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!

Speed Cleaning Tip - Let it sit

Many years ago I bought a book called "Speed Cleaning" at a library discarded book sale.  THIS is the book.  There is a picture of the book on my right side bar.  If you want to order the book, my suggestion would be to find the cheapest used version, which at the moment is $1.51, plus $3.99 shipping.  I've decided to review the book again and try to put some of its ideas to work in my home.

One idea is that when you have a grimy area to clean, a dried on spill, or built up stains, spray the area, or simply squeeze some water on it.  Instead of using your time and elbow grease, let the liquid do the work.  Move on to something else for a few minutes and when you come back, you just wipe it off!

Saturday I put this idea to work with this bottle of spray cleaner I bought on the dollar aisle at Dollar General.  This stuff works so great!  I have bought Tilex in the past, but no more.  For one dollar, you would not believe how well it works. 

First of all I worked on the stainless steel sinks in the kitchen.  Here's a before picture.   The brown stuff is a build up of coffee, etc.  It is pretty easy to clean by scrubbing, but I just sprayed the cleaner, walked away a few minutes and when I came back, all I had to do was rinse!



Before with yucky brown build up.

This picture shows the drain after I sprayed it and walked away.



Spray and let it sit!

This is after rinsing the cleaner down the drain.



After rinsing, no scrubbing.

I was on a roll and so here are pictures of more areas I applied the spray, let it sit, and came back and rinsed or wiped away the grime.




The sink in the laundry/bathroom.



The top of the freezer had stains and a build up of dust.

The knobs on the stove had a build up of grime, even though we wiped them every time we cooked.  I hadn't even noticed until I put on my reading glasses and looked close!  That's another tip!  Put on your reading glasses, or just get close.  You will be amazed at the grime that is there that you don't notice.





I removed the knobs, sprayed, and let them sit.

They are nice and clean now.



Clean knobs.

One thing I can't stand is a grimy can opener.  There can be all kinds of bacteria on there from food and seems like a recipe for food poisoning to me.  I removed the part that actually opens the cans and let it go through a dishwasher cycle.  Then I sprayed the rest of the can opener with my spray with bleach, let it sit and then wiped off all the grime.  Here's my clean and sparkly can opener.

The next area I plan to put this idea to work on is the white cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom.  I can clean a few doors a day.  This one definitely needs some cleaning.

I hope this post gives you some ideas of ways to use the wet it, let it sit and rinse, speed cleaning idea.

Do you spray grime and let it soak, or do you "scrub it now"?