#Springcleaningchallenge
With the weather here in Maryland jumping from the 20’s at night to 70’s by day and a forecast of rain and snow in our future, flu season is still upon us. Children foregoing jackets at recess with the not quite warm weather and holiday weekends gathering with friends, means that germs are still abundant.
When the sun is shining, we are getting outside to prepare gardens and yards for the growing season. With spring, come rainy days when we can’t get outside and this makes it the perfect time to do some indoor spring cleaning and decluttering at home.
Here are some ideas to make the process fun and efficient for your family:
- Put on some fun music and let the family take turns picking the music as you move room to room decluttering and cleaning
- Work together as a family in the same space together, assigning different cleaning to each person, like dusting baseboards, wiping down surfaces, sweeping or vacuuming and cleaning windows. This gives you time to train your children to enjoy keeping a tidy home together.
- Put together small caddy’s that can be carried room to room so that you do not need to store extra cleaning products all over the house. Make a smaller one that can be carried by the Little’s who are helping. You can even just put water in a spray bottle and give the youngest of your cleaning crew a microfiber cloth to wipe “spots or dust” that they see. Children LOVE spraying things!
- Get rid of outdated cleaning supplies and read the directions on cleaning products to make sure that you are taking care of the residual germs in your home with the right products. Either a cup of bleach in a gallon of hot water, 1 part white vinegar & 7 parts hot water or a disinfectant stating that it kills 99.9 % of germs is your best bet for killing microbes. Remember to wear gloves and protection when needed.
- Watching cleaning posts with the hashtags #springcleaning or #springcleaningchallenge together can get the teenagers (or the parents!) motivated to join in.
- Take before and after photos so you can look back to see how your hard work paid off.
- Make sure to split the home up into doable projects so that it gets completed but does not drain your cleaning team spirit.
- Ask for the kids input as you rearrange furniture or add some seasonal decor.
- Talk with your children about good hygiene and identify the germiest or grimiest places in your home and show them how to disinfect the surfaces well.
- Go through junk drawers and closets together and make it a game to run random objects that don’t belong there to the spaces where they do belong.
- Once finished, treat your cleaning team to some ice cream and stop by your favorite Donation Center to drop off the items you found while cleaning that you no longer need or use.
Cleaning a home does not need to be overwhelming, and by helping your children to be a part of the process, they will take pride in the work of their hands. Don’t let your expectations for a “perfectly” cleaned and organized space be projected into the process. You can always go back and touch up what was missed. Training your children (and sometimes husbands) to appreciate and to care for their home is a life-long skill that every person should have. And it builds lasting memories of working together for all of you. Have fun spring-cleaning!
Feel free to comment and share your own #springcleaninghacks for all of us to enjoy.