2. Hand out the disinfecting wipes and have everyone wipe marks off their walls and light switch plates. A Mr. Clean Magic Eraser might come in handy as well. Make sure you have enough for everyone!
3. Hand out dust rags and have everyone wipe down their bookshelves, TVs, and electronics. |
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5. As the laundry baskets start to pile up in the hallway, get your washer going. The laundry may as well start washing while you work! Have your kids strip their bedding and add that to the piles as well. This is also a good time to take curtains down and wash them. Have your taller kids wipe the window frames once the curtains are down. Hand out Windex wipes for the windows. I’m a huge fan of all sorts of cleaning wipes when it comes to getting the kids to help out. They can clean too, without making an even bigger mess than what they started with!
6. Get rid of stuff. Ouch. Your kids will really hate this part. Look at what they have too much of and then set a specific number of items to give away. For example, when my kids’ closets are overflowing, I might tell them that they have to choose at least ten items of clothing to get rid of. If they have more books than what will fit on their shelves, I’ll count the excess and tell them they need to choose that number of books to give away. When it comes to random toys, I only allow my kids to keep as many as will fit in their toy boxes. This might sound harsh to some, but I personally believe that it is good to limit your children’s belongings. Otherwise, they get overwhelmed by all of this STUFF. It is so much easier for them to organize their own surroundings when they aren’t overwhelmed with a million toys that they probably never touch except to move them out of the way to find the toys they actually play with. Apply this same concept to yourself and your own bedroom.
7. Once yours and your children’s belongings have all found their homes, it’s time to clean the floors. If you have carpeting, vacuum. If you have hard floors, vacuum any area rugs you might have, and then roll them up and move them out of the room so you can clean the hard floors. If you’ve read my last two posts, you can probably guess what I’m going to recommend next: sweep, then Swiffer with first a dry pad and then a wet pad. After the floors have dried, you can bring the rug back in.
8. Once your bedding is washed, it’s time to make up the beds. Then take your kids out for ice cream or something. At this point, I’m sure you all deserve it!
And that’s it, you did it! Well, you did the worst of it anyway. You may still have laundry rooms and mud rooms and libraries and dens and such to do. (I don’t have any of these things to clean!) If so, you just follow the same basic concepts that I outlined in the other rooms. Start at the top of the room and work your way down. Dust, wipe, declutter, clean the floors, etc. Do one room a week, and your house will be clean by summer!
You may purchase all of the cleaning products mentioned here in my store: http://astore.amazon.com/poormumspalace-20.