SPRING IS ALIVE!!!!!
Sun shining, flowers are beginning to bloom and trees are starting to show signs of life. I love spring. Spring is my favorite season. I love how everything starts to shine and all the beautiful colors come alive. I love hearing the birds chirp and the smell of BBQs filling the air. I love sitting around a campfire and roasting marshmallows with the kids. Everything about spring makes me happy.
One of my favorite things about spring is when it is warm enough outside to open your windows and smell that fresh air after being cooped up all winter long. I love feeling the breeze come in through the living room as it moves past my house and out the back door. It takes that dusty musty wintery smell out of my house.
When spring arrives the first thing on my list is SPRING CLEANING!!!! Inside and out. Sometimes it gets overwhelming. We have 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, screened in back porch, garage, a fenced in back yard, a front yard with 2 flower beds and 2 side yards. With both of us working full time jobs and the kids in sports it is hard to find time to get it all done. Here is a list of Spring Cleaning Tips that I would like to share with you.
1) Open your windows: Get Fresh air in and the smell of winter out of your house. Take a deep long breath in and exhale.
2) Make a music playlist: Nothing makes cleaning better, faster and fun. Make sure to only have upbeat music. The last thing you need is some slow sappy love song playing while you are in the groove.
3) Declutter, donate and pitch: Make piles for things that are broken and need to be pitched, a pile of stuff that you know is too small or going to be too small for you next year, and a pile of things that you need to comprise into one tote. Decluttering will help your house feel less dirty because you don’t have some many items sprawled around the house. Dollar General, Family Dollar or even the Dollar store has really awesome cleaning supplies for really cheap and they have little organizers to for your closets. If you have a Five Below around you they have these bags you can put winter clothes in and store under your bed.
4) Make a checklist. Creating a cleaning checklist for each room will help you stay focused and you can feel satisfied when you complete your checklist.
5) Remember that you dust top to bottom before you vacuum. Don’t do the easy stuff first because you’ll end up with a bigger mess than you planned.
6) Nothing frustrates me more than washing windows and seeing the white paper towel fuzz still on them when I am done. I learned a few tricks I would like to share with you
a.) Use coffee filters or newspaper when cleaning windows
b.) Spray your shower first and let it soak while cleaning the rest of the house
c.) Same for the toilets. Put toilet bowel cleaner in the toilet and let it sit while you are cleaning other areas of the house. This makes it a lot easier to clean when you are ready to clean the bathrooms.
d.) When using a sponge make sure you clean it after every new room by putting it in the microwave for two minutes.
e.) Do you have nasty stove burners? Hate scrubbing them? Well here is an easier way. Take about ¼ cup of ammonia and seal it in a large Ziploc bag.
1) Do this before you do anything else in your house and make it the last thing you clean. The longer you let them sit the easier it is to clean them.
f.) When cleaning the faucets in the shower and or sink use a lemon that has been cut in half. Take a lemon cut in half and rub it on your fixtures and then rinse. The spots disappear and it leaves the faucets shiny.
g.) To clean your shower head, pour distilled white vinegar in a plastic baggy and secure it to the shower head with a rubber band. Let it soak for 1 hour. Wipe clean with a wet cloth. Easy fix for a clogged shower head!
h.) Cleaning the blinds. No one likes this job because there is no easy away about it. No one wants to take the blinds down, clean them and then place them back up. You can’t dust them because that doesn’t always work. If you have a cup of white distilled vinegar and old sock you are set. In a bowl place equal parts of Vinegar and water. Dip hand in mixture and then wipe the dirt and dust away. When sock gets dirty just dip your hand back in the mixture and repeat.
7) Use your vacuum extension tools. They can help you get in the small cracks where the floor meets the wall. If your house is anything like mine this is where all the dog hair hides.
8) Reward yourself. You have worked hard. Get yourself flowers to add to the fresh smell of spring to your house.
Once you get all of your cleaning done grab your friends and family, pitch in some food, grill out and play your favorite outdoor game. What is your favorite thing to do in the spring? My husband is normally grilling out and the family comes over to play corn hole or euchre while the kids play basketball or baseball in the front yard.
One of our favorite things to do is take the kids and dogs and go creek stomping. They love it!! It is great exercise and it is free and fun. We have labs so they are all about being in the water. We go to the park off of 71st and College. We walk along the creek until it meets the white river and it is deep enough the kids can actually swim and also shallow enough for the dogs to play. I like to sit on the island and watch my family happy, healthy and having a blast.
Until next time…………
