Spring Cleaning Challenge – Week 2

I know you’ve just been dying to know how week two of my Spring Cleaning project went. And yes… It went. This daily cleaning thing is tougher than it sounds, and to be honest it has been more like an every other day thing for me so far. I’m already excited to complete the Spring Clean list and get to the point where I am just doing more basic tasks for maintenance. 15 to 20 minutes a day… Now that sounds doable. If you read week 1, you learned some of the things I didn’t know before starting this super fun adventure, including that a lot of the tasks on the list take more like an hour on average. But I will stop complaining and get to the update!

Week 2 – and my MVPs (most valuable products) for cleaning:

Day 8 – Monday: Clean Kitchen sink and under sink.
Total time: 30 minutes of cleaning + Lysol soaking time

After getting married last summer, I used some of our wedding gift card money to buy a couple of these under cabinet drawer/organizers from Bed Bath & Beyond. Now I can’t find a link to these for the life of me (wtf BBB?), but hereis something that looks pretty similar. I had been eyeballing them for awhile. And while they are a bit on the pricey side, I LOVE THEM. So, this task was pretty painless because I had already brought some level of organization to the under-kitchen-sink last fall. Therefore, the MVP award #1 goes to: Under Cabinet Organizer Drawers. I previously had my cleaning supplies bin in the center of the cabinet, which just wasn’t quite working for me. So after pulling everything out of the cabinet, I vacuumed and wiped down the cabinet, tossed unneeded items, and re-organized. Just a little bit of rearranging and I am much happier. My cleaning supplies are now easily accessible! How convenient for my cleaning challenge, eh?

Under-sink organization

Cleaning the sink itself is a fairly standard practice for me. However, I did try to tackle the layer of gunk/grease/dirt that seems to be caked onto everything in my kitchen – including the neck and spigot of the faucet. Paper towel scrubbing seemed to move the sticky gunk around a bit, but just wasn’t cutting it. So I invented this highly technical method of grease removal, called “Lysol soaked saran wrap sticking”.

I sprayed a bunch of Lysol on the faucet head using saran wrap to catch the excess and wrapped it up. Let that sit for an hour or longer, and voila. It removed the layer of gunk easily. I’m not sure the faucet has been this clean since we moved in. MVP award #2: Lysol. Can’t go wrong.

Clean degreased faucet

Day 9 – Tuesday: I had a work event, which took precedent over cleaning. Womp womp.

Day 10 – Wednesday: Wipe down Kitchen walls and clean trash can.
Total time: 20 minutes (hooray! I did it! completed a task in 20 minutes!) False advertising much, popsugar??

Straight-forward and quick. I wiped down the walls using MVP award winner #3Method All Purpose Cleaner. This stuff is natural, smells great, and I use it on everything from counters and floors, to window sills, to my pleather couches, shelves, wood tables and chairs. I pulled out the Lysol again to give the trash can a good wipe down of the outside and inside the lid.

Day 11 – Thursday: Clean stove top.
Total time: 25 minutes and here I am complaining about these tasks taking too long. Either I’m getting lazier, or more efficient. Don’t tell me.

Another pretty standard cleaning task. We have a flat ceramic stove top, which is nice because it doesn’t have complicated 3d gas burners to catch all crumbs and things, but it’s not so nice because it gets this cooked on black stuff that is almost impossible to scrub off. This Easy-Off stove top cleaner used with a cook top scrubbing pad is pretty effective – though I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s “easy-off” for 100% of the mess.

Easy-off ceramic stove cleaner

I also had yet another encounter with that nasty layer of grease that is so content in my kitchen, this time on the stove display and around the control knobs. I tried soaking paper towels in Lysol and sticking them up there, but unfortunately, it was not as effective this time. I may have to resort to buying an actual de-greasing cleaner. Recommendations, anyone??

Day 12 – Friday: Another day off. sigh.

Day 13 – Saturday: Clean Kitchen surfaces and floors
Total time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

The problem with this task is that once you start thinking about “surfaces”, you can easily get carried away and never really be DONE. It sounds simple, right? Countertops, and floors. But wait… there’s more. What about all of your knick-knacks, containers, and exposed storage? When’s the last time you wiped down all of your cabinet doors and drawers? What about your kitchen windows, sills and frames? Take a close look at some of the areas that you usually ignore – I’m willing to bet you’ll find a greasy dust layer in some unexpected places. I started by removing everything from our kitchen window sill and giving all of the items – and the window – a good wipe down.

Rinse and repeat for everything on our pot rack shelf.

This is also about the time that I finished off a roll of paper towels. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t live without my bulk packages of Bounty from Sam’s Club. Which is why MVP award #4 goes to… paper towels.

I finished up by replacing all of my kitchen items, wiping down counters, cabinet doors and drawers, and finally shaking out and vacuuming rugs, sweeping and swiffering the floor. And because I took Sunday off yet again (sorry for the spoiler)… this concludes my spring cleaning challenge: week 2.

Clean Kitchen

Ta-da! Check out my kitchen! I didn’t get started on the bathroom like I promised, but thank god week 3 exists.

So now I’d love to hear: what are your cleaning MVPs?

Spring Cleaning Challenge Week 2 Task ListLinked up at: Share the Wealth SundayMotivational Monday, Totally Terrific Tuesday

 

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2 Comments

  1. GREAT tips! I really love the advice about cleaning the faucet with Lysol and saran wrap. I could never get mine clean in my old house and would have loved to have known your secret. At least when I move now, I know how to keep the new faucet shiny and clean!

    Thanks so much for linking up with #ShareTheWealthSunday!

    xoxo
    Lisa

    1. Thanks Lisa! I was surprised at how well the Lysol worked on the faucet – and anything that you can “set it and forget it” I love. Just let the cleaner do the work and wipe it down later! Thanks for hosting, and for stopping by!

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