Cleaning My House the Easy Way

After I started cleaning my house in 20 minutes each day, I found another article about cleaning the kitchen in 20 minutes. I decided to try adding that to my routine. I have only been doing this for a couple of days, so I cannot comment on it yet. So far, I like it just fine and my kitchen is cleaner already.

There are a couple of rules with this one also. You are going to need to be sure to wash dishes and wipe down the counters after each meal, and sweep the kitchen floor everyday. Add your 20 minute task to these daily rituals and in one month your kitchen will be deep cleaned.

I have been going at this housecleaning schedule for a little over a week now. I have had to miss two or three days due to a busy schedule, but I did not try to catch up the work I missed. I just kept going. I think that has made it manageable for me. Once you get behind, it is demoralizing and hard to catch up. I still see an impact from the amount that I am getting done and it makes me feel great.

Today's assignment was to clean out closets. As if I could even clean out one closet, much less multiple closets in twenty minutes! Have you seen my closets? Oh my! Some of them have almost eight years of clutter in them.

Case in point was my living room closet. Yes, I said "was", past tense; because, today I cleaned that closet out in twenty minutes.

Ordinarily I would have dreaded this job and put it off, because I would anticipate it would take all afternoon to clean out this closet. Not so. I just drug everything out of the closet that was not hanging up. Swept the floor, then put back what I wanted to keep. That took about twenty minutes.

The time limit kept me moving, forced me to make quick decisions and before I knew it the job was completed. I did not think to take a before picture, but I got an after shot which you see above.

I ended up with two bags of donations for Good Will, two coats to go to the dry cleaners, a box of breakables I thought had been lost in the move here, and a mirror I bought in 2004 to display keepsakes that I always meant to hang and never quite got around to. It is not going back into the closet, so I either have to hang it up or get rid of it.

I threw all of the hats, gloves, mittens and scarves into a laundry basket that is on the closet floor. Next time around I will go through that basket and decide what to keep and what to pass on to someone else. Meanwhile, it feels great to be making this progress!

After being at school all day today, I decided to do my 20 minutes of cleaning tonight after supper. Tonight's assignments were to deep clean the bathroom (inside drawers, inside trash can, top of mirror, tile, mop) and to tidy up the pantry (canned goods, boxes and bags). I have too much clutter to deep clean very well, so this month I am using these deep clean days to declutter.

I was making good progress on one shelf in my bathroom closet when suddenly there was a plumbing emergency in the house. Yikes! I looked around for another adult to take care of the problem, but being a single mom, there was no one but me. Frischy to the Rescue! That's my motto!

I tried using a plunger, but that just made a bigger mess. Oops! The next step needed an auger. That was in the basement. That's where the washer and dryer are. So, not to waste the trip, I carried a basket of dirty laundry down with me, and started a load in the washing machine.

I brought the auger back upstairs and went to work on the stopped up drain. I finally got that problem solved, but now I was well into the second twenty minutes, had not even gotten the shelf finished I started on in the bathroom, much less set foot in the kitchen pantry. Plus, I had to add cleaning the toilet, inside and out, to tonight's list. I had not counted on that! And let's not even talk about that auger. Gross!

These are the days that make cleaning my house super challenging. Yes, I have been working on my house for the past hour, but who can tell? It looks just about like it did when I got home from school, except for that nasty auger. Blech!

Take a look at the photos of my closet above and see if you can tell which shelf I cleaned. Then answer the poll below.

This took a bit longer than 20 minutes, but I got the job done! This closet is still not as pretty as I would like it to be. I think I will be making another pass or two.

Someday I will have nice towels and matching storage baskets. But, in the meantime, don't you agree this is an improvement?

On the top shelf I used two baskets to hold bottles. One has cleaning supplies and the other has beauty products.

The next shelf down has two plastic shoe boxes I have used forever to hold cosmetics. I made a weak pass at them earlier in the weak, and they are no longer overflowing, but I need to go through at least one more time. I also decided to put toilet paper rolls on this shelf so we can reach them more easily.

The third shelf is the easiest to reach. I put things we need regularly. I also rolled our bath towels and stashed them on this shelf. I have a few in front, but there is another row of them in the back. I lined up the wash cloths in a plastic bin. Nice and tidy!

The bottom shelf is hard for me to use without bending over. I just put a few things on that bottom shelf. A pretty basket holds extra soap. I stacked the hand towels. Another basket holds extra tooth brushes and tooth paste.

I got some of my linen closet ideas from this video.