Plan Your Seasonal Cleaning Well

Seasonal cleaning, more commonly known as spring cleaning, is that time of the year when you gear up to scrub the house clean from top to bottom. Seasonal cleaning is a tradition in most households and is an essential activity. The amount of dirt and dust and other icky stuff that builds up through the year is astounding.

Ideally, you should maintain your house with regular daily cleaning and some deep cleaning every few months. This article will tell you everything you need to know about intensive seasonal cleaning. Pull those gloves on and get ready to get your home squeaky clean!

Make a list of all the cleaning tasks you have to tackle. Divide the chores into categories: external or outside cleaning, upholstery and fabrics cleaning, furniture cleaning, bathrooms cleaning, kitchen cleaning, floors and ceilings cleaning etc. Under each category make a list of the individual tasks that you have to attend to. This will help you keep track of all the work to be done, stay on schedule and make sure that you haven’t missed anything.

Assign a realistic time period to the cleaning project. Seasonal cleaning is a major task and a lot of chores such as dry-cleaning carpets and upholstery or polishing and painting furniture might require a substantial bit of time. Break the project into small and big goals.

Get the whole family involved. Seasonal cleaning is too big a project for any one person to handle alone. Everyone in the family should have a particular task or set of chores to take care of. Even young children can help with little odd jobs such as wiping doorknobs and knockers clean or carrying around cleaning supplies in a plastic bucket to help the adults.

Work through the house room by room. This will help you be systematic and maintain a steady pace. Always begin by clearing out the clutter in the room. If you want to really clean the house out, we advise pulling out everything to one safe spot in the house. This way you can get all the sneaky hard-to-reach spots, floors, ceilings, wall corners etc. cleaned well and good.Carpets, furniture, items stored in the room, wall art, décor pieces- everything needs to be taken out.

Cleaning should be on two dimensions: the rooms need to be emptied out and cleaned fully and the items inside the rooms need to be thoroughly cleaned individually before they are put back into place.

Many of us forget cleaning things like the air ducts, drains, air filters, smoke detectors, chimneys and sewage system. These “supporting systems” are usually in the background of how a home functions and get easily overlooked. Make sure you address these aspects of house cleaning too. In fact, you should ideally clean these first, after everything has been removed, because they’re bound to be the dirtiest and might mess up other areas and things nearby.

After everything has been taken out, clean each room thoroughly. Begin with vacuuming and sweeping using a broom. Make sure you vacuum the ceiling also! Dust the ceiling fans at this stage. All other surfaces in the rooms have to be dusted too. After all the accumulated dust and dirt have been removed, start scrubbing and cleaning. You can use old cloth, wet mops and cleaning sponges along with water and cleaning agent/ soap.

Wipe down all the doorframes and window frames and other fixtures at this stage. Clean the surfaces of the doors and the windowpanes too. If you want to have anything touched up or polished, now is the time to do so.

Fixtures inside the rooms will vary according to the part of the house you’re in. Attend to every aspect of every room: in the bathroom you’ll want to clean out the toilets, the tub, the sink etc, in the kitchen you will have to clean the stove, the over, the fridge etc and so on.

Once the house itself is spic-and-span, start cleaning the smaller items, gadgets, appliances and other things. Don’t put back any item without dusting it and wiping it clean. Kitchen appliances and other heavy-use items might need washing and a good scrub.

Move on to external cleaning. This includes any item or fixture that can be seen from the exterior façade of the house. Outdoor areas and elements such as patios, grills, fences, driveways and the lawn and landscaping may not need as much attention as the inside of your home, but when you’re doing a seasonal overhaul, make sure you tackle these too.

Author Bio: Izzy Smith is a working mom who loves her home, her family and always accepts the challenges of life with a smile

! She takes care of her home and family, but while she is cleaning and maintaining the house, she finds some time for writing.