OS Cleaning...

Danni-R

Hello,
I've been lurking for a while and was wondering..... When it comes to cleaning the house, how do you plan/motivate/ 'enjoy' doing it?

I live on my own and so I know its all my mess:o but it needs to be done.
Where do I start? The kitchen? The living room? And how is best to do it? I'm fully armed with shake and vac and all the cleaning products under the sun I just forgot to pick up the motivation....
Thanks
Danni

Ellidee

Hi, someone else will come along soon with better advice than me, but, for now, take a look at the Flylady thread just next to yours. HTH

belfastgirl23

I usually motivate myself by imagining a drop in visit from friends or family and how ashamed I'd be of the place. I also tend to start by promising myself a 'ten minute tidy' or fling boogie as the flyladies would have it. Often I can keep going for a while.

Flylady is good but be sure and start with the baby steps ... fully fledged flying can be a bit scary IMHO since it can feel it sets such a high standard you have no chance of living up to it and you should therefore retire to the sofa with a cup of tea and a biccie instead of starting anything

Skint_Catt

Definatly Flylady. One room a day and three/four different levels. Spreads it out a bit with weekends off! :j

Danni-R

Cheers for the help....
I'm off to look at the flylady thread! Was hoping to spend the weekend doing it!

skintchick

I live alone too so I know how messy it can get

What I do is start with teh kicthen, Clean and tidy it and make a cuppa.

Take cuppa into living room. While it's cooling tidy living room. Use carrier bags and fill them with rubbish, and then stuff that has t go to other rooms (one room per bag).

Once it's tidy, drink cuppa. Make another.

Take cuppa to next room to be tidied. I do my bedroom next, or the hallway if that's messy.

Keep going! In the bedroom I put everything onto the bed, in piles: clothes to be hung up, clothes to be washed, stuff that belongs elsewhere etc then work through each pile.

Then I stop.

Next day, hoover as you can now see your floors (!), clean bathroom,a dn do the washing you've 'found'.

A great tip for getting the house clean and tidy in record time is to invite someone to visit!

Good luck.

Peartree

Best motivation in the world - invite your friends/family round! With no impending visitor deadline, cleaning my house takes ages. With impending visitor deadline, the time is halved!

I also live alone but can mess up my house worse than a family of ten. What is amusing is when friends come around and say how lucky I am not to have children so that I can keep my house so nice (generally with a huge whiff of burning martyr). If they'd only seen how toxic it was 24 hours before!

Crazychik

I too find it hard to get motivated, and we're a family. I Generaly tidy in the week, but only have time to do proper thorough clean at wk ends.
Myself & OH share the work. But before he came on the scene, I used to split my 2 days off in the week and do a floor a day. Put loud music on in the background, turn of the tv & pc. Cos otherwise, Im tempted to sit & play rather than work.

I do the laundry,cleaning of the kichen, loo & bathroom,mop & sweep hall & kitchen
OH does hoovering of all the carpet areas, & polishing.
He helps also with the change of bedding (every other wk end),
curtains (twice a yr), cleaning windows (every couple of months), turning mattresses (twice a yr)


Set yourself a rota. And a goal for each day!
Once the majority of the "mess" is cleared. It shouldn't take long to re-do & keep on top of it.
Think of the area's in your home which is used the most. Then make a start on those. Any clutter, throw in bags/boxes and put somewhere no-one will see. When you have time, you can sort through those items!
I tend to make 4 piles of clutter or itmes no longer needed
1 for selling on, ebay, car boot etc
2 for charity
3 pass on to friends
4 rubbish
I do all of these regular, and helps to keeps things to a minimum.

Good Luck

passion8

Hi Danni-R

I haven't joined the flylady thread yet, (keep forgetting ) but I wanted to pass a tip on re biological wash powder that was posted here by squishyclaire.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=6402704#post6402704

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Have you tried biological washing powder. I used this recently on my oven and it worked a treat. It is a bit harder on the sides but you can use cold water to make a thick paste. Leave it on for a while and then wash it off. Still use gloves though, it's not nice on your hands. I soaked the trays in the bath with washing powder also and then gave them a little scrub. I buy the Asda 50p smart price powder which seems fine.

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I don't expect you'll be starting with the oven? , but there's some other tips for biological powder.

I tried the paste on the underside of the kitchen cupboards, (white melamine type that had been splashed with fat - v. embarrassing ), and layered it on like you would if you were using grouting. Left it until it was nearly 'set', then carefully used a scraper to take it off. Worked a treat

Not only that, as it was a bit sloppy to begin with (wrong consistency lol), it dropped on the marble effect worktops, but as I wiped them down, they came up sparkling too. As did the sink and drainer when I was rinsing out the cloths.

Since then I've descaled every end of the chrome taps (numerous, because of hard water and neglect ) by putting a small amount of paste into sandwich bags and wrapping them around the taps and securing with elastic bands. They're sparkling

The best use yet was for the bath.

I dread cleaning it as I have a bad back, but instead of letting the water out, I tipped some of the paste that had dried up slightly into the water, but I'd let the water cool down beforehand because it tends to start to smell like a Chinese laundry lol. (Just sprinkling the powder in would have done btw).

This morning all I had to do was take one of those long-handled brushes that most people clean their backs with and gave it a bit of a brush then rinsed it. The bath looks like new and practically cleaned itself! I'm chuffed to bits, I might take up cleaning other houses So to answer part of your question, I'd say start the kitchen and bathrooms first, and do everything s l o w l y lol.

Don't forget to wear gloves in case it irritates your skin, and good luck!

Danni-R

Thanks for all the advice so far...my weekend off hasnt turned out like I thought and I'm back at work :mad:.

I did the trip to the tip today so can see the floors again.
I found the thread about one liners and noted down the things I thought I could use.
Thanks for the info on the cooker but I'm not quite at the stage yet. Plus I dont tend to cook in it (I made some home made pasta sauce that I'm working through so its not all take aways!)

I finish later tonight and my plan is....
Load the dish washer and sort out the laundry into piles.
Take all 'junk' upstairs from the hall way which should mean that tommorrow when I get up I can put the laundry on and hoover the downstairs!

(I know I should put the laundry on when I get home but the washing machine is out side in the garage and its cold and dark out:o)

Thanks for the help and suggestions,
Danni

Ellidee

Some great tips there Passion8 -Thanks!