Spring Cleaning: Day One

After one last cold snap from good ol' mother nature spring has sprung for good! Outside little buds are blooming on the trees, flowers are opening up towards the sky and a soft spring rain is falling. Meanwhile, inside I have started my bi-yearly (spring and fall) ritual of deep-cleaning.

Some people like to work the whole house in layers, ie. clean up all the surface dirt all through out the house, then do all the closets, then do all the cabinets, etc.When I deep-clean I like to do one room at a time and today I am going to start with little mans room.

Another thing I do when spring cleaning that a lot of people don't is I do the hard things first and work my way inside out. What that means is I organize closets/drawers/dressers/cabinets first (the "inside" stuff) and then I do the dusting of furniture, scrubbing of baseboards and windows, and straightening  of knick-knacks (the "outside" stuff).

I do this for two reasons 1) there is no need to surface clean if I am just going to dirty it up again when I declutter/organize and 2) it's easier to do the hard stuff at the beginning when I have a lot of energy then to wait till the end when I am wearing down.

I started with the dresser.

• One at a time I pulled the drawer out, sat in on the floor and went through it.
• I pulled out what didn't fit anymore and what was the wrong season and packed those away in a Huggies diaper box.
• I then neatly folded all his clothes 
• Each drawer is dedicated to a certain thing.
• First drawer is diapers and wipes. 
• Second drawer is onesies and long pants
• Third drawer is short sleeve shirts and shorts
• Fourth drawer is blankets
• Fifth drawer is burp clothes, receiving blankets, and sheets.

Next was the closet.

• I pulled all his clothes out of his closet and weeded the ones that didn't fit anymore and the ones that were the wrong season. 
• I packed those clothes away in an old Huggies box and sat it out in the hall.
• I then pulled everything off the closet floor, this included his toy bookshelf and his black drawers. 
• I vacuumed the closet and then put the bookshelf and the black drawer back in. 
• Next, I weeded his old toys (ones for newborns) and packed them away for the next child. 
• I organized his toy bookshelf with the remaining toys and filled up his black drawers with his bibs, washcloths, hats, etc.
• The shelves in the top of his closet hold plastic storage containers. I took those down and organized those. 

     

• Next I took down and washed the curtains. 
• Washed the windows. 
• Made the bed.
• Used furniture polish on the crib and dresser. 
• Dusted the baseboards. 
• Vacuumed under the crib and the rest of the room. 
• I also took this opportunity to clean out and organize the diaper bag.  

And of course little man helped. After I got all his shorts folded he decided that I didn't do it right and so he climbed in the drawer and proceeded to throw out all the shorts one by one. 

In the afternoon me and the butterball tackled the living room.

Keeping in mind the "inside-out" rule, I did the drawers and the stacking baskets first. Taking one end table at a time I did the following:

• Removed the drawer and sat it on the floor. 
• Dusted inside the drawer pocket (I'm not sure what it's called, but the place where the drawer slides into the end table). 
• I removed everything from the drawer and separated them into three piles. 
• a trash pile
• a goes somewhere else pile
• a stays in the drawer pile
• I put everything that goes in the drawer back in an orderly manner. 
• Did the same thing to the second end table. 

 I then cleaned out my stack-able storage boxes that reside over by the book shelf. It doesn't look like much after but the wires were all tangled together before.

 Other things I did was:

• Wash and iron the curtains.
• Wash the windows.
• Dust and polish the furniture. 
• Wipe down the light switches and door handles. 
• Move the furniture and vacuum under it. 
• Straighten up the bookshelf. 
• Clean the couch with my hand steam cleaner. 
• Vacuum the rest of the room. 
• Dust the baseboards.
• Cleaned the glass of the entertainment center and the TV. 
• Dusted the knick-knacks.

Here is the after of my bookshelf...I forgot to take a before so just imagine it really dusty (black furniture shows dust really well) and the books slightly more askew.

And of course little man helped in here too. After his diaper change he went to the wipe box, got a wipe, and proceeded to crawl into the living room with it. He then climbed up on his feet and started to wash the glass of the entertainment center like he saw me do. In reality he just made a lot of streaks and fingerprints that I had to go back and clean up but it was too cute. I have a feeling making more work for mom will be his MO for the rest of his life.