I don’t know what it is about the spring that gives most people the urge to clean their homes (and entire lives) up but it seems with the beginning of winter’s thaw, I instinctively want to clean, clean, clean!

The winter is full of busyness with Christmas and New Year’s, which though they may actually only be two calendar days, consume upwards of five weeks of your life between parties, decorating and then putting stuff away. Honestly after the insanity of the holidays, I’m exhausted. I have no desire to go through the efforts of deep cleaning my home but sometimes around March/April the weather starts to change, the days are longer and I can feel a boost in my energy.

Any decently nice day I open the windows in every room, even for a few minutes, to get the stale winter air out and some nice airflow throughout the house. This is the easiest way to ‘’freshen up’’ the house without doing anything. There are a few areas of the house that do get neglected though and at least once a year I make sure to pay special attention to.

Windows and Doors

I have a two year old who loves to watch life outside the windows so I am constantly wiping down grimy little finger prints from the inside of window panes and doors, this isn’t the window cleaning I’m talking about. I’m talking about removing the screens from all the windows to vacuum and wipe them down as well as cleaning every tiny crevasse in the window, with Q-tips and rags. I was amazed when I took the screens off our bedroom window how dirty the inside of the casement window was from attracting dirt when it was open in the warmer months last year. They definitely all need a good deep clean.

Same goes from the tracks of any sliding door your home may have, they get disgusting. Full of pet fur and general grim that gets kicked up when sweeping and cleaning the floors. It took me almost two hours to deep clean every window and door properly but got it done with q-tips, rags and warm soapy water. They look amazing now!

Dishwasher

It seems sort of silly to clean an appliance whose job it is to clean dishes but cleaning the dishwasher is something that needs to get done! Last year we were noticing our dishwasher wasn’t cleaning as effectively so I did a little investigation and realized not cleaning the dishwasher regularly is a major catalyst to it dying prematurely and not working effectively. With common household ingredients (hot water, vinegar and baking soda) and a little help from good ‘ol YouTube I had our dishwasher disassembled, reassembled and sparkling clean. I’ll warn you to wear good gloves and be prepared for finding some gross stuff. The food processor in our dishwasher was nasty, and I consider is pretty effective at making sure the dishes are fairly ‘clean’ before placing them in the machine.

Cupboards

I don’t know about you but I don’t regularly clean and organize my cupboards. We get groceries and food gets placed away. We’re pretty good at not buying more food than we need and always shop with a list, but that doesn’t grantee some foods don’t spoil (like the large box of soda crackers that gets open for a bowl or two of soup then finds its way to the back of the shelf when it stales). Another attribute of my two year old is her love for playing the cupboards with mommy’s baking supplies and mixing bowls. They get messy and disorganized.

This past weekend I tackled one cupboard in particular (our main food cupboard) and went through everything in there. I took everything out, wiped and vacuumed the shelves down, since stuff like flour and sprinkles always find and escape, and reorganized it. Spring is an ideal time to do this and make sure everything is well sealed to prevent the impending summer ant population explosion!

There seems to be something refreshing about spring that I want to reflect in my home as well. Taking a few hours a week over a month of so to do some of these monotonous deep cleaning of your home can make a big impact!