- Window blinds can be cleaned while still on the windows, by using a small, soft sweeper attachment and a damp cloth to wipe off marks.
- Clean your oven and stovetop. Read your manufacturer’s cleaning suggestions since they vary according to materials.
- Clean out your refrigerator. Especially if you have kids in the house, you probably have spills back in your frig that you don’t even know about. Remove all the food and the drawers and trays and do a deep-clean with a vinegar-water or baking soda-water solution.
- Clean the nooks and crannies of your shower, especially the corner caulk that gets black with grime and mold. Regular use of bleach isn’t good for tile grout, but once every spring, a good scrubbing with a bleach-hot water solution is going to give your shower a fresh boost of clean. Be sure to wear gloves and wear old clothes.
- Give your wood furniture a lemon oil treatment, rubbing the oil in with a soft cloth and letting it soak in before buffing it off with a clean soft cloth.
- Get a step ladder and clean your ceiling lights and ceiling fans.
- Spring cleaning season is a good time to change the batteries in your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors.
- Clear the clutter out of closets, cabinets and drawers. Clear out all old clothes you’re not wearing any more, donate them to charity or sell them at a resale shop and make room for those bright, new summer clothes!
- Flip your mattresses and launder or dry clean mattress covers, bedskirts, pillow sham covers, bedspreads, and any other bedding you don’t regularly launder.
Get Your Kids Involved
Kids can handle some big cleaning jobs, and they may even enjoy them! Get your kids involved in spring cleaning by saving the fun jobs for them. When cleaning ceiling fan blades, window blinds, vinyl shower curtains and window screens, take them to the back yard and lay them on the grass. Have the kids squirt or spray soapy water on them and then squirt them off with a hose.
Spring Cleaning Charts and Lists
However you decide to spring clean, first make up a list or a calendar style chart listing everything you need to do in every room. A well kept list will help you remember all the little jobs and the out-of-sight jobs, like ceiling fans. As you finish a task, mark it off your list.
Spring Cleaning Method #1 – A Little Bit at a Time
If you don’t have the time to dig in and spend a week just spring cleaning, try tackling one big job when you do your regular weekly house cleaning. You’ll have to start before winter’s officially over, but you can get it done over time.
The first week, deep clean the bathrooms when you do your weekly cleaning. The following week, tackle the windows – inside and out – in half or all of the upstairs; the week after, the windows downstairs.
Spring Cleaning Method #2 – Task by Task
Make a list of all the jobs you have to do and ender each one list the rooms in which you need to do it. For instance: “Flip mattresses and launder bedding: Master bedroom, Kids’ bedroom, Guest bedroom.” “Wash windows: Living room, kitchen, bedrooms, etc.”
Take one day to do each task, going throughout the house and getting that one task done. You’ll only need one or two cleaning supplies at a time, so you won’t have to tote all your supplies around to each room.
Spring Cleaning Method #3 – Room by Room
Start upstairs, in bedrooms, or other rooms that are less “public” and clean room by room, ending in the most used rooms, finishing with the kitchen.
