Spring Cleaning

Hello everyone! Bet you thought I was dead right?!  I know its been a while since my last post. What can I say? Life takes over and Im just along for the ride.  It seems like everything and nothing happened all in the span of a few months. We have been crazy busy, but not so much with anything I felt you all would be interested in reading. I started painting the base boards in our home (hopefully a tutorial with tips coming soon). My little girl was sick for almost a month, then was teething, got a tooth (ya!) and promptly started working on the next tooth (sigh). No rest for the weary I guess.

My next few posts are going to mostly be dedicated to the super exciting, always fun topic of cleaning ( you're laughing right?) Ok, so maybe fun and exciting are not the best word to describe it.  I also apologize in advance that these posts are probably going to be lacking in fun and exciting pictures too. But hey, I didnt think anyone wanted to see my messy house anyway.

Sadly its a fact of life that house's get dirty and we (in my house that's 'I') end up needing to clean. As you know we recently purchased a home. Where we used to live was maybe 1200 square feet of space to clean. Now its almost double that. And while I love our home, I feel like its a constant battle to clean. I felt like I was just running in circles, without a plan. I would clean the same things all the time and then one day look up and realize I hadn't vacuumed the stairs since....well since we moved in. If you have any pets you may have the joy of knowing that their hair loves to accumulate in the carpet of the stairs.  Let's just say, Ewww.  I hate stairs with carpet. When house hunting it was one of the top things on my do not want list. Some how we ended up with them anyway. Its not so much that I hate the stairs, or the carpet. I hate vacuuming the furry creatures that start growing on my stairs.

I needed a plan of attack. I searched the web for cleaning schedule that worked for me and found, nothing. Maybe its just me but so many of the schedule's I found were over kill. I mean who needs to clean their baseboards every week?! While I would agree cleaning your bathroom often is a plus, I also dont think it needs a deep cleaning every week either. Once a month or so seems good enough to me. Besides, who wants their hand shoved in a toilet every time they turn around? Not me. Dont get me wrong, there are things I do almost everyday. I try to clean the kitchen after every meal, sometimes easier said then done though. And I try to walk around and pick up clutter a few times a week too. But I needed a plan for the bigger jobs.I wanted things to be spaced out. A few jobs a week would be perfect, after all I also have a child to take care of (as many of us do) and a dog, and a boyfriend, and cooking, and work and projects to finish and... well you get the idea. I like to live life as it happens.  Not clean constantly.  Also my week nights are already slammed enough with things to do. So the last thing I want to do is break out the toilet scrubber on a Tuesday night.

So I made my own schedule. It goes something like this-

HOUSE CLEANING CHECKLIST
	WEEK 1		WEEK 2
	Laundry		Laundry
	Vacuum upstairs		Sweep/Mop
	Clean Kitchen		Clean bathroom(s)
	Wash bedding		Vacuum downstairs
	WEEK 3		WEEK 4
	Laundry		Laundry
	Dust		Wash Bedding
	Clean Kitchen		Sweep/mop
			Vacuum downstairs
	WEEK 5		EVERY 2-3 MONTHS
	Laundry		Clean oven
	Clean Microwave		Clean windows
	Clean Kitchen		Clean dishwasher
	Clean Fridge		Clean (inside and out) cupboards and drawers
			Vacuum edges and stairs
			Wash throw blankets
			Clean window coverings
			Clean out closet Move Furniture and vacuum