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For some reason bathrooms are the dreaded chores in all of my cleaning schedules. There is something just gross about having to clean up THOSE kind of messes, especially the bathroom floor. Ick! So what I do is typically somewhat ignore the floor in my daily cleaning schedule (unless I see an obvious mess). But once a month when I am doing the deep clean on bathrooms, I literally get down on my hands and knees and go to town. (Maybe that’s why I hate bathrooms so much).
 

How to Clean a Bathroom Floor

Step 1: Take everything off the floor, including mats, plunger, toilet brush, etc.

Step 2: Sweep, vacuum, or use a swiffer duster to remove any loose surface dirt

Step 3: Fill sink with hot water and pour in a little but of bleach

Step 4: Using the bleach water and a sponge mop, scrub the entire floor area

Step 5: Grab a cleaning rag or old cloth diaper and dip it in the bleach water

Step 6: Wipe down all baseboards with bleach rag

Step 7: Use the bleach rag to scrub the dreaded area behind the toilet that you can’t reach with the mop

Step 8: Empty the sink, throw the rag in the laundry, and put away the mop. VOILA, you’re done!

All of this sounds like a lot of work, but it typically doesn’t take more than about 15 minutes if you can just force yourself to do it. If you really want that clean bathroom look and feel, you definitely need to do this deep clean on the floors at least once a month.

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Spring cleaning to me is not about the deep intensive house cleaning projects. It’s all about DECLUTTERING and doing projects which have been put off for way too long. In case you need some inspiration for your own spring cleaning list, here is a copy of mine!
 

Spring Cleaning List

• Swap out my daughter’s 3T clothes for the 4T box.
• Eliminate some of my “shoe problem”. I have too many to justify buying new ones but I really really want/need some cute new summer shoes!
• Get cracking on my clean bedroom project … ick.
• Work on my recipe binders
• Inventory my food storage stock and start replenishing
• Begin sorting and decluttering the unfinished basement area
• Swap bedrooms around to make room for Baby #3!

What’s on YOUR spring cleaning list this year?

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My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-f91c3e0a8ad26b4701aa7a1274452155}

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Isn’t your bedroom supposed to be a sanctuary? Your private place of peace and comfort? In my house … not so much.
 

Check out the pics of my sparkling clean bedroom

I can’t believe I posted that for you all to see. How embarrassing! So let’s talk about how we are going to fix this “little” problem of mine.
 

5 Tips For Cleaning a Bedroom

1. Start with the surfaces (i.e. dresser tops, night stand, etc.)
2. Find a home for things on the floor (and put them away!)
3. Buy some pretty decorations for the surfaces as motivation to keep them clean.
4. Go through one drawer or shelf at a time and ELIMINATE and sort
5. Vacuum and dust with glee when it is all tidied up!

Now if I could just follow these tips I would have a beautiful clean bedroom. This is my goal for the next few days. I always find that once I get it cleaned and especially DECLUTTERED it is much much easier to keep my bedroom clean.

p.s. How is YOUR bedroom looking these days?

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Obviously every family situation is different, so you may need to modify this daily cleaning schedule to fit your own personal schedule. But it’s a good starting point for determining the things that need to be done daily.

Morning:

• 5 minute bathroom touch-up:
  – Wipe out the sink
  – Clear off any water spots on the mirror
  – Put everything back into cupboards/drawers
• 5 minute kitchen touch-up:
  – Load breakfast dishes into dishwasher
  – Wipe off kitchen table and counters

Afternoon/After Work:

• 10 minute house pick-up:
  – Kids toys put away
  – School stuff tidied up
  – Mail sorted and taken care of
• 10 minute dinner prep/cleanup:
  – Tidy up kitchen in preparation for dinner
  – After dinner load dishes and run dishwasher

Before Bed:

• 5 minute kids bedrooms
  – Dirty clothes in laundry
  – Toys picked up
• 5 minute kitchen odds and ends:
  – Empty dishwasher
  – Quick overall tidy-up
• 5 minute whole house pick-up
  – Put things away in the proper rooms
  – Clear off surfaces that accumulate junk
  – RELAX

If you do these few things every single day you should never have a “messy” house. It all adds up tp only 45 minutes and we all know we can spare at LEAST 45 minutes a day to do the bare minimum of our cleaning duties.

So get started today, whatever time it is when you read this, do the 5 or 10 minute tasks and feel good about yourself! I’ll be starting in the morning

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If you’re anything like me, you probably live in a relatively “surface-clean” house.  The kitchen counters are clean and your table is wiped off (usually).  The kids toys are picked up and the living room floor just MIGHT be vacuumed.  The bathroom could probably use some more work but at least there are no pee spots visible on the floor or toilet.

The house never gets really filthy enough for you to explode and do a 10 hour marathon clean.  Ok who really does those anyway? Not I, that’s for sure!

So the problem is, without some sort of cleaning schedules in place for your household, there are cleaning jobs that just NEVER get done.  When is the last time you actually scrubbed down your electric can opener?  Seriously, I looked at mine tonight and was grossed out, and then instead of taking a minute to wipe it down … I said to myself “I’ll have to clean that one of these days”.  How many other areas of your home do you do this in?  Those light switch smudges, the dirt layer on the top of your bathroom baseboards, the fridge drawers … EEEK … the list goes on and on.  So how do we overcome this inherent problem?
 

Cleaning Schedules 101

On top of the daily house cleaning jobs like dishes and putting away toys, there are other tasks which must be done once a week or so. Vacuuming, dusting, mopping, laundry. You know, the things that really stand out if you put them off for very long. But on top of THAT we must have cleaning schedules for the more thorough deep cleaning in our homes. Doing these things once a month or so (before they get TOO nasty) will give you a great feeling that your house is always CLEAN and takes way less time than if you put it off for 6 months.

I am in the process of working out my own cleaning schedules for my household and I will be sharing what I do on this blog. Hopefully you can learn from what I’m doing and follow along in your own house. Come on, let’s make cleaning fun by doing it together!

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