It's no secret that I love to clean my house. I enjoy it. I really do. Every minute of it. It is, for me, stress relief. I get that sense of accomplishment when a room is totally clean.
I also realize that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for a good house cleaning. If they did, we could put Merry Maids out of business, the cleaning product industry would flourish and I could be their new spokeswoman!
However, in light of this blissful fantasy, I also realize that not everyone has the time to do a deep cleaning every spring and every fall. Even among those who do have the time, they don't necessarily enjoy it. Even still, there are those among us who {gasp} hate it! And there are those who enjoy it, but just can't "do it all."
My perfectionistic, OCD self would love to tell you that during your fall cleaning you should remove everything from each room, clean it all perfectly before putting it all back. But that's not realistic, now, is it?
So I'm adopting a "sometimes good enough, is good enough" attitude. I am not going to approach this Fall Cleaning series as a method to get everything in our houses spotless, but rather, to hit the high spots and tackle the worst offenses.
I encourage you to rest in the incompleteness of your moments, to recognize the goodness of all you've already accomplished, knowing that when the time comes, what needs to be done, will eventually get done.
Where to start:
I believe it is a best practice to clean from the top down in any room, and to work your way through the house one step at a time. Therefore, starting at the top, we are going to begin this series with our light fixtures and ceiling fans.
If you're like most people I know, your ceiling fans have been running all summer. Now is a good time to shut them off and take a good look. Most likely you'll find the same thing on your fan blades that everyone else finds on theirs - dust and dirt.
There are special attachments you can purchase that make quick work of ceiling fan blades; this one even attaches to a telescoping handle. I've found, that unless your ceiling fan is two-stories high, it's just as easy to clean them by hand.
My preferred method is warm water with 2 dots of liquid dish detergent and a micro fibre cloth. You can wipe down the whole fan while you're up there; blades, globes is you have them, and even a light dusting of the motor casing. I find that it takes me no more than 5 minutes to clean my ceiling fans.
Light fixtures in my house pose a little different problem than ceiling fans. I have light fixtures with all kinds of designs, swirls and metal work. For me, a light dusting usually does the trick for the loose dust, and than I can use my microfiber cloth to wipe off any grease or dirt that the dusting missed. For a few hanging globes, I have to pull out the big guns (my vacuum attachment) and suck out all the bugs that have accumulated over the summer.
Lamp shades are easy. I use a lint brush on or my vacuum attachment and they are done in a wink of an eye.
First challenge for fall cleaning 2014 is to clean those ceiling fans, light fixtures and lamp shades. Come on... let the light shine in!
Only By His Grace,
Billie