Day 2 arrived for the Spring Cleaning party! If you haven’t already joined, roll up your sleeves and jump in at any time over at SimpleMom! Leave a comment with your own tips for decluttering, cleaning and organizing the home.
Today’s focus was the Living Room, family room, den, or any other area you spend most of your time in. This area will take about two days. I spent today cleaning, dusting, wiping the blinds, putting away things that did not belong and steam cleaning all of my area rugs.
Tomorrow will be spent behind the scenes in the cabinets, drawers and closets where dust bunnies and clutter like to hide. I will be decluttering the bookshelves and arranging our DVD/Game cabinets. I hope to continue to fill my Sell/Give box with things that are not of use to us anymore.
Here are some tips on what I learned today!
Enlist the troops! Sophia helped with all the dusting today! Armed with a rag, I would spritz surfaces and she would travel behind me cleaning. By finding age related tasks for the children willing to help, it makes the clean-up go much faster!
Don’t get discouraged! I have 5 children. Some days the mess is endless. As soon as one room is clean, another room has been destroyed. This will happen no matter what. Do not give up even if you think your cleaning is pointless! By taking the time to minimize some of the “stuff” in your home and to do a deep cleaning, it will only make the following days easier to control.
Here are my before and after pics for today!
The first set is of my bookcase. The twins love to read. I have the pleasure of cleaning up the “before” picture often since I can not quite get two one-year olds to put the books back on the shelf correctly...yet. I took some extra time to sort the books and make them look a bit neater.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
If you haven’t already, check out the tips and comments at SimpleMom to see how other homes are enjoying their Spring Cleaning Party!
I have 6 year old twins who insisted on helping. You are right somedays it seems they mess it up faster than I can clean it. Happy Cleaning!
ReplyDeleteLooks great! You're doing a good job! I love how simplistic everything looks. :)
ReplyDeleteLooks so nice! We have the same coffee table :)! have fun tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteIt looks good. Maybe the kiddos could put the books into a basket if not back on the shelf? But then again maybe not.. :-)
ReplyDeleteThe bookshelf looks lovely! You are doing fantastic--it doesn't look like you have that many small people living there ;o) My two seem to make at least twice that mess!
ReplyDeleteSome days I feel like I spend all evening just picking up the toys (or prompting my 5 year old to do so). There are days when I just give in and pick it up myself. I think I'd be crazy if I had two of them to clean up behind. Oh wait, I do. Don't husbands count?
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the comments! I'm enjoying visiting all your homes to see the changes everyone is making!
ReplyDeleteI love your useful tips! My son has figured out how to "work" the windex trigger spray. He wants to wash all the windows every day! The problem, I need to be there with the papertowel wiping up, and I don't feel like cleaning windows everyday. Thanks for the great post!
ReplyDeleteAbbie