Home is the one place where calm and peace should reign at all times. This is essential for peace of mind and contentment, especially after a hard day’s work, or a day when things haven’t gone well. But for a house to achieve the status of being serene to the mind, where bliss, happiness, and calm prevail, a certain degree of basic essentials have to be fulfilled.
At the top of the list of these essentials, is the cleanliness of the house. Other essentials are orderliness, layout, color scheme, etc. However, it is the cleanliness that will define the house. A common proverb states, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”, and this article will advise you on ways and means to clean every room of your house, to hopefully achieve a degree of godliness.
Start with Pre-cleaning – Declutter
Before you embark on your cleaning drive, reduce the clutter in the house and put things back in their correct places. Your pet’s toys, the misplaced magazines and newspapers, keys, electronics, and so on. Putting objects back in their correct rooms and places can make the house a lot cleaner, to begin with, providing some much-needed motivation and simplifying the entire process. Once you begin the actual cleaning process, you won’t have to interrupt your flow repeatedly to put things back in place. Clear the tables and close any open shelves and although not necessary, cover your television and your computers with a cloth. While clearing the dust off of your window mesh and ceiling, leaving your wardrobe and shelves open would further increase your workload as dust may accumulate.
Organize and Plan
Have a plan in place. Cleaning your entire house room by room can take quite some time. So make sure that you have ample time on your hands. If not, plan to target only a part of your house and plan the rest for later. If you set about trying to clean your entire house within an impractical time frame, you will either end up doing a half-hearted job or not be able to finish in time, leaving you frustrated. Decide the intensity of cleaning you wish to perform: just a light dusting, or do you want to perform a deep clean. You could also plan to disinfect your house. For certain things, you may even have to hire professional help. Planning in advance can help you avoid any hiccups.
Gather Your Cleaning Supplies
Once you have your plan in place, you should start arranging all the supplies that you need. You don’t want to start cleaning, only to find out that you don’t have all the equipment that you need. The most basic tools that you might require include rubber gloves, brooms, dusting rags, cleaning brushes, floor disinfectants, and house cleaning products. You would also require a microfibre cloth to wipe glass surfaces and other scratch-prone items.
Have a Standard Pattern
While cleaning your house, there should be a fixed sequence that you should follow. Irrespective of which room you are cleaning, you should always clean from top to bottom. Start with cleaning the ceiling and the upper portion of the walls. You should then follow this up by cleaning the walls and the windows, followed by the floor. Cleaning the furniture, appliances, and other ornaments should come last. This is because if you do it the other way round, the dust from the ceiling and windows might settle on the surfaces that you have already cleaned.
Targeting One Room at a Time
Now that you are done with the easy stuff, it is time to get some serious cleaning done. Here are a few tips to help you along the way.
Kitchen
While cleaning the kitchen, you should start with the cabinets and the countertop. While cleaning the countertop, a wet rag should suffice; however, if there are grease stains that are hard to remove, you could use some white vinegar or some mild soap. Make sure that you move the appliances and clean that region as well. If your shelves are wooden, you must ensure that the cloth is not too wet and is only moist. After the countertop, you should clean the appliances which could include your microwave, oven, toaster, and food processor. Subsequently, you can also soak the garbage disposal and clean the sink. Mopping the floor should come in last, although sweeping it or vacuuming should be your first step while cleaning the kitchen. For disinfecting your kitchen, the professionals behind this website suggest using food-grade disinfectants. Using these can help prevent bacterial and viral growth for more than 60 days. Disinfecting your kitchen is very important, especially given the COVID pandemic.
Bedrooms
Once again you take the top to bottom approach. But after cleaning the ceiling followed by the walls, you should start with the windows. Cleaning the window is fairly straightforward. You start by removing the drapes and setting them aside. Next, you can vacuum out the window sills and then wipe them down. As the final step, you can clean the window glasses. Pro-tip, wipe in one direction on the inner side of the window and the perpendicular direction on the outside. This will help you identify and remove any swiping marks that may arise. After everything is cleaned, you can remove the bed sheets and the pillow covers and wash them along with the curtains. Removing the used bedsheets and the pillow covers after everything else will help you keep your mattress dust free and also keep the fresh bedsheet and pillow cover perfectly clean and fresh. Needless to say, sweeping of the floor should always be followed by mopping.
Living Room
The procedure for cleaning the living room remains the same as that of the bedroom. If you have carpets or rugs, you may want to carry them outside and dust them. They tend to hold a lot of dust and if cleaned inside, can significantly increase your work. You should also remove the drapes as they will have to be washed. If your furniture has removable covers, those can be washed as well, else you could simply wipe down the furniture and dust the cushions outside. Wooden furniture can also be polished. The type of polish that you use depends on the type of wood and its finish. These tips, if done properly, will infuse new life into your living room.
Bathroom
Washing your bathroom can be quite straightforward, provided you use the right cleaning solutions and the right tools. The salt in the water can cause scaling in the bathtubs and the shower stalls and cause staining on your bathroom fittings.
Cleaning these without an appropriate cleaner can be quite difficult, so you need to use the right cleaners. Before you scrub down your bathroom, you should soak your bathroom fittings with a suitable multi-purpose cleaner or with a dedicated bathroom cleaner. This will make the subsequent scrubbing of your bathroom to remove any stains much easier.
While cleaning your house can take a significant amount of time and effort, it can be quite rewarding and surprisingly relaxing. Furthermore, with the right tools and the right cleaning equipment, cleaning your house can be quite straightforward. Try finishing one room before you move on to another and follow a top-down approach to minimize your work. Following these tips will definitely help you leave your house spic and span in no time.
