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Honored Contributor
Posts: 20,019
Registered: ‎08-08-2010

Re: Spring cleaning anyone? Share your plans/progress


@151949 wrote:

Having a housekeeper is more than just that she cleans your house for you. If you watch her you'll learn many triicks to doing your cleaning more simply and efficiently. My housekeeper is very petite so she has brushes on long handles so she doesn't need the stepstool so often. She has a brush that goes over the blades on the ceiling fans to dust them - quick as a wink. She also has a brush she puts on the sweeper and goes along the baseboards - they are clean quick as a wink, & she doesn't even have to bend over. She uses a long brush to clean the tub - once again - she doesn't even have to bend over.I prefer she use these things only in my house so I purchased them and keep them here and she uses them here only.


 

@151949

 

As I am aging (well, my body is aging faster than my mind anyway) I have started to use some of these 'aids' in cleaning too. 

 

I have to say that in some ways I like them, but honestly they don't get things as squeaky clean as the old fashioned way of coming in direct contact with the surfaces with some soap and water, but I settle for it in certain places in between bigger/deeper cleaning, and they do make my life easier in that aspect. 

 

While I do use a Campinelli microfiber dust/wet mop thing on the wood floors most of the time, there is just nothing that gets in the corners, cracks and crevices like good old hands and knees floor washing. I still do that too, just not nearly as often!

Honored Contributor
Posts: 20,019
Registered: ‎08-08-2010

Re: Spring cleaning anyone? Share your plans/progress


@CHATTY wrote:

SPRING CLEANING???  Do you mean winter cleaning.  I live in Pennsylvania and it's still January and winter here.  My furnace of course is running and I wouldn't even think about spring cleaning until at least March or April.  If I did my spring cleaning now in the winter, I would have to do it again in the spring.


 

@BLH

 

We don't have a furnace (electric baseboard heat) but I remember those days, and I wouldn't clean this early back when we lived in town with that type of heat either. 

 

As posted here, this is the only time of year I have to give the house a thorough going over with all our outdoor work that begins usually by mid April at the latest. 

 

I have a friend that teaches second grade, and her 'srping cleaning' is done in July of every year. 

 

It happens when it happens for people! LOL

Honored Contributor
Posts: 25,929
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Spring cleaning anyone? Share your plans/progress

@Mominohio Well , if you want to get up on a ladder to clean 7 ceiling fans , blade by blade with soap & water - that's your choice. I find that they are clean to my standard by simple dusting every 2 weeks. Same with baseboards, dusring with the vacuum keeps them clean to my standard. 

BTW - i introduced my housekeeper to super cloths from QVC and now they are all she uses to clean glass.

Honored Contributor
Posts: 18,604
Registered: ‎10-25-2010

Re: Spring cleaning anyone? Share your plans/progress


@Snoopp wrote:

How do you afford to paint every other year?  It is going to cost me thousands to just do a significant amount of upstairs painting this year.  Your walls must look wonderful.

 I don't know how the walls get spots.  I am blaming the dog but I've washed walls in the past and can't figure out where the spots come from.  

 

Painting question...what type of paint should be used for trim?  Semi gloss is getting too dusty and the baseboard cleaning is killing me.


We can paint so often because the labor is free.  I just have to feed DH and he’s happy.

 

He actually likes to paint.  Last year we skipped painting the bedrooms because they get little use, but he is already itching for me to get some paint so he can do them this year.  I am trying to talk him into only painting the master and skipping the rest. They really don’t need painting.

 

My husband can do just about everything around the home and with cars and engines.  We had to pay someone do replace the windows and the roof, because I don’t want him on ladders anymore, but he wanted to do the work himself.

 

I am fortunate because he does a wonderful job too.  

 

I have natural wood trim, so my baseboards are not painted.  I just dust them when I vacuum with a slightly damp microfiber cloth and that seems to work.  My house is super dusty and you can see the dust on the baseboards after only a day or two.

 

Esteemed Contributor
Posts: 5,453
Registered: ‎02-02-2015

Re: Spring cleaning anyone? Share your plans/progress

@Carmie you are a lucky lady.  I would be repainting rooms all the time if I were you.  My baseboards show dust within a few days too.  I'm going to clean them one room at a time with some soap and water and a microfiber cloth.  I dread it though.  My knees will be killing me.

Honored Contributor
Posts: 20,019
Registered: ‎08-08-2010

Re: Spring cleaning anyone? Share your plans/progress


@151949 wrote:

@Mominohio Well , if you want to get up on a ladder to clean 7 ceiling fans , blade by blade with soap & water - that's your choice. I find that they are clean to my standard by simple dusting every 2 weeks. Same with baseboards, dusring with the vacuum keeps them clean to my standard. 

BTW - i introduced my housekeeper to super cloths from QVC and now they are all she uses to clean glass.


 

@151949

 

Definitely ceiling fans and the globes on them need soap and water washed at least a couple of time per year in this house.  Baseboards I wipe with either a damp cloth or the Supercloth as I'm dusting, but baseboards I don't do but maybe once every six weeks to two months (sometimes not even that often...much to the horror of my mother!).

 

I dont' know what we did before Supercloths and the Bio Cleaner cloths.  Which reminds me, I need to start a new thread as Bio Cleaner has some new cloths I tried. 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 12,313
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Spring cleaning anyone? Share your plans/progress

I tackled our master bedroom today....cleaned baseboards, ceiing fan, hardware on the drapery rods. Washed down all the furniture as well. Used the sweeper on the walls....no washing the walls.....Curtains taken down for a quick trip to the dryer to fluff up.

 

When it warms up I will do the windows, entirely to cold to have them open today.  

 

The room looks good and smells good as well....but many more rooms to go.  

I have many plans for early spring outside, so I want to get done as much as possible before warmer weather gets here.

 

 

 

Respected Contributor
Posts: 3,561
Registered: ‎07-20-2017

Re: Spring cleaning anyone? Share your plans/progress

I start my Spring cleaning in early March and take the house in sections.

 

Since I keep a fairly clean home all the time....it really isn't too much of a chore to me.

 

Cleaning the outside of the our home is, by far, the hardest. But, I am looking forward to it. 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 8,567
Registered: ‎03-14-2010

Re: Spring cleaning anyone? Share your plans/progress


@Carmie wrote:

@Mominohio wrote:

@CelticCrafter wrote:

@mousiegirl wrote:

@151949 wrote:

I don't do any spring cleaning per say anymore but I do small projects all the time that add up to a good cleaning. I no longer am able to wash walls and I miss that really clean feel & smell a room has when the walls have just been washed.


 

 

Wash the walls?  I wash prints off and vacuum, that's it for walls, lol.  


@mousiegirl - no little kids here, so no little handprints to wash off.  I will go over them with a swiffer or the vacuum.  Washing walls - that's what paint is for!   Wash them wrong and you have big old water streaks running down them.


 

Definitely. If one has big water streaks running down them, they have no idea how to and have never washed a wall! LOL


There are some areas on my kitchen walls  that need washed more often than waiting for spring to clean them.  I wipe my walls down pretty often when I see dirt.  A lot of what comes off is the paint.  We use an expensive washable paint, but if you wash many times, it comes off.

 

We usually paint all of the rooms on the first floor one year and all of the rooms on the second floor the next year, so my walls get painted every other year. We touch them up when necessary through out the year.  My white interior doors to the basement and to my kitchen pantry needs painted every year because the paint washes off around the handle where I always wipe it clean. 

 

i only do a total wall wash right before we paint.  The rest of the time, I use a microfiber cloth to dust them. One room in my house has red burgundy walls and I actually can see when it is time to dust, especially over the heat vents.

 

 


 

@Carmie  Wow! I'm glad we don't have that problem. The house we live in was built in the mid 1990's and all the walls here have the original eggshell color paint. I have been washing the walls once a year since we moved in back in 2001. The paint doesn't come off and still looks fine.

 

I like having the house all the same neutral color too...makes it so easy to change things up without having to paint Smiley Happy

 

 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 9,979
Registered: ‎07-28-2012

Re: Spring cleaning anyone? Share your plans/progress

[ Edited ]

I did finish up the cleaning of the oven yesterday, but left it there, until today when I pulled the range out from the wall to get under the range hood really well, along with the backsplash behind it. Had to get a stepstool and sit on that to scrub under the hood, so I wasn't all bent over as that does a number on my bad back, lol. Anyway the range, floor underneath and surrounding areas are all squeaky clean again. I have to see an ENT specialist in the morning about my ruptured ear, so probably won't get anything accomplished on Friday, as he is an hour away. I will be taking several items to the donations center in a little while, as I like to get them out of the house and not have a pile of stuff laying around and I need to fill the car with gas anyway. At least it finally got above the freezing mark on the thermometer, lol.

"To each their own, in all things".