7 Spring Cleaning Tips ...

I know that my ceiling fan tends to be overlooked in my home. It rarely occurs to me to dust it off, but you can really eliminate a lot of allergens by wiping off those fan blades! The key here is to create a dust free environment, so you don’t want to take a feather duster and brush the grime into the air. Instead, use one of my favorite spring cleaning tips: take an old pillowcase and slip it over each fan blade, sliding the top of the case over the blade. This amazing technique not only cleans away all of the dust bunnies that linger overhead, it captures all of the dust in the pillowcase. Simply dump the dust into the garbage and toss the pillowcase in the washing machine!

Your cabinets are full of all sorts of cereal boxes, bags of goodies and canisters of cooking essentials like breadcrumbs and sprinkles. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we may try, little morsels of the foods we love tend to end up as crumbs littering the shelves of our cabinets. Use some of your spring cleaning energy to empty the cabinets and sweep those crumbs away before they lead to ants or mice as the weather grows warmer. While you’re at it, check the expiration dates on the food you put back into the cabinets and discard anything that may be too old.

While we wash our sheets and blankets on a regular basis, we often neglect our curtains and bed skirts. Strip your bed completely bare, take those drapes down and give them a good wash. While your bed is bare, flip your mattress. These are all great ways to keep allergens down and fight any bacteria that may be hanging around. If you have a carpet cleaner, now is a good time to use it (or you can rent one).

Do you have a drawer somewhere in your house that you use to stash things that don’t really belong anywhere else? It’s alright; I think we all have one of those, usually in the kitchen or bathroom. Make them a little easier to manage by organizing everything into bins or tins. Altoid tins work great for organizing little things like tacks, paperclips, rubber bands and all those other things you find yourself frantically digging for when you need them. If you don’t have a hidden stash of empty Altoid tins, check out clayalley.com. They have an amazing supply of reasonably priced tins in various sizes. Label them so you can find what you need quickly and easily. Anything that may be too large for tins can be easily organized into pencil holders or other various sized baskets.

In all reality, my closet will never ever look as organized as this picture, but I can dream, can’t I? There are, however, wide assortments of practical things you can do to get your closet into tiptop shape without hiring an organizer to achieve the look for you. Clear storage bins are a must; they allow you to store things on the floor of your closet, while still being able to see what is stored within them. If you are stuck with a tiny closet, take a length of chain and stick the hook of one hanger through the top link. You can now hang another hanger from the next link and all the way down to the end of the chain. Over the door shoe organizers work wonders as well! Empty your entire closet, sort through all of your clothes and take anything you no longer wear to a local charity. Start from scratch and organize your closet in the way that suits you best!

Windows and mirrors look amazing when they are cleaned properly. You want streak free shine with no lint particles sticking around after you’re done. The best way to clean those reflective surfaces without harsh chemicals is to make a mixture of 2 cups of water, 1/4 cup of white distilled vinegar, and a 1/2 teaspoon of liquid soap in a spray bottle. The soap is a necessity because without it, you will get streaks that result from the vinegar mixing with the wax residue of traditional window cleaning fluids. Don’t use paper towels that will leave lint behind, use an old sock or a squeegee. One clever trick I learned recently was that if you are cleaning windows, clean the inside with a vertical motion and the outside with a horizontal motion. That way if you have streaks, you know which side of the glass they are on.

List makers tend to be more organized than those of us who just wing it. Make a schedule of what rooms to clean on what days of the week, as well as what major things need to be cleaned in those specific rooms. This will keep you on track and set a reasonable expectation for each day so you don’t get too overwhelmed. Don’t feel like you have to accomplish everything in one day, that’s far too overwhelming. Spring cleaning is thorough and detailed, set aside a few hours every day before or after work to get a few things done, and before you know it you’ll have the cleanest house around!

I know it seems like a hassle, but a great, thorough spring cleaning is a fantastic way to head on into the warmer months. It feels great to walk into a gleaming home after a long day of work and after a winter of being cooped up indoors, it’s time to cleanse the whole place from top to bottom and start the spring off fresh! How do you go about spring cleaning?