A Young Wife's Tale » cleaning house http://youngwifestale.com/blog Hand me another Diet Coke. Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:46:17 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 How I Clean House http://youngwifestale.com/blog/homemaking/how-i-clean-house/ http://youngwifestale.com/blog/homemaking/how-i-clean-house/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:52:37 +0000 Young Wife http://youngwifestale.com/blog/?p=603

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?

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