Spring Cleaning: Week 2

I am following Money Saving Mom this month in the 30-day house cleaning challenge in an attempt to clean up my house (it really needs it).  You can follow my progress all week through Instagram (#cleanin30), Twitter (#cleanin30) or Facebook.  You can also join in the challenge fun.  Download the 31 Day House Cleaning Guide that we are following and you, too, can have a sparkling, or at least somewhat cleaner, house.

Days 6 and 7: Clean the bathrooms and clean all interior windows

Technically the 30-day cleaning challenge does not include weekends.  Money Saving Mom is only challenging us to clean throughout the week.  On the schedule, Day 6 says to clean the bathrooms.  Since we had just done that on Day 4 and since my kids clean their bathroom on the weekend as part of their regular chores anyway, I counted that one as being done.  Day 7 says to clean all the interior windows.  Somebody must be possessed if they think that chore can be done in 20 minutes.  I counted.  I have 16 windows on my house.  It would have taken me hours to clean all those.  I am so glad that chore fell on the weekend (on a Sunday, the day of rest, no less) and I don't have to feel guilty about not doing it. Shew!

Day 8:  Sweep and vacuum all floors in the house

Over the weekend, my sister, two friends from high school and myself had a girls' weekend.  We all stayed at my parents' house and played tons of card games and board games (and I got a great manicure!).  While I was there, Tim stayed home with the kids and got the house in great shape - including vacuuming all the floors!  So I woke up Monday to a clean, vacuumed house and I didn't have to do any of it.

Day 9: Surface clean bedrooms

Our rooms were pretty well straightened, but in one corner of my room there was a pile of things I was setting aside for a future yard sale as well as some things to give away.

OK, so it was really cluttered.  I boxed up all the yard sale items and put a very descriptive note on the box.

Hey, honey is better than vinegar any day, right?  I got together the items to be given away and put them in my van.  Then I put a crate of painting supplies down in the garage and Ta da! a clean corner.

I also decided this was a good day to work on a stain that's been on Julie's floor for a while.  Why did I pick that day to work on it?  Mainly because I had just bought new carpet cleaner and I wanted to see how well it worked.  This stain was in Natlie's part of the room (Julie's American Girl doll and yes, Julie decided to spell her name that way - poor child is spelling-challenged).

Isn't it cute how she has everything set up?  Maybe that will be a future blog post.  Anyway, the stain is in the bottom center of the picture.  Here it is closer up.

Lovely, huh?  So I sprayed the foamy stuff and scrubbed.  The final result?

Not perfect, but better.

Day 10:  Deep clean the living room

I was pretty tired of cleaning my this point.  So I didn't "deep" clean the living room.  We have wood floor in there so I decided to dust under the couches and piano, something I only do occasionally.  I found all sorts of goodies under the couches.

Day 11: Clean the bathrooms

Yet again...I don't normally clean the bathrooms every 4 days, so I decided instead to clean out the drawers and cabinets in the kids bathroom.  I got rid of a bunch of expired sunscreen and toothpaste and did a lot of decluttering and straightening.  Drawers 1 and 3 are now hair stuff and drawer 2 is nail stuff.  Poor David.  All the drawers are full of Julie's things and he gets nothing.  Guess he'll survive.

Julie's hair supplies all straightened up.

Day 12: Clean out closets

Um, yeah, I'm going to amend that to "closet" instead of "closets."  The blogger at Fresh and Organized must either have a much smaller home or must work a lot faster than me if she can clean out all the closets in 20 minutes.  Or maybe her closets are just cleaner....

I'm going to post the before picture today and I'll post the after picture next week.

Another busy cleaning week done.  Got any Spring Cleaning done this week?