Even the tidiest and best looked-after homes can benefit from a deep clean occasionally. If you don’t have the time to do this yourself you can hire a Nashville maid service (or one in your local area) or check your local listings for a maid service.
To avoid getting overwhelmed when you’re cleaning the house, it can be helpful to break the clean down into smaller, more manageable tasks. With this deep-cleaning guide, start with some basics tasks, and then move to tackle some room-specific chores. This can come in handy before you host important company or just when daily clutter and mess have started to pile up. You can follow these steps before an annual spring clean. Soon you will have a clean and tidy house.
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How To Deep Clean Your Home
As you go through each room, start with these deep cleaning tips to streamline the process.
Declutter Before Deep Cleaning
Find a new place for or get rid of any visible clutter that doesn’t belong in the room that you’re cleaning. Leave the things that are behind closed doors for another day to help to simplify the deep clean. Clearing the clutter out of the way first will make cleaning easier, and seeing your surfaces clear and tidy can help to boost your motivation to keep going.
Start High, Go Low
Tackle the large, hard-to-reach surfaces in the right order. Start with the ceiling, then go to the ceiling trim, the ceiling light fixtures (including the lightbulbs), the walls, the rest of the trim, and baseboards. The best tool to clean these surfaces is a microfiber mop or a duster with a telescoping handle.
As an added bonus, these tools are usually thin enough to get behind your sofa without moving it. Above eye level, a spray of water is all you need on the mop. As you get closer to the floor, surfaces tend to build up more dirt and dust, so use warm water mixed a little dish soap. In bathrooms, add a dash of white vinegar to stop mildew and mold.
For areas where it’s awkward to get in with a mop, use a microfiber cloth. Rinse the cloth often and wring it out thoroughly.
Deep Clean Windows
Cleaning windows is quite an easy job, but the payoff is massive. To start, vacuum the sills and tracks. Next, spray the window with glass cleaner from top to bottom. Leave the cleaner to do its job for a minute, then squeegee it off. Wipe in one direction inside the window, and another outside, to make it easier to see and correct any streaks. Or, to get rid of the hassle, you can contact a professional company who provides cleaning services for house holds at affordable prices. Since they’re experts, you can be sure of their deep cleaning services.
Spruce Up Window Treatments
Don’t worry about taking down blinds or shades. Instead, all you need to do is vacuum them where they are using your vacuum’s brush attachment. Instead of laundering and ironing curtains, fluff them up in the dryer for a few minutes. Wipe off the road and rings, and rehang the curtains.
Remove Dust From Surfaces
Wipe the rest of the hard surfaces, like wood furniture, shelves, or built-ins, using furniture cleaner and polish and a soft cloth. For a very speedy clean, put a clean cotton sock over your hand and use it to dust surfaces, moving objects out of the way with your other hand. Lastly, use a lint roller on your lampshades.
Deep Clean Floors
To do this properly, you will have to move furniture, even the larger pieces like your bed and the sofa. You can make moving heavy pieces easier by putting furniture slides under the legs.
Next, get out the vacuum with the crevice tool on to get at the dirt in the corners and along the baseboards. If you have a hard floor, clean it with a microfiber mop and the appropriate cleaner for your floor’s surface. If you have carpet, rent a professional-grade cleaner, especially if you have pets or young kids, or book a carpet cleaning service.
Room By Room Deep Cleaning
The Bedroom
- Wash bedding. Wash the bed skirt, duvet cover, shams, and pillows. Include any down-filled items too. Give these an extra spin cycle to make drying quicker. Dry down pillows on low with a clean tennis ball in the machine to stop them from clumping. The best way to dry synthetic pillows is to air-dry them outside. Take a bulky comforter to the laundromat to use an extra-large front-loader.
- Freshen your mattress. While your bedding is out of the way, clean your mattress. Sprinkle baking soda over the mattress, and let it sit there for an hour. Vacuum up the soda using the hose attachment. Flip or turn the mattress and repeat the process on the other side.
- Declutter your closet. Pull out all the clothes that you didn’t wear in the past season, and bag them up for selling or donating. Buy some matching hangers for your remaining clothes. If your closet looks nice, you will want to try harder to keep it tidy and under control.
The Kitchen
- Polish cabinets. Wipe the exposed tops, then cut newspaper or shelf liners to put inside the cabinets. The lining collects dust, so next time you clean, all you will have to do is replace the paper. Next, wipe the front and back of the cabinet doors with a wood cleaner. For painted or laminate cabinet surfaces, use warm water with a squirt of dish soap. You can also use the sock trick. Put a sock on each hand, spray the cleaner, and wipe in circular motions.
- Deep clean in and around appliances. Empty the fridge, then wipe it down, inside and out. Do the same thing for your oven and dishwasher too. If you can, pull your appliances out from the wall and clean the surrounding walls and the floor that would usually be covered up.
- Tidy your countertops. Move everything off of your kitchen counters. Clean and dry the empty countertops thoroughly, as well as the backsplash. Once the surfaces are dry, only put back the things you use every day. For everything else, try to find a hidden spot to put them away to reduce countertop clutter.
- Bonus task. Take everything off the shelves in your pantry and wipe them down. Consider using a large roasting pan to catch crumbs as you clean. You could also rent an air compressor and blow the dust bunnies away from your refrigerator coils to boost its efficiency.
The Bathroom
- Wash your shower curtain. Check the label on the curtain first to make sure it can be safely machine-washed. Most shower curtains can be washed on a gentle cycle on cold. Set the dryer on low and take the curtain out and rehang out before it is completely dry. You can wash the plastic shower liner on cold and hang it up to dry, or you can just buy a new one.
- Make your shower doors sparkle. To get rid of any water spots and soap scum marks, heat up some distilled white vinegar and wipe it over the doors. Reapply the vinegar to keep the doors wet for thirty minutes. Next, scrub the doors with baking soda sprinkled onto a non-scratch pad. To keep your shower clean for longer, keep a squeegee nearby for wiping down the shower after you’ve used it. Switch to a glycerin-based soap too. Animal fat and talc in most soaps are what leaves that soap scum residue.
- Declutter the vanity and bathroom cabinets. Bring some order to the chaos that is lurking under your sink. Pull out everything that is under and sort through it. Throw out what you don’t use or any empties that have been left. Rehouse anything that doesn’t belong under there. Wipe down what does belong there, and put it back in categories. Repeat this process with your medicine cabinet or any other cabinet that is in your bathroom.
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