How I Clean House
16 Jul
Hello. I am a young wife. This is how I clean house. There’s lots of different methods out there. This is what works for me.
There is a difference between straightening and cleaning. Straightening the house makes it orderly and neat. Cleaning the house makes it clean. This is one reason why you can clean house all day, but it looks like you haven’t done anything. Another reason might be that your dog chews up pillows and drags the stuffing all over the house.
I have to straighten the house, as well as clean, every day. Straightening includes putting shoes in the closet, picking up trash and dishes and making the bed. Cleaning includes dusting, vacuuming, mopping, scrubbing toilets and showers and washing windows.
I clean my house from top to bottom. I dust first, starting with the ceiling fans. Then I wipe down my countertops, kitchen sink and stovetop. Then I vacuum. In the bathroom, I clean the sinks and showers and toilets before I sweep and mop or wash the bath mats.
Please note, it’s rare that I get all of that done in one day. Maybe day one you could dust and wipe the counters. Day two clean the bathroom and day three sweep and mop. Some people like to focus on cleaning one room at a time, but for me, if I’ve got my Swiffer Duster out, I may as well dust everything all at once.
Typically I do a load of laundry every day, so I usually don’t have a designated laundry day. Also, I clean with rags, not paper towels. I save tons of money that way. I really love the microfiber cloths made for cleaning mirrors and glass.
I do iron. David has to wear a long sleeved dress shirt and tie to work every day. Brooks Brothers shirts are a lifesaver, but not all of his shirts are from Brooks Brothers, and ironing saves money over dry cleaning. I motivate myself to iron by renting a chick flick that I tell myself I can only watch while I’m ironing. Or, if it’s a day when I need to iron, but I keep putting it off, I tell myself I can’t have any more Diet Coke until I start ironing. That always works!
One more tip. I use the Pledge Fabric Sweeper to get Henry’s hair off of the upholstery. I can fill the sweeper by cleaning the couch one time, so I had to find a way to make it reusable. I tried prying the rollers apart and dumping out the hair, but it didn’t work afterwards. I’ve found that if you take a butter knife and run it down the crack, the hair comes out and the sweeper still works.
So, what’s your method? Any tips or tricks?
Hey, what’s the best way to clean a shower with two tile walls and two glass walls? I can get the tile to look good, or the glass to look good, but never both. As you might guess, the master shower is my most dreaded chore. What’s your least favorite chore?
Girl, you are exhausting me just reading your list! I can’t even REMEMBER when I was physically able to clean the whole house. College maybe.
For the glass part of the shower, do you have a squeegee? Ya know, like the rubber part of your windshield wipers? Or, use like Tilex on the tile and windex on the glass.
I think my favorite products, although they can be a bit more expensive, are the cleaning wipes. It’s SO much easier for people with strength and stamina issues to grab a wipe and clean something than bottles of this and that, and scrubbing. I especially like the pledge multi-use wipes. You can use them on wood, plastic, glass, electronics, everything. Although for the “real” wood, the nice things my husband has built me and such, I love liquid gold. Makes them SHINE!
Another MIRACLE cleaner is the Magic Eraser from Mr. Clean. I do NOT know HOW they do it, but you get it wet, and it will get any stain off of any hard surface. Anything. My husband even used it to get ink from a gel pen out of the dryer after it had gone through the washer and dryer and was dried on. Nothing else would touch it. Magic Eraser took it all out. Amazing!
Kerri, I knew I liked you. Magic Erasers are my favorite. I give them as housewarming gifts. I’ve used the Pledge wood wipes, but I haven’t tried the multi-surface.
Yeah, David couldn’t be cleaning house. I’m blessed to be healthy enough to take care of him. One thing I meant to write, but forgot, is that with all of the medication David is taking, his immunne system is weakened. It’s really important for me to keep things clean so that he doesn’t catch things. And, I get sick a lot, too, and I’m very susceptible to food poisoning, so it’s very important that I keep the house clean.
I do have a squeegee. I just never felt like the glass was clean using windex and the squuegee, but I think they have anti-bacterial Windex now. Thanks!
A little bit of CLR diluted and sprayed on the glass walls of the shower will cut any hard water stains and leave everything looking beautiful. I wash down the CLR and then spray it down with Windex to just put a final shine on things. The key for us is to use the squeegee after every shower. It helps keep the spots from drying on your beautiful glass shower door. And I agree – the Magic Eraser was heaven sent! I have taken all kinds of yuck off of a wide variety of surfaces.
For the shower, we use Magic Eraser, Scrubbing Bubbles, Vinegar Windex, and Invisible Shield. Scour with the Scrubbing Bubbles, wipe the tile grout with Magic Eraser, and spray the glass with Vinegar Windex. Then, when the shower glass is really clean, we use Invisible Shield (like RainX) once per quarter. And, use a squeegee after every shower. Sounds like a lot of work! Fortunately, it’s one chore that Rodney doesn’t mind doing. HA!
Thanks for sharing the other tips!
Oh, the dreaded master shower is my least favorite thing to clean! It never looks clean, no matter what I use or how hard I scrub. I love the Magic Eraser and the microfiber cloths.
I have not heard about the pledge fabric sweeper, but I will have to try it for all the wonderful dalmatian hairs I have everywhere. Thanks for sharing the tip!
Michelle, let me know if you want a coupon. I have several.