Time for a Deep Clean

After being without power for a week during a high humidity and hot week my house has become a sticky, musty, smelling place. Thanks to Hurricane Florence it is now time to deep clean the house! I thought I would share my tips and tricks for deep cleaning and the products I use to keep my house chemical free while doing it!

Most days of the week I am on a cleaning strike. With everything that my family is involved in life is busy and it's just going to get messed up again tomorrow. But, this storm has provided an opportunity for us to have a fresh start in our fridge, so why not the rest of the hose too?

Most times when I do get the urge to clean, which isn't often, I attack one room at a time. Sometimes it's one room at a time one day at a time. A lot is dependent on what the rest of our schedule is like. This method keeps me from becoming overwhelmed with trying to keep the entire house clean every day. If you seem to get overwhelmed by a whole house deep clean, here are a few tips that I use to help me enjoy the process:

• Make a checklist. (You can snag my whole house deep cleaning checklist near the bottom of this post to help you out.)
• Focus on one room at a time. The process goes faster for me when I can focus on one room and knock it out before heading to the next. I feel accomplished like I'm getting somewhere!
• NOISE, please! Turn on the radio or put on a movie that you know by heart. You know the one that you can recite from memory. I find that if I have music I can sing to or a movie playing in the background that I've seen 1000 times that cleaning doesn't seem like cleaning! It feels less like work.
• Reward yourself! I like to promise myself a reward. Sometimes the reward is just to finish one room (like chocolate--YUM!) and sometimes it's to finish the entire house.

I enjoy using my cleaning products and know that I can give them to my children without any fear of adverse side effects from what they are using. We have moved away from chemicals in our house and have started using all natural products some I even make myself. Not only is it safer for my family but it saves money! Cha-ching! And who doesn't want to do that?

As we move through the next week and I plan to tackle one room each day and will explain how I clean that room, what products I used, and how to make them if it applies. If you want to join me you, please feel free. I will post links to each day below so you can follow along later.

You can grab the pdf version of my cleaning checklist here.

Tomorrow we start!