What I did on spring break (Did you know you can clean your tub with half a grapefruit?)

this suburban greenmom is probably the last person on here to finally get around to spring cleaning...

Spring break. It’s not at the same time as the kids, which means I now have five whole days, uncommitted, no schedule, no kids. Also no opportunity to run away to Vegas or anything, but I’ll take it.

While I fully plan to spend a decent amount of time being a schlub, reading junky books, and watching chick flicks, I also plan to do a significant amount of spring cleaning. In this house the first round will without a doubt be about simple uncluttering: sorting, filing, shelving, and tossing the vast majority of the papers and weird random Stuff that finds its way into the house and seems to bother no one but me.

The school papers will be sorted through, most put into the recycling bin, and a few saved for sentimental purposes. The toys will be put away.  The random junky little “goodie bags” that have shown up when kids at school had birthdays or come home from birthday parties—these will be dissected and stored for Halloween or other such moments. (My kids won’t notice. Trust me.)

Once the surfaces are cleared off, they get cleaned: mostly a vinegar-water solution will take care of whatever needs cleaning, but I may have to try one of the furniture polish recipes I’ve found online—especially one of these lavender ones—for our various wood pieces.  I’ll hit the bathrooms and possibly the grungy stove pieces with my homemade soft scrub recipe. (Although this highly creative grapefruit recipe looks really cool! I may have to try it!)

If I get really ambitious, I might even try to clean the carpets—those carpet cleaners are pretty easy and cheap to rent at the local supermarket, and honestly using nothing but hot water (spraying it on and sucking it back out several times) gets out an amazing amount of dirt and grunge from the carpets, without the toxic weird chemicals from standard carpet cleaning solutions. You rent the thing for the day, usually, so you can just go over it again and again until the water rinses mostly clear. This site also suggests you can add half a cup to a cup of vinegar to the water solution for really bad carpet, but honestly I’ve never needed to do that. (If I can’t manage the whole deal, I’ll sprinkle the carpet in the rooms with baking soda--possibly with a little essential oil mixed in with it--and vacuum it up afterwards. Also works on upholstery!)

So…I’ll go get on that. After I finish watching this movie…

Jenn the Greenmom