Back in September of 2005 when I told my grandmother that I was buying my own place, the first words out of her mouth were "Are you going to keep it clean?" In February of 2006, on the day that I finally moved in, Grandma passed away, and I vowed even harder that I was going to keep the place clean (a part of me feared she would actually come back to haunt me if I didn't).
For the first few months, I did a pretty good job. I cleaned the bathrooms, ran the vacuum and dusted every weekend. I was actually pretty thorough in my cleaning, including dusting the baseboards and door frames on a weekly basis. Then came June of 2006, and some unexpected changes that I wasn't exactly excited about. When my home office became more cluttered as a result of these changes, it became more difficult to keep up with the cleaning. Eventually, I decided to outsource my housekeeping, first with a professional firm, and more recently with a local woman.
Let me clarify that my house isn't something out of "hoarders" or the show "Clean House." Things are fairly clean thanks to my cleaning lady who dusts, vacuums, scrubs and cleans the bathrooms every other week (in addition to the regular tasks she has, in the past, helped me to organize my walk-in closet and on many occasions has emptied the dryer and folded laundry). The thing is, some of the tasks that I initially did as a part of my weekly housekeeping routine really aren't bi-weekly tasks a housekeeper should do, they are more of a one-off thing that should be done occasionally by meand I've neglected to do them.. Plus, as you may recall, there was a period of time where there was construction, which resulted in not only construction dust, but heavy foot traffic. When people were coming over, I would often use my office as a "staging area" for drying sweaters, etc. and there was always a pile of things to sort through on one spot of my kitchen counter.
For quite some time, I excused my failure to deep clean on the fact that I was "busy." That excuse falls short, though, when I see a blogger I follow post pictures of her house with nothing out of place even though she works full time and she and her husband have a toddler and a dog who I highly doubt are mess-free. If she can keep her house looking good on her own, there's certainly no reason my house shouldn't look spotless.
This year, I resolved to spring clean the entire house; working backwards from Memorial Day, I scheduled out exactly what I needed to do every weekend to not only get the yard and garage (which I have done an annual, and often semi-annual cleaning of) ready for summer, but also to pace myself through a spring cleaning. When I was little, in addition to her weekly housekeeping, my mom used to do a semi-annual deep clean of the house. I loved spring and fall cleaning; there's something about that 'fresh cleaned' smell that you get during a deep clean, so I was jazzed about actually taking the time to do this.
I started at the beginning of March, with a deep clean of the kitchen, emptying out the cupboards, wiping them down, and reorganizing them. I was pretty proud of the results, and was excited for the next weekend to come around to start on the next rooms. Of course, the best laid plans sometimes go awry, and that's what happened. I wound up working from home the following weekend, and on the road the weekend after that, which meant I was now two weeks behind schedule. Thankfully, my mom and dad came over and wiped down the village that I have above my cupboards, as well as the birdhouses and suitcases on my plant shelves...I think they were afraid this uncoordinated daughter of theirs would probably fall of the ladder if I was left to do this on my own.
This past week, I was lucky enough to not have to travel anywhere for work, so I was able to use my nights to catch up. I've been borrowing tips from some bloggers that I follow, and am pretty proud of what I accomplished. First order of business, I tackled the laundry room, cleaning behind the washer and dryer, wiping down and reorganizing all of the cabinets and putting away the clothes that was hanging up. One thing I noted, the bain of my laundry activity - Lost Socks, haunted me not only when matching the darn things, but also in finding a "holding pattern" (I have clearly spent too much time on airplanes) for those unmatched clean ones. It's amazing what you can find on Pinterest though, and I now have a new solution for the lost sock challenge.
After tackling the laundry, I moved on to the utility closet and back hall. Okay, not a whole lot to do here, just reorganize things and wipe down the woodwork, but still in need of a little TLC. I then moved on to the stairs and the basement. The walls were in need of cleaning, courtesy of my fur child shaking the hairball remedy off of his paw and onto my walls; and even though the basement is a recent addition, it was good to give that a little attention as well. I reconfigured a few pieces of furniture wiped down the walls, hung some pictures that needed rearranging, and that was done. Moving on to the front entry and hall, I reorganized the front closet, got rid of the spider webs in the closet, wiped down the woodwork, and washed the inside storm door window.
Once I'd gotten some easy tasks under my belt, I moved on to the main bath. Again, the biggest issue was organizing the cupboards and the linen closet. I've found through this process that not using the step stool when I should is not a good practice, but everything is now neatly in its place, and in the future I won't try to reach things beyond my height level.
The last room I tackled this week was my office. I shredded, purged and filed the avalanche of paperwork in the closet; resorted the bins that I had for office supplies, and wiped down the woodwork. This may sound simple, but it took several hours to get through this one. During this process I discovered that I may just be addicted to office supplies. I have enough rulers, notebooks and post-it notes to last me a decade. I also found tons of stuff that didn't belong in the office that I'd stashed in the closet at one time or another - Christmas decorations that I'd bought at the after Christmas sales; postcards and mementos from different places I've traveled that should be in with my scrapbooking items; and lots of picture frames that I intended to print pictures for. Instead of just moving the frames somewhere else or putting them back into the closet "until there was time" I took the time to print out pictures and set the frames out - a much better use than sitting in a box or a closet, don't you think?
Since I anticipate getting back on the road shortly, and I do need time to maintain what I have cleaned, the last area for spring cleaning - my bedroom, bathroom, and closet, will be spread over a few weeks. This will still give me plenty of time for my outdoor chores...cleaning the garage, getting my front porch and patio set for summer, cleaning up my flowerbeds and spreading mulch, all before Memorial Day.
After that, the goal is to be in maintenance mode for a few months before I start Fall Cleaning. Wish me luck.
