If we all waited until the first tulip to bloom to spring clean our homes, we’d live in landfills nine months out of the year. And why resign ourselves to a life of being unable to find anything while playing a never-ending game called “Where’s that smell coming from?”
Channel warmer temps and brighter days with a super-simple cleaning guide that’ll bring you infinite amounts of joy (take that, seasonal affective disorder).
Organize
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You first need to put away all your clothes in order to actually access the floor to clean it. When you know where everything is, you’ll have an easier time finding it later. The Aromatic Cedar Closet System is the charcuterie board of closet organizing, giving you a taste of a little bit of everything. You’ve got eight adjustable shelves and three hanging racks on insect-, mothball- and mildew-repellent Appalachian Mountain cedar. It sure beats throwing your stuff into the abyss of a plain old closet with one hanging rack.
Junk drawers work well on a micro scale, but given the sheer amount of clutter in your home, you’re going to need several of them. The Strick & Bolton Tani Cappuccino-finished Buffet provides a roomy sleek home for all your miscellaneous accumulations on three drawers, four shelves and two cabinets. No one will ever know it’s filled with hardly-used trinkets and dishware your grandma gave you.
If you’re anything like me, you hoard smaller items thinking they’ll take up very little space. Well, that theory goes out the mildew-stained window when your bathroom medicine cabinet no longer closes. Enter the Over-the-Door Bath and Beauty Cabinet with Full-Length Mirror, which makes intelligent use of empty wall space. It also doesn’t hurt that mirrors make any room look bigger.
Deep Clean
Ah, finally—everything is where it’s supposed to be. But with newly exposed surfaces come new mounds of dust bunnies you haven’t seen since ‘nam.
Dyson vacuum cleaners are the Michael Jordan of cleaning products, zapping everything in sight with NASA-grade technology. But any pet owner knows that while fur looks adorable on their little tiny rambunctious bodies, it’s pretty gnarly glued to your dark couches and carpets. The Dyson Cyclone V10 Animal Vacuum digs deep into fibers to extract even the most stubborn, sealed-on fur and dust with minimal noise (bonus points for not scaring your little pup!).
Once you’ve gotten all the schmutz out of the way, you’re ready to let the Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Multi-Surface Everyday Cleaner in Bluebell work its magic. Perfect on everything from porcelain to sensitive wood, it tops off all your hard working with an intoxicatingly fresh scent—minus the toxins.
You’re going to need some elbow grease to wipe away the sins and soot from last year, and fewer sponges take care of that better than the Scrub Daddy FlexTexture Scrubber. Pop two fingers into its eyes (it sounds morbid, but the support is so necessary in slippery situations), and use its mouth to clean both sides of your cutlery at once.
Maintain
You don’t want all that hard work to go to waste. What’s the first thing your guests see when they walk into your home? Your sprawling collection of salt-stained boots. Putting away your shoes neatly when you walk through the door every day is a one-minute investment to making your foyer seem infinitely more put together. This 10-Tier Shoe Rack will help you do just that by allowing you to stow up to 60 pairs of shoes. You can then wheel it into the closet when you have company over.
For those of us with pets, keeping the home odor- and dander-free is an ongoing battle. The Beautyhabit L:A Bruket N.085 Lime Tea Tree Mint Dog Shampoo is a festive mojito for your furry friend with calming properties, which they’ll need to help relax them at the sight of a vacuum.
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