Can cleaning be enjoyable?

I'm always in a hurry when it comes to cleaning!  Squeezing in a few minutes here and there and then on Saturday, a couple of hours... and its still not done.

So, I've decided if I have to do it, it may as well be enjoyable!  In this picture I was drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying a candle while cleaning the bedroom which included dusting, decluttering, dust bunny evictions and organizing.

I put on a "clean with me" You Tube video for motivation!  Another option would be to play fast music or what ever kind of music you enjoy.

 Things I have done or read that would help make cleaning more enjoyable:

1.  Use a timer and race against the clock to get a job done.

2.  Listen to an audio book while cleaning.

3.  Do the worst job first thing in the morning, so you won't be dreading it all day.  Then you can enjoy looking at the finished job the rest of the day and be proud of yourself.

4.  Use cleaning products that you enjoy and that make the process easier.  Some products have a great scent.

5.  Wear a pedometer or Fitbit and see how many steps you can get while cleaning.  Cleaning can be a good workout, especially if you are crawling around on the floor cleaning under furniture, etc.

6.  Dedicate some of your cleaning time to prayer for a specific purpose.  If something is laying heavy on your mind, you can pray while you clean.

7.  Do small jobs throughout the week so you don't have to do a marathon cleaning later on.

8.  Clean with somebody.  It could be a family member or a friend.  Have a cleaning party!

9.  Reward yourself when the job is done.  It could be something as simple as just stopping for a cup of coffee or snack every few minutes, or something bigger, like a new outfit when Spring cleaning is done.

10.  This may not be an option for everybody, but the ultimate way to enjoy cleaning, is to hire a professional!  I've never paid anybody to clean my house, but it sure sounds good! 


And just a little bit of cuteness..... Grandbaby on a Quilt!



 How do you feel about cleaning? Can it be enjoyable?

 Have a great day!

Glimpses of Home = Cleaning and Fall Decorating.

I spent some time working around the house on Labor Day.  This included some decluttering, detail cleaning, reorganizing and fall decorating.  Here are a few glimpses.

Of course, coffee first!

I got an early start.

I cleaned high and low!  For example I moved some small things like the bench that sits in the dining room under the window, and cleaned the dust boards and floor with a Flylady "purple rag".    I decluttered some scraggly plants and dusted some of the plants' leaves.

I used my static duster to clean under heavier things, such as the china cabinet.  There was a petrified piece of a tortilla "scoop" and lots of dust bunnies.  After I pulled stuff out with the duster I vacuumed it up.  I also dusted on top of the taller pieces of furniture that don't get a lot of attention.  Out of sight, out of mind.

Cleaning makes a mess when you are in the process. haha 

I pulled my fall decor from storage.

The kitchen table with a little bit of a fall touch.

This is on the china cabinet.  Almost all my fall decor came from Dollar General. 

I like to rotate my quilts according to the seasons, so this is my fall one.  I really should work on another fall quilt!  I would love to do that!  Also possibly a new runner with the maple leaf block.

In the mudroom at the back door.

Its funny that my Christmas china is behind the Fall potholder!

A reminder note to keep moving the laundry along!

I recently bought this chalkboard to use in a photo shoot.  I'm also going to write different messages on it and use it in this spot in the kitchen.  I can put messages that suit the season, or occasion, such as a birthday.    I removed some things from the counter that I don't use on a daily basis.  It looks so much cleaner with less stuff sitting out.

As for our house,

Its going to be in the mid 90s today, so its hard to think about fall, but in my house, its fall! 

Speed Cleaning in the Living Room - Days 2 and 3

Items found under the couch!  Traces of Summer and babysitting boys!

I am continuing on with my plan to do a 10 minute speed cleaning session each day "before" work this week.  Yesterday it did NOT happen before work.  However, when I got home I went straight into the living room.  I was really tired, but I figured I could do anything for 10 minutes.  Supper was going to be easy and simple:  Fresh tomatoes from the garden and ham sandwiches! So, I started cleaning at 5:30 and finished at 5:40.  Here's what I did:

I moved the couch and 2 end tables away from the wall.  They sit underneath 2 windows.  I dusted the mini blinds and floor boards with the pink fluffy static duster that I use.  Then I vacuumed the entire area.

I moved the furniture back.  Done in 10 minutes!

Today will be day 3 and I plan to move more furniture, vacuum underneath and dust floor boards.  Not very exciting, but a well spent 10 minutes, I hope!

Speed Cleaning in the Living Room This Week!

Happy Monday and first week of Autumn, 2017!

This week I am doing some speed cleaning in the living room!  Speed cleaning for me this week means I am going to work for 10 minutes each day before going to work, and am posting it here for accountability.

I know 10 minutes doesn't seem like much, but by Friday, if I stick to it, I will have worked for 50 minutes!

Today's 10 minutes are going to be spent as follows:

Couch and chair duty!  I'm going to remove the cushions and clean up all the crumbs and dirt that always slowly accumulate under them.  I'll pick up the biggest pieces like popcorn, etc. and then vacuum the rest with our hand held vacuum.  I'll also vacuum the cushions, the back and arms of the couch and chairs.  I'll move as quickly as possible and see if I can get all that done in 10 minutes!

I've been doing well with speed cleaning each Saturday like I described  HERE.  If you haven't read that post, it tells how I clean for an hour each week, doing four 15 minute jobs.  It really does make a difference.... and its only an hour!  Love it. 

We had unexpected company Saturday afternoon, and even though my house wasn't perfect, I was happy with its appearance.  As you may know, our house was built in the 1940s.  Our visitor was a 75 year old man who grew up in this house and he wanted to walk down memory lane.  He remembered his father building the house.  It was so interesting to hear him tell about his memories.  There were some good memories and some bad memories.

A weekly speed cleaning hour is great, but I need to do some deep cleaning also.  So, join me this week as I do some speed deep cleaning!

I hope your week will be blessed!  

Speed Clean With Me!

(The links in this post are affiliate links.  If you click on them and make a purchase, I may earn a small fee.  Thanks!)

I had a nice long Labor Day weekend with lots of plans. But, I didn't want to spend a lot of time doing house cleaning.  So I decided to clean for one hour, loosely based on the Flylady's Home Blessing Hour.  For my own home blessing I decided to spend 15 minutes on 4 different chores.  Here's what I did.

It was a gloomy, rainy Saturday morning.  Perfect for staying inside!

 The laundry was already in progress.

At 8:00 A.M., I set the timer on my stove for 15 minutes.  I was still drinking coffee and constantly losing my mug.  Do you do that?  I have to look all over the house to find it.

My first chore was dusting.  I didn't do a detail dusting, just a light dusting.  I cruised around the house with my fluffy pink duster thingie and dusted hither and yon.   This is a static duster and does a pretty good job.   I started at the back door and worked my way around the house.   I spent a little more time in the living room and master bedroom, since those two rooms were the dustiest of the house.  I went outside a couple of times to shake and tap the duster on the back steps.  Detail dusting is reserved for the time when I am working in a particular zone.

After the 15 minutes was up, I stopped and proceeded to the next chore:  Dust Mopping.  We have hard floors in every room, no carpet at all.  I dust mopped a lot like I dusted.  I started at the back door and dust mopped around the edges of each room.  The purpose of this was to prepare the floors for vacuuming.  The dust mop pulls crumbs from under the bottom edge of the kitchen cabinets.  It gets the dust from under the edges of furniture.  I had to go outside and shake and tap the dust mop just like I did with the pink fluffy duster thingie.

The third 15  minutes was a  speed vacuuming of the floors. I didn't move any large pieces of furniture and I made sure I got up everything the dust mop pulled out.  I vacuumed small rugs, quickly pulled the chairs from the dining room table and vacuumed under there.  

I love this battery operated vacuum.  No wires to plug in.  Just grab and vacuum.  Its a Shark Navigator.  I bought mine a couple of years ago on Black Friday.  Click HERE to check it out!

Finally, the last 15 minutes of the hour, I did some quick mopping.  I started at the back door, mopped the mud room, laundry room, kitchen, dining room and living room.   During my next home blessing hour,  I plan to mop some other rooms in the house.  Of course the kitchen and mud room will need mopping again.  This mop is nice because the cover is machine washable.  I just spray the cleaner on the floor in sections and move fast.
 

Here's a picture showing the mop without the cover.  I've had that bottle of concentrated cleaner forever.  It lasts a long time and I don't remember where I got it.  I checked Amazon and they sell it HERE.

After only an hour, I was really pleased with the results!  You'd be amazed at the progress you can make in an hour.  Not included in this hour was cleaning the toilets and the tub/shower, but that didn't take too long. 

I love using this speedy method in doing other work around the house also.  For example, I had some yard work that needed doing.  This included trimming some scraggly summer plants and bushes.  Every now and then, over the weekend, I would run outside and trim just one potted plant, or one bush.  Or I would run out and spend 5, 10, or 15 minutes at a time, depending on what was going on.  I got it all done without  doing a marathon of yard work.

Getting some things accomplished like this is very motivating to me.  I'm ready to take on the next home blessing!

Fall Cleaning In The Storage Building

This is the small storage building that my Hubby has designated as mine.  It contains so many different kinds of things including, but not limited to gardening supplies, gardening tools, plastic totes full of various household items, kids' yard toys, flower pots, potting soil, fertilizer, clothes drying racks, Christmas trees, canning jars and supplies, vases, wreaths, cemetery flowers, garden flags and much, much more.

The weather was so beautiful on Saturday, I thought it would be a good idea to work in the building.  It won't be long before winter will be here and I won't want to be working outside.  So, I spent a  couple of hours trying to get it in some kind of order.  The main problem is that I have stored some small pieces of furniture out there and when I put the furniture in there, I put it in the middle, just so the door would still close.  Then things got put on top of the furniture and it was down hill from there!

My goodness!

After two hours, everything is straightened up and it looks so much better.  Its still not pretty to look at, but that's ok.  It is an outside storage building after all!   I need to spend some time going through things, decluttering, etc., but I made some great progress.  Here's an after picture that shows we can now actually walk inside the building.

We threw away a large black garbage bag filled with trash, two boxes of old newspapers and an old metal dresser chair.

My cleaning zone for this week is the living room and front porch.  I've already decluttered and deep cleaned most of this area, so I just need to do maintenance cleaning.  Things like cleaning under furniture, detail dusting and cleaning under the cushions on the couch.

I have to say that my home is the cleanest its been since we moved in!  I am loving it.  In addition to my zone cleaning, I now have a morning cleaning routine that I do before work which is mostly just straightening everything up.  Its so nice to walk into a clean house after work every day.

My attempt at a Pinterest Pantry...

I Keep tweaking our pantry, trying to organize it and make it work better for us. I study Pinterest looking for ideas.  Well, my pantry would NOT qualify as a pretty Pinterest pantry, but I did get some pretty good ideas.

The Flashlights are all together, ready for the next power outage, which I hope is a long time from now!

Lots of the Pinterest pantry pictures had cute chalkboard labels that were supposedly sold at Dollar Tree.  My Dollar Tree didn't have them and the clerk said she didn't know if they ever had. I didn't have time to look in other stores, so I just bought a pack of these labels and used a black sharpie to write the labels.  The red totes came from Dollar Tree also and came in several colors.

The shelves are deep, so if I have items that don't fit in the totes, there is room behind them.

I like this towel lined basket for our potatoes.

I came up with this system for storing canned foods by buying soda can organizers at Dollar tree and using wire shelves that I already had.  I like this system because I can see at a glance what we need and we can keep them rotated by expiration date easily by always putting new cans in the back and pulling from the front when getting a new can out.

I store small appliances that aren't used on a daily basis on the top shelf above the canned items. 

This bottom shelf is where Hubby and I put our lunch bags after work every day.  You can see the bread maker is stored in the back of the deep shelf.  I haven't used that in a LONG time.  Its not good to use a bread maker too often when one is trying eat low carb. LOL

Here are all the plastic wraps, aluminum foil, garbage bags, zipper bags, etc.  The shelves are deep, so in back are stored some more seldom used items, such as the large stock pot on the right.

My attempt at a Pinterest Pantry is an ongoing process.  We will finish painting the shelves and I may eventually find the chalkboard labels and make some other improvements, but it will probably not ever be considered a Pinterest Pantry!

This week's Fall cleaning zone is the master bedroom and closet.  I've been waiting for this zone to come around again because the closet needs some work!  Also, its time to switch out the summer clothes for fall and winter things.  We still have some warm weather around here, but I won't be wearing some of the sleeveless and thinner things again until next spring.

Have a great day and week!  I am thoroughly enjoying our fall weather here in North Carolina!

Hurricane Decluttering

We are slowly getting back to normal after Hurricane Matthew passed through here. We are so thankful that our problems were minimal compared to so many. We were without power for three days and had some family members over for a couple of days who's power was still off after ours came back on.

I decided I would take advantage of some time off from work by continuing on with my Fall cleaning.  These two cabinets were really getting cluttered!  They are high up and I store things up there that aren't used too often.  I can't even reach the back of the one over the refrigerator.

So here are the before and after pictures.  When I was working on these two cabinets, the storm was going on outside and our power had not gone off yet. 

Before

After

Before

After

After the power went off, I spent a lot of time working in the dining room.  The weather was sunny and beautiful by then and with the window blinds open, there was plenty of light to see what I was doing.   I deep cleaned everything, washing windows, mopping, detail dusting, and organizing everything.  The china cabinet and two other cabinets were completely organized.  I was glad to have something to do other than sitting and laying around just looking at the walls!

The roads in our area were damaged so badly, that we couldn't really go anywhere.  All the nearby towns were without power, so there were no stores or restaurants open.  We threw away everything in our refrigerator and freezer, but when we went grocery shopping after power was restored, the grocery stores had not replaced their cold or frozen foods yet.  So today I plan to make a stock up trip for basics like milk, butter, etc.

So many people in our area are dealing with flooding and damages way worse that we did.   I sure don't want to see any more hurricanes for a long time!

Under the Sink

Fall Cleaning continues!  Last week I worked in the kitchen.  Deep cleaning in the kitchen isn't for sissies!  I've decided that I have to clean the oven more often, so that when I do clean it, it isn't a marathon!  Good Grief!

Here are the before and after pictures for the cabinet underneath the kitchen sink:

Before

After

I love the chicken wire basket with the burlap trim, that I am storing dishwasher tablets in.  I found it at Dollar General.  They only had one at that particular store, but since there are several more Dollar General Stores nearby, I plan to look for more.  I think it would be cute for storing folded dishtowels and dish cloths.

I didn't take a before picture of the silverware drawer, but here's the after picture.  This is another small area that needs to be cleaned regularly.  I don't know how the tray gets so dirty.  Evidently every time the drawer is opened, some dust or crumbs jump in there!

In my planning for fall cleaning in zones, I allowed extra time for the kitchen.  So, this week I'll finish working in the kitchen and also work in the dining room.  I planned eight zones, and this is week eight!  I am going to start over next week with zone one, because there were some jobs in each zone that I didn't get done and I also want to keep the work I've done maintained.  Also, all of the closets in the house need work. 

My ultimate plan is that once I get the whole house completely decluttered and cleaned, I will have time for sewing and quilting.  Can't wait.

Here are a couple more Fall Pictures from our yard.

Have a wonderful first week of October!