Lockdown - Clean your Home one Room a Day!
The nationwide lockdown has forced us all to stay at home, but let's make the most of the time to do something... even if it's cleaning the house one room at a time!
27/03/2020
South Africans are praying that the lockdown serves it's purpose, to bring down the infection rate related to the Coronavirus. With everyone being forced to stay at home, don't look for the bad in this situation, rather look for practical or positive ways to fill your time. One idea that comes to mind is to clean your home from top to bottom - one room a day, especially since you can't have your regular home cleaning service come in and do it for you.. That way, when the lockdown is over, you will know that your home is absolutely clean, clutter-free and can take a deep breath and carry on with life.
Even if you have someone that cleans your home regularly, there are still areas that tend to be forgotten, stuff that ends up in a spare room or dumped in a cupboard, or items that always get overlooked. Taking the time to clean your home during the 3 week lockdown will give you plenty of time to put together a plan of action, get stuck in and while away the time. You don't even have to only spend a single day on a room if it requires more work than that. After all, there are 21 days to fill.
Where to start?
While there is no particular order for where to start your cleaning plan, a good idea is to tackle the room where you spend the most amount of time as a priority. This could be the living room, family room or a den. Chances are that this room also has a lot of stuff that belongs in other rooms, so getting all that out of the way before you start is a good way to begin.
If possible, try to remove as much furniture as you can, even if you need to put this outside in the garden on or your driveway. The weather is good and there is only a very slim possibility of rain. Have a couple of plastic drop cloths on hand for just in case.
- Give the room a new look and feel
With the larger pieces of furniture out of the room, now is a good time to look at moving around furniture if you were wanting to give the room a new look and feel. With nothing in it, you can look at where items can be placed without the effort of actually moving the pieces around.
- Work from the top down
Start at the top of the room and work your way down; clean curtain rails and light fittings, and definitely give a ceiling fan a good clean. From there you can move down to windows and window frames, art on the wall, fixing cracks in the wall, and so on. All the way down until you reach the floor.
- Deep clean as you go
The point of this cleaning is to give every room a complete clean, so don't just wipe with a duster. Dirt tends to build up on top of curtain rails and tracks can get sticky with grime, so give these a thorough scrub and wipe down. The same applies to light fittings; remove the glass shades to dust out any dead bugs and soak the glass or plastic shades in hot soapy water.
For smelly carpets, especially if there are pets around, sprinkle a liberal amount of bicarbonate of soda over the carpet. Go over this with a soft sweeping brush to get the soda into the carpet fibres, and leave this on for about an hour before vacuuming. This natural treatment will loosen dust and fibres embedding in the carpet and also help to lift smells.
- Before you go
Once the room is clean top to bottom before you put any furniture back into the room give it a good clean while it is outside. This is the perfect time to tip upholstered furniture upside down the clean the seats and cushions properly; if you have a tennis or squash racket give the seats and back a good pounding to release accumulated dust.
Dining tables tend to collect spider webs and the like, so get underneath with a feather duster to clean this area. You can also use this time to check furniture for any damage that needs to be fixed before it goes back into the room.
When to finish?
This same routine can be applied to every single room in a home, moving from room to room to give each a thorough cleaning. Filling your time with something that gives you the satisfaction of a job well done, has to be worth the effort.