Freshen Up Your Home With These Spring Cleaning Tips

Spring begins Sunday, March 20th – is your home ready? While spring cleaning isn’t the most exciting task, the feeling of a fresh, uncluttered, and spotless home is hard to beat! You don’t have to tackle all the cleaning in one day. If you spend a couple of hours cleaning this week and next week, you’ll not only get your whole house clean in time, but your new cleaning routine can help keep your Sky Cove South home sparkling year-round.

Spring Break 2022 Cleaning Tips 

Here are our top tips to help you knock out your spring cleaning.

Get the Household Involved

When you get your kids involved in the spring-cleaning routine, not only will they develop skills they’ll need as adults, but you can also turn it into a learning opportunity. For example, if you make your own eco-friendly cleaning products, you can discuss what it means to be eco-conscious and teach your children how to read and follow a recipe.

Make a Playlist and Jam Along

A high-energy playlist can make nearly any task feel like it goes faster. Put on your family’s favorite songs and dance and sing along as you all prepare for the spring season.

Go Room by Room

The most effective way to deep clean your house is to approach it room by room. You can skip rooms you have cleaned more recently and start with areas your family largely neglected over the winter. Create cleaning lists for each room to keep you organized. Lists have the added satisfaction of crossing off each completed task as you go.

Start With Decluttering

Spring is the perfect time to go through everything, get rid of items you no longer use, fix broken or worn things, and move items to a more convenient location. As you declutter, start with at least 4 boxes:

• Box 1 is the donation box for items you no longer need or use but may still have a useful life elsewhere. Think carefully about which items can truly be used by somebody else and which should be trashed or recycled instead.
• Box 2 is the trash box. Not everything can be donated, so you’ll need at least one box for items you need to throw out or recycle.
• Box 3 is a repair box for things you still want but need mending or repair. Once you’ve finished spring cleaning, you can fix the items in the box.
• Box 4 is the “put away” box. This can be your catch-all box for items you need to remove temporarily for cleaning before returning to the shelf, items you want to put in storage, move to another room, or give more thought to before deciding its fate.

Some items may not fit in a box, and you may need more than one box per category, but this idea can still help you stay organized.

Keep Cleaning Products to a Minimum

You may be surprised how much cleaning you can do with a microfiber cloth and a good all-purpose cleaner. The fewer specialty cleaners you buy, the less room they’ll take up in your cabinets or linen closet.

Choose – or Make – Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products

So many cleaning products may be harmful to you or the environment. Stick with eco-friendly (non-toxic and biodegradable) products when possible. Here are some ideas of eco-friendly cleaners you can make yourself:

• Boil spices or herbs (like cinnamon or cloves) in place of air fresheners
• Make your own general-purpose cleaners from warm water mixed with vinegar or baking soda
• Use half a lemon sprinkled with salt like a scouring pad for stainless steel or chrome surfaces

Invest in Multi-Use Cleaning Tools

Why keep a vacuum, carpet scrubber, broom, and mop when you can buy tools which handle it all? Purchasing a multi-use tool can make cleaning easier while taking up less storage space than all the old tools you used.

Spring Cleaning Checklist

Is your spring-cleaning checklist missing anything? Here are some common things people clean at least once a year:

• Dust first, starting at the top and working your way down. You can sweep or vacuum up dust from the floor later.
• Clean light switches, doorknobs, and other often-forgotten small areas.
• Thoroughly clean your bathrooms, wiping down all surfaces.
• Clean your pantry and kitchen cabinets.
• Clean the front, back, top, bottom, sides, and inside of all appliances, including your refrigerator/freezer, dishwasher, microwave, and oven/stove.
• Dry clean or launder all linens, including curtains, drapes, bedding, and throws.
• Wipe down the windows while the curtains and drapes are being cleaned.
• Clean and wash mirrors, windows, windowsills, and window frames.
• Sweep, mop, vacuum, and/or steam clean all the floors in your home. Vacuum chairs, sofas, and any other upholstered furniture – and don’t forget to lift the cushions and clean beneath.
• Clean your air. Replace your HVAC filter; buy or change the batteries on your radon, carbon monoxide, and smoke detectors; and consider investing in special germ-killing UV bulbs.
• Don’t forget outdoor areas like sweeping and hosing down your patio, cleaning the grill, and scrubbing the outside of the windows.

Make Cleaning Your Sky Cove South Home a Habit

Once you finish your spring cleaning, it’s much easier to keep your home clean with a regular maintenance schedule. Maybe you make it a habit to dust every Monday, tackle the floors every Tuesday, clean the bathroom every Wednesday, scrub the kitchen every Thursday, then spend your whole weekend enjoying time with your family.

Are you looking to move to the Palm Beach area? Check out the beautiful single-family and multigenerational houses at Sky Cove South. Contact us today for more information.