Spring Cleaning.

Spring Cleaning. Does anyone do that anymore? I do. I MUST. We've been cooped up in this stuffy house all winter accumulating all sorts of ickyness.
By the way- that's me in the picture to the left. Not.
(I did spy that knitted cozy in the picture tho!)

I don't feel like things are actually clean until I've completely gutted, sorted, eliminated, repaired, and wiped every nook and cranny.
I worked on the kitchen yesterday. 9 hours of cleaning, plus some laundry. There is still stuff in there that I need to clean. I didn't get to the stove or the tops of the cabinets. I did take everything OFF the cabinets (mine don't go to the ceiling and I use it for storage) and washed the stuff but it really needs vacuumed and wiped up there. Talk about cobwebs.
Man, was I beat last night.
Today- Laundry room. It's the smallest room in the house but also,, the dirtiest and it's packed to the ceiling (literally) with junk that needs to be dealt with. Hats, Gloves, Expired cans of food, Coats, boots, potatoes with plants growing out of them, light bulbs, appliances I'll never use, etc. You get the idea. Not only that,, but it's our mud room and it's really living up to it's name! I completely anticipate it taking me as long to clean that tiny room as it did to clean the kitchen.
Tomorrow, living room.
Saturday, kid's bathroom and scrubbing the moulding in the hallway.
It would be nice if I had some help but the truth of it is.... this kind of cleaning is better done alone. I can't ask someone to clean to my standards, it's cruel and unusual.
I'm a sadist.
It's not like I clean like this all the time. I clean like this RARELY. Once in the spring, Once in the fall.
A quick search of the interwebs didn't bring up any kind of helpful tips that I could post here so I'll post my own.

• give the room a quick tidy before you start. You know, five minutes of collecting trash and clutter, get the dishwasher going. Empty trash cans.
• Make yourself a small bucket of hot water, a tiny squirt of dish soap and a cap of bleach. This is for the "wiping down" Nothing smells better to me than a room with no other smell than "It's been cleaned and sanitized"
• Divide your room mentally into quadrants. Tackle one quadrant at a time. Tackling the entire room wastes energy and it overwhelming.
• Follow these rules- Gut, divide, conquer, eliminate, wipe, repair, put back.
• Stand back and look at it through "stranger" eyes. If a total stranger walked in at this moment, would it stand up to scrutiny?
• Don't for get things like base boards, moulding, ceiling fans, exhaust fans, dusting your "stomped" ceilings... oh yes,, this brings us to an important point
• Dust your ceilings FIRST. Otherwise you'll just be re-cleaning everything you already cleaned.
• Designate a box for give aways, throw aways, and store aways.
• Clean out draws, cabinets, catch-alls, fridges, etc.
• Mop floors (or vacuum or steam clean as the case may be)

I'm sure there are a few more things to add but that's all I can think of for now. Maybe after I'm done with another room I'll think of more.

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Have you ever looked into getting a memory foam mattress? Chris and I looked at one a few weeks ago. We were very impressed. It's so soft and supportive! We quickly dismissed the idea of getting one though, they can be very pricey at up to $7000.00. We could get a used car for that! Today I checked the prices at myluxurymattress.com and they were very reasonable! They're highest price is $1099.99! Much better don't you think?