View Full Version : April Spring Cleaning Challenge
I realize I am a few days early with this, but I am totally bummed out by the possibility that I may not be able to meet my goal listed in the short-term challenge thread. So I decided that to cheer myself up, I will set some goals that I know I will meet.
I'd like to give my home an old-fashioned, top-to-bottom cleaning in April. My house is still all torn up from the remodel, so I won't be able to get to it all at once, but there are some rooms I could get started on. I'm thinking the bathroom will be first.
Anyone want to join me in spring cleaning?
I am so incredibly there. I recently made and printed a three page spring cleaning list. You should have seen the look on Zach's face when I excitedly presented it to him. :) It's thorough. This week is obviously not a big progress week for me as I will be busy giving birth, but soon!
Already in! I've been hard at it cleaning window blinds and tracks, ceiling light fixtures, moving furniture out of the way and washing down walls in behind, and anything else I see that needs addressed. Spring is here and there's nothing like welcoming in the new season with a clean fresh home! :) Happy cleaning you guys! Will revisit again.
In: I have already started on master bedroom as I could not stand the colours of the bedding; it was all bugging so I started to clean it while I changed things up with a set I had and busy sewing new curtains from a sheet set I bought on sale a couple of years ago. ..lol It all looks so fresh....
earthshepherd
3-28-11, 1:54pm
Hoo boy, I really need to join this challenge. I don't wanna, but I'm gonna! Wooohoooo!!
Wow..ok Im in too!!! B/c if I dont I am afraid I will not get anything done. Maybe this way I will get going more lol. I am sure you guys will be all clean and shiny before I even get halfway done but Im going to give a go none the less :)
I'm so glad for the accountability! ;-) Would it be motivating to break the challenge up into different threads, like "Spring Cleaning: Master Bedroom" or whatever and then just post there? Or would that not be helpful?
I do most of my cleaning in the winter, so I'm just commenting here because this list might be a handy format for some of the readers here. This winter I created a spreadsheet that listed each area of the house (e.g. office desk, office closet, laundry room, storage shelves, storage bins, etc - broken down into tasks that are a few hours' duration). For each area I estimated how often I need to go through it and clean/declutter, and entered that in another column. Then I put the date that I completed it this winter, and had the spreadsheet calculate the next date. This way I can view this time time to time, sort by date, and see what's due for attention. It saves time in the long run because in past years, I was hand writing this list every winter when I got ready for the annual purge.
Why clean in the winter? Because as soon as it thaws, I want to be outside, hiking and biking and planting the gardens!
I started this the weekend after the last teen moved out in November! I think it's my year of spring cleaning... Though I'd been planning that room makeover for a year in anticipation of his moving out... so I was ready. It involved painting, then moving stuff upstairs from both the kitchen (the office used to be there) and the living room (bye bye TV & TV hutch from the common space!). THAT created a total redesign of the living room & partial redesign of the kitchen. The furniture is all in place - we moved my sweet vintage secretary into the living room yesterday. Later this spring, the living room is getting new colors of paint to harmonize the new theme.
When I say new, I mean the same furniture with the addition of my grandmother's Navajo rugs that have been languishing under my bed for years - which came out after our trip to Santa Fe last fall. These changed up the colors in the living room, as well as the feel, so I found some brown velvet curtains, brown velvet pillows, a wrought iron table lamp & one beautiful old oak side table, all from Goodwill, to complete the "makeover". Total cost was about $75. The walls will go from yellow to two shades of putty grey, and that will cost another $50 (unless I find the right shades on craiglist! Been looking...). The furnishings colors are those of the rugs: brown, cream, putty, & red. The couch we have is moss green, and it looks good with rugs; all rustic Southwest tones. Luckily, all the wood in the room is dark, and harmonizes well.
The neutrals in the rugs look great with mossy green and the reds I have on the chairs & couch pillows. Red & brown are beautiful together. We already had a red leather chair (Goodwill of course!), and I brought in a bentwood willow chair from the front porch (a friend makes these), draped one of the Navajo rugs over the back & made a cushion for it from foam cut into the right shape, and wrapped with some red Pendleton wool I'd gotten at the Goodwill years ago, and felted. I wrapped the foam square like it's a gift, neatly folded the edges, and used an old kilt pin to hold it together on the underside - no fitted sewing needed! It's holding up well, and since its already felted, I can wash it.
The kitchen stayed basically the same, with more open space once the office & computer were moved upstairs. I got to rearrange, clean, dust, and spruce it all up, no money spent there. The upstairs media/guest room was expensive - $500 total for new shelving (Elfa, from craigslist, a super deal), a cream colored microfiber click sofa/guest bed (craigslist super deal), and the splurge: a really comfy, well-built office chair (craigslist again), in white leather & chrome. This room is beautiful, comfortable, and we use it all the time. When my DSS came back & saw his former lair turned into a grown-up room, he said, "OMG, my parents are hipsters!" HA!
I also re-did the upstairs bathroom (formerly the teens) with already owned rugs, towels & plants. I splurged on a new shower curtain & polyester liner (from the Goodwill), and took down the teen posters, cleaned out the magenta hair dye & old body washes. It looks very adult now, such a nice change.
Whenever I re-do rooms, I deep clean - vacuuming ceilings, walls & floors, dusting, scrubbing, etc. The next expense is getting the beige wall-to-wall carpeting that came with the house professionally cleaned. We would LOVE to rip it out & put in cork or bamboo or tigerwood flooring, but that is big bucks. Plus, this is only 10 years old, and still has life in it - why send useful stuff to the landfill? Area rugs hide most of it anyway...and I have spot cleaned for years, but it does wear. I'll be damned if I know why family homes are built with beige carpeting... sheesh. It should be grey or brown!
It's been great to redefine the rooms post-kids. I am excited to paint and deep clean this year...
@Rosemary--I love checklists and spreadsheets! They are so helpful and make me feel accomplished!
@redfox--your makeovers sound lovely! I wish you lived here--our local paint store has about three gallons of grey paint after their formulas failed to produce the brown I ordered ;-) I love that Tigerwood flooring, too. But what do I have in my home? Beige carpeting! LOL
domestic goddess
3-28-11, 5:32pm
No, I don't want to join, but in the interest of actually getting something done, I will! This week is the bathroom. It is a tiny little room and really should only take a day, but I am still moping around with this resp. virus, and I don't move very quickly or for very long. So just this one room, and I'll be luck if I get that done! It mostly just needs cleaning, but I would like a new shower curtain. Did just buy a new bath mat, and I would like for dsil to fix the hole in the wall made by the doorknob. Want to get one of those plastic things to protect the wall; better late than never!
ok ok I admit.....I didnt do anything last night when I got home from work on the house. (sigh)
Yesterday I tossed expired food from the fridge. I won't be able to scrub the thing down until my kitchen is put back together, but I do feel better knowing that nothing old or gross is in there.
I also bought a broom/dustpan (mine were broken) and found my cleaning supplies (they had been boxed up). I washed towels yesterday and am hoping to get to cleaning the rest of the bathroom within the next couple of days. I need to do everything in there--floors, walls, tub, insides of cabinets, purge supplies, etc. It is probably my least favorite room to clean, so that is why I am doing it first!
We reorganized our breakfast station and cup cabinet this weekend. The breakfast station is on the pass-through between the kitchen and dining room/school room. The cabinet it sits on opens on both sides, but the drawers only open to the kitchen. I set the coffee maker and cereal dispenser up to be accessible in both rooms and filled the cabinet underneath with stuff like granola bars and extra cereal. On the other side of the counter I put a pretty vintage tray stacked with bowls, vanilla sugar and mason jars with our forks, spoons and knives for cereal and coffee. Zach hung a bar with S-hooks on the wall and hung up our pretty blue coffee mugs over the tray. In the mornings now I put out a small white pitcher of milk. This makes it so we can have coffee or cereal without opening the gate to the kitchen and letting the toddler in. It's also very pretty looking. When we moved in that counter was one of the kitchen "hot spots" that just collect clutter, so it's nice to see it cleaned up and functional.
Yesterday I tossed expired food from the fridge. I won't be able to scrub the thing down until my kitchen is put back together, but I do feel better knowing that nothing old or gross is in there.
Oh, you so reminded me of what my Mom used to joke about - "I need a new fridge...the old one is dirty!" And, upon discovering a moldy container of leftovers, she would say, "Oh look! It's my penicillin experiment!"
Oh, you so reminded me of what my Mom used to joke about - "I need a new fridge...the old one is dirty!" And, upon discovering a moldy container of leftovers, she would say, "Oh look! It's my penicillin experiment!"
Haha! I used to be much better about this, but since our fridge is currently crammed into the dining room and I have no easy way to do dishes, I got behind. ;-)
Just decluttered 2/3 of my kids' toys. Good Lord it feels lovely in the girls room now. So much for resting. :)
this is exciting and I hope to be able to stick with it......laundry room needs painting.......carpets shampooed.......rear bathroom needs wallpaper stripped or painted over, can't decide which it will be......lots of little odds and ends to clean out and throw out.
Redfox...it all sounds wonderful and as much as we miss the teens...lol...it is nice to have the space all adult.
I have a surprise visitor coming on Sun for a whole day...I guess I had this in mind because I had started spring cleaning...for now it will just get a good vacuuming and dusting and bathrooms cleaned and
start the deep cleaning next week...........
I've been picking up the rooms in my house as best I can. The remodel has affected the upsatirs, the downstairs, and the basement, so it is kind of hard right to do anything right now. Our contractor has been sick all week, too, which means we are now a full week behind (after already going for five weeks). Ugh! Anyway, I am hesitant to really do a deep clean right now because all the dust from cutting and sanding will reappear in about five seconds. But I am keeping things picked up at least so that when the makeover is done, all I have to do is clean--not throw away trash, pick stuff up, put it away, and then clean.
I'm afraid I'll make this my summer goal when it is too HOT in central Texas to be outside much. Right now I have to take advantage of early nice spring day outdoors. I'll be reading your updates here to help me in my summer cleaning.
http://iliketomakethings.blogspot.com
Have any of you ever used "organized home" website? for you who love a good "to do" list, this site provides spring cleaning list for every room in your home, they also do a winter one for Christmas. You make a notebook and put in the pages you need. I'm a list freak so it was perfect for me, I love a good check list.
Mrs. B
Mrs. B I will have to check that out!
I am feeling better and about ready to get started! I'm feeling kind of inspired by a post I read the other day on our own Miss Minimalist's blog. I'll admit that I've never thought of myself as a minimalist, but the way she describes it, I think it may be what I am aiming for in an unlikely way.
So anyway, I'm on a tear right now to get rid of stuff and clean. The night before I went to the hospital to have baby T I seriously decluttered the girls room. Seriously. It was the kind of hormone driven brutality I don't think I could have mustered any other way. The result? The kiddos are THRILLED with their room now. I have not stepped foot in it for a full week and it is still clean. They've been taking their friends up there and showing them how nice it is. This doesn't surprise me at all about Cheyenne, who once told me how much she loves toilet bowl cleaner because "it just makes the toilets so very sparkly" but it floors me about Bella. They've argued less, whined less and spent more time in their room playing.
My three tough areas are these. 1) Books 2) Homeschool stuff/craft stuff and 3) Stuff that used to belong to my mom or grandma and I'm scared to get rid of for fear of starting a fight.
The homeschool stuff I don't really want to declutter, but I do need to find more space for storing it. The books....I love books. That said I either need another book shelf or I need to get rid of some. The third category I am mostly over, but there are a few holdouts. My mom's good dishes. Never use them. Never. Those are actually important to my dad, though, and he lives here too, so I'm probably going to compromise on that.
Oh I cannot wait to get this place deeply cleaned and decluttered. It's probably going to take a while with all the little kids running around. I'm going to do 15 minute pushes twice a day and one big push a week. I think that will add up. When Zach is off of school in 5 weeks we'll really dive in.
Oh, I love organizedhome.com. So many great ideas--very inspiring!
Today DH helped me switch out seasonal linens in our bedroom. It is 82 degrees today--time for something lighter. We switched out our curtains, too, to some airy-er ones we had sitting around. DH took out the old side table he had been using as a nightstand and brought the nightstand that matches mine up from the downstairs. We had been using it as an entryway table, and it always kind of bugged me that we had a matching nightstand but weren't using it LOL Anyway, the space looks so nice right now. We didn't spend any money except on a couple of cheapy table lamps and some flowers for the dresser. I'm not going to quibble about that. DH didn't have a lamp and mine had been broken and reglued so many times it was borderline silly :p And the flowers, well...they make me happy! :-) Tomorrow I will do an actual cleaning--dusting, vacuuming, windows, etc.--and spray down the linens with some nice linen spray I found at the dollar store awhile back (smells so nice!).
I am thinking that I can get started on my bathroom, too. I need to purge some items in there and give it a good scrub down. I really should touch up the paint in a couple of areas, too, and ask DH to recaulk the tub. I've been thinking of putting a shelf in there with a few accessories to pretty it up a bit. I'm thinking some printable art from the graphic fairy and a glass hurricane with some pretty soaps or something like that. If I can find a nice shelf at Goodwill or on sale, it shouldn't cost very much at all (I can accessorize with what I have sitting around).
Oh, and I forgot to post it here, but I did some major decluttering/shredding in our home office last week. So maybe I can work out a plan for cleaning that room, too.
Two evenings ago I tackled my pantry! Ugh! What a chore! But as always, I feel a whole lot better now knowing (and seeing) it's all clean and organized. I now have a dedicated section for all my teas too! No more hunting and searching.
I managed to get #1 on my list done this past week.....laundry room completely cleaned out.....appliances moved and cleaned under and behind. Ceiling paited, walls paited. Oh, the joy of of new paint smell. Not kidding, I really like it and the clean walls are wonderful!
I deep cleaned the bathroom last night. I still have to the floor, and I need to get the vent and the fan, too. Those will have to wait until later as I need DH's help getting them off.
Today I will finish the floor and start working on the master bedroom. It is mostly picked up, but I haven't given it a good clean inawhile (i.e. dusting, vacuuming, etc.)
I only have two jobs left:
1. recycling papers and cardboard from two small baskets (DH's drop baskets) and one closet;
2. recycling cardboard and reorganizing the office/storage in our offices.
Oh, and 3. finishing transitioning to our new accounting system. I admit, I keep putting it off. I do believe that I will get it done tomorrow (the papers/cardboard will wait until Monday). Wait, that will be May 2.
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