Bringing it Home: Spring Cleaning Missteps

we took it back to the 70s with miss betty wright and the cleanup woman we go down a musical journey with every episode of bringing it home with sarah and teniel we are back with you again and it's spring so as the song just said are we ready to clean up no we're never ready to clean up but the problem is when the sun starts shining in spring it reflects and you see all the dirt and the things that you thought were clean they don't look as clean once the days get quieter you know everything is new again in spring you really want your house to feel good so yes we are ready we're ready to start spring cleaning but you know most of us jump in and there are a lot of mistakes that are actually made during spring cleaning time you know you're exactly right and i hadn't really thought about that until you and i started talking about you know spring cleaning and things that we should do that we aren't doing and i think one of those like wow this is so little but really so big you really need a plan well you know i need a plan for everything yeah i have to have a plan for everything but what were you referring to well you know when i just see a need and i start i feel like sometimes i see a need i start cleaning and that leads to something else and this leads to something else and then i turn around and i got like three areas of my house in disarray because everything seemed to affect each other where i should just focus on one closet or one area got that done and then moved to the next area instead of trying to hit you know multiple rooms or areas at one time so if you do it that way can you kind of break it down into smaller jobs instead of saying okay i'm going to take this again and clean the whole house oh yeah that's overwhelming yeah that is so you can i guess take this area today and then in a couple of days do this room sure you know a lot of times once once i get started i love this idea of a plan then i can check it out because i do love to check stuff off yes i do too i may not make a good plan but when i do write things down i check them off i feel much more accomplished and hey i already do this again yeah because it feels so good once you have it done so you need a plan of attack i guess you could say yep yep and once you get your plan and you get started and you know i've seen people do this i've never done this let me just say but some people start cleaning the room from floor to ceiling and that is absolutely backwards because i mean if you think through this thing we got dirt we got cobwebs that are up high and we got our walls that need to be wiped down if you have ceiling fans those need attention so if i've already cleaned my floor my baseboards and then i started bringing all this dust from the top down guess what's gonna happen it gets right back on my floors and my baseboards so you definitely want to clean from the top down your floors need to be the very last thing that you do that's right that's a great point and you'll save yourself some steps in the long run even your blinds i mean you know all of that needs to be done before it's all gonna fall to the floor yes dusting your furniture everything that makes a lot of sense and i think another shortcut people may take they may say a cheaper cleaner or a weaker cleaner you know and it's just not cutting through the grind it's a dollar you buy yes you know um and that matters your budget's important but you may have to buy more of that product to get done the first time and you can just all the more expensive to be done yeah you know get a good quality cleaner whatever your preference is but get a good quality cleaner and they don't have to have the harsh chemicals and things like that but get something you know works i mean if you got a big job to do you know what they say don't bring a knife to a gunfight i mean this is one of those cases you got a big job you need to buy something for a big job exactly i agree with that you know save yourself a lot of extra elbow work too yeah that's true you know in some things you know we talk about there's so many different cleaners out there and i'm not going to sit here and say one's better than another i think it's totally personal preference right but there are some things that are going to require some bleach you know like some things in our bathroom there's some germs we want to get rid of in our kitchen you know there's areas that we want to you know sanitize and use bleach but now does every cleaner project need bleach no and some people don't want to use bleach right so you can make your own cleaner you know my mother does i have made the cleaner using a cup of water a half a cup of white vinegar and then a quarter cup of dish soap the grease fighting dish soap and man that stuff works right so that would be the dong type soap exactly we don't promote brands but we're talking similar to the dong soap that we could grease you can mix all that up really good in a spray bottle and go to town so and that's really inexpensive and that'll clean your bathtub your shower tiles you know all those types of things really well yes for sure so there are a lot of options for you if you want to make your own or if you want to go buy whatever at the store your preference you know what drives me nuts is when i see someone using one rag to do a whole bunch of jobs all you see is germs i see germs spread everywhere um i'm not a certifiable germaphobe but i've got some tendencies and so we definitely need to make sure that we're using uh different cloths if we know it's during cleaning time and we're gonna be cleaning every room in the house we need to stack give you a stack of clean cloths or microfiber cloths whatever you plan to use so you can change them out when they're dirty especially when you're cleaning the bathroom you know don't even transfer if you're wiping down the toilet don't ever use that for anything else that needs to be chunked you know a lot of those microfiber ones you can use several times just wash them right yeah so if you're cleaning other areas yes they can be reused but once they get filthy you know we even need to wash them or they're really filthy you know let's get rid of them because you're defeating the purpose yeah you're defeating the purpose of cleaning if we're moving the dirt around so let's try to not do that well and true talking about different like the cloths and things a lot of people playing with paper towels and that's not really the best thing to use they can get expensive too it can and it leaves a lot of lint behind so you know that's another option to think about um and they can damage furniture as well or these new tvs everybody's got oh you pay so much more you don't want to scratch the screens up right so paper towels may not be the best type of cloth to use yeah yeah that's true um you know all this cleaning going on and we got fumes going on even if they're natural cleaners that you made yourself or you use a bleach cleaner that you bought at the store we need to open windows let's let some fresh air in let's let some fumes out and you know spring is usually a good time for that i mean the temperatures are not too cold where you know we can do that it's not too hot so you know opening those windows is a good idea when we're doing spring cleaning um now air conditioning doesn't usually solve the problem mainly because our home heating and cooling systems they don't necessarily bring in fresh air from outside so that's where the problem comes in that's not how they're designed so just good old fashioned cracking the window uh that's that's what we need to do and that's one of my favorite things about when the weather starts warming up having that fresh air flowing through my house yeah it just that automatically makes me feel better it helps with the smell it elevates your mood to get that outdoors i don't like outdoors but i love when the fresh air comes through let a little bit outside in let a little bit outside in then i can enjoy it definitely yeah one thing we truly truly want people to avoid and we touched on this a couple weeks ago in our poison prevention podcast but we don't ever want anybody mixing different chemicals together oh no make a you know stronger cleaner or whatever um that can be very hazardous to your health so don't ever mix different cleaning products together it's just a bad idea oh i know like bleach and vinegar that can create some kind of gas actually exactly you know so don't just don't do it none of it don't mix any of it together because you don't may not know 100% what is in that product right and you want to keep yourself and your family safe that's true so be very aware of of that and not don't do it okay okay you know i was thinking about how when the sun shines in your house that's when you can really see all the things that need attention and so you may see that your windows need attention you see the most the sun is shining but did you know that sunny days are not the right time to wash your windows and i didn't really think about this but what it is you know the strong heat from the sun will dry your cleaning fluid more quickly so if i spray a solution on my glass then the sun's gonna help dry it quickly which sounds like a good thing but what that can actually do is leave streets so it makes my glass harder to clean when the sun is out so i actually want to wait until a cloudy day or an overcast day or even when the sun sets later on in the evening so that it doesn't drive my window cleaning fluid so quickly that's like totally opposite probably anyway i've ever done it because when do you notice it you notice it when the sun's bright you know so um that's wild but it makes sense it does because then once you get the streets on there it's so hard to get them off so we can avoid them in the first place that's what we want to do okay well i've learned a new tip today myself um you know a lot we have a lot of pet pet parents out there you know people that have pets in their home and i'll tell you getting pet off your furniture can be difficult you know for a lot of people so you may want to make sure that you're using the attachment on your vacuum to help you get that out better because it directly sucks the hair into the canister of the vacuum doesn't have to go through the filtration system of the vacuum so you get i guess a little bit more oops did that work i wish you all for the hand motions you made but uh they can see the hand motions a little more power there to get that that hair off yeah because that's it's hard and i guess it would be beneficial if they you know did it often yeah that's not something you need to wait until spring probably to attack right and maybe even use like a rubber bristle attachment to get that off definitely whatever works and it would depend i guess on your type of furniture sure yeah but if you have leather versus you know some kind of cloth it is going to make a difference and speaking of vacuums yeah i'm kind of guilty here i'm going to have some full disclosure yeah we're all a little guilty of this but you know one thing that people tend to do is letting the vacuum cleaner canister get too full before we empty it out like bagless or with bagless either way if you've got a bag we let the bag get too full if we use the bagless kind we let the canister get too full before we dump it um number one we're just lazy we can do that but number two we're trying to stretch our money if we use bags you know you're trying to get as much as you can out of it but the reality is it's not cleaning effectively right you know once it gets past a certain point it's going to affect how well it's circulating the dirt out of your car it's full there's nowhere to go so um it's a good idea for us to go ahead and empty it if you notice that the vacuum's starting to get sluggish in picking things up that's when it's a good time to go ahead and replace it yeah that's a great tip that i need to pay attention to as well you know because i'll be like this vacuum is not really got much suction and i'll look at the canister well there you go it's over and so cool you know these tips all seem so basic but we don't always do that like i learned today a couple myself i'm guilty yes so you know spring cleaning is something that we all need to take the time to do um and just making a few small adjustments into the types of cloths we use how we choose to clean top to bottom right and initially making that plan of attack you know it can save you a lot of time so you have a plan for your spring cleaning i'll get back to you on that okay i'm gonna take that as a no um do you make that a smart goal right like we got to value in our first week oh yeah um do you plan to get a plan yes actually um i talk to my kids we need to do all closets need to be cleaned out you know they've outgrown clothes i mean just a couple times a year we need to do that and it's that time when we need to get some stuff out and just man just get our house in order yes ready spring cleaning yes however i don't know the right way to say that spring cleaning yeah that's not that's a good term for today it's not a term but we hope everybody spring is off to a great start and we thank you for being our loyal listeners and until next time and in the words of mr bob marley live the life you love and love the life you live bye