Portland House Cleaning - 5 Spring Cleaning Tips

Portland House Cleaning

Spring has finally arrived in Portland, brightening the day with sunlight, blooming flowers and cheerful bird songs.  Does your home feel gloomy and messy after the long winter? Spring cleaning is somewhat of a must do tradition. Spring Cleaning will freshen up your house and make you feel prepared for the upcoming hot season, which will hopefully mean fun in the sun! If you live in the city, you can certainly make use of our Portland House Cleaning tips.  Before we start to stock our homes with new spring décor and outfits to match the weather, let’s start by getting some home spring cleaning done.   It’s out with the old and in with the new, as we give you helpful hints to help you energize, prioritize, organize, and sterilize your home this season.

1. Can’t Clean Until You Make Room: Get rid of all the items you accumulated during winter, and you no longer need. After all, you’re just filling up space for no reason. If you don’t have a storage room for everything, then organize a garage sale, quick status! If you’re like me and that’s just too much work  donate them to any organization made to help the needy in Portland. Once everything you don’t need is gone, you can finally begin the actual cleaning portion.

2. Dusting: With the snow and rain finally gone, dust surely gathered. Think beyond your dresser and coffee table. Its time to pull out the vacuum, use the edging tool and thoroughly vacuum the baseboards through out the house. Be sure to reach those hard to reach places behind and under the bed, behind the couches and any large furniture. After thorough vacuuming, wet dusting the baseboards to remove anything else that wasn’t actually dust is a must. We recommend you use a citrus cleaner when wet dusting to give the house that great fresh smell.

3. Your Vents: Pull out the handy dandy vacuum again. Part of making the house dust free is making sure your vents are free of dust and debris. This will help minimize dusting during the summer. Remove all the vents and vacuum the vents as far as you can. Vacuum the actual vent covers themselves and wipe them down with a citrus cleaner. This does not replace vent cleaning by a professional, but does help in keeping the cost low in the event that you hire a professional to clean your vents. Vacuuming where your air filter lives…have you ever done it? If you haven’t this is a great time. If you don’t want to see what that looks like kindly ask your main squeeze to do it. While he or she is at it,  replace the air filter as well. Replacing the air filter will also help keep dust levels low, which is a win if you don’t like to dust.

5. Your Fridge: Who loves it? Not many, but it has to be done. That Spaghetti sauce you bought 6 months ago, that’s right you remember now! Ooops, it’s finally a new creation of its own so surely it has got to go! Throw out any expired and rotten food. Most likely you will have some sticky and hard to remove spills at the bottom of your refrigerator or storage containers, fill these containers with warm to hot water for about 5-10 minutes. The heat of the water will soften the sticky icky spills at the bottom and it will be easy to remove without scrubbing too hard.  Mean while, wipe down the rest of the refrigerator. You don’t need a fancy cleaner…sponge, dish soap and a cleaning cloth will do. Don’t make excuses just get it clean.

5. Your Dishwasher: Yes, your dishwasher does need to be cleaned from time to time. Remove the utensil holders and racks. Check them for stuck-on food bits and then wipe down. Grab a handful of paper towels and carefully press them onto the base of the washer to pick up any shards, bones, and metal or food gunk. Add 2 cups of vinegar to the bottom and turn the machine on to Energy or Low Wash. Stop the machine in mid-wash, so the vinegar can set on the bottom and work. Let it stand for about 20 minutes, then turn on to finish cycle. When done, wipe out the inside.

Once you’ve managed to clean the above, you will become even more motivated to take care of the rest of the house. If reading this is exhausting, while we can’t help you get rid of items or organize your closet we can certainly help you tackle house cleaning items like dusting, cleaning your refrigerator and thoroughly cleaning your dishwasher.