Why wait until spring to start Spring Cleaning? Dust and germs live in every nook and cranny around the house and now that cold and flu season has hit, it’s a good time to spend a little extra time cleaning. You don’t have to do the whole house at once; that’s crazy. Just take it room-by-room and scrub a little each week (or month). We’ll cover regular cleaning methods, tips to get the stubborn stuff and how to keep the bathroom from ever getting this disgusting again.

Start With The Basics

Pick up odds and ends: dirty towels, clothing, garbage, and magazines. Dispose of each properly. We’ll pretend you know that dirty towels and clothes go in the laundry; magazines can be put away or thrown away. The garbage is obvious.

Scrub the sink, shower and toilet with an all-purpose cleaner. Use a rag or paper towels. If you use a rag for the whole room, start with the sink and go least dirty to most disgusting surface. Never wipe the sink with something that just touched the toilet. Were you raised in a barn?

You may want to use a tougher sponge for the shower to get in-between the tiles and break up that gunk, but we’ll get to that again later.

For mirrors, windows and shower stall doors use a glass cleaner. A newspaper or squeegee is very handy for not getting those annoying streaks on the mirror. You can use a rag, though, if it’s all you have.

Now on to the floors, we suggest you sweep or vacuum first and then mop. Get most of the dust, hair, et cetera, up before you add water. Sometimes we shake out the rug and vacuum that up, too, but you’ll probably want to vacuum the rug itself, too.

The Hard Stuff

If you clean every week, the above tasks are generally enough but if you’re bathroom has gotten completely out-of-hand or you’re just a total germaphobe, here are some additional ways to deep clean the bathroom.

For the toilet, pour castile soap (which is vegetable oil-based soap that’s good for cleaning stuff) throughout the bowl and scrub with a toilet brush. Then add something stronger like Borax to the bowl and mix with the soap. Use a smaller brush (like an old toothbrush) to get up around the edges of the bowl and into the jets.

For shower or bath grime, get a dish wand or sponge. Mix equal parts vinegar and dish soap to break down the grime. Rinse the tub or shower after scrubbing.

If you want to clean the faucet or showerhead, fill a plastic bag with vinegar (pick your size according to the size of the faucet), and tie it up around the faucet. Let it soak there for at least half an hour.

Hard water stains are a pain and don’t always come off with an all-purpose cleaner. For your faucet and knobs, cut a lemon in half and scrub the water stains with lemon juice. Seriously, it works!

Depending on the type of bathroom rug, you might be able to throw it in the washing machine. However, read the tag carefully. Additionally, if you’re not able to get stains out and it’s no longer the crisp white or blue you started with, consider taking it to professional dry cleaners. They’re great with stains.

The same goes for bathroom curtains and shower curtains. For the plastic curtains, you can spray with all-purpose cleaner and wipe clean. For window curtains and fabric shower curtains, machine-wash or take to dry cleaners, according to the tag’s instructions. Again, stains are best handled by a professional.

Keeping It Clean

Now that you’ve gotten past all the grime and build-up, swear to yourself it won’t ever get that disgusting again. Of course, there’s a solid chance that it will and you can simply read this blog again, but for the sake of ending this blog on a positive note, let’s pretend.

Start by touching up the bathroom every day. Throw away trash, put makeup, hair ties, toothbrushes and combs back in the drawers every day. Wipe down the sink and counter daily so water doesn’t settle and create mold.

Every week, spend a quick 10-15 minutes cleaning out the toilet and washing down the shower or bath. If you do this regularly, the soap scum and hard water stains won’t build up like last time. Sometimes a daily shower spray can help keep things cleaner a bit longer as well. You simply spray each day after you shower or bathe and it does the cleaning for you.

Lastly, every other week or so, vacuum thoroughly and wash the rugs. The curtains can probably last another month before you need to dry-clean them again, but keep on eye on the dust that’s building up.

You did it! You cleaned an entire room in your house and it’s positively shiny. Well done. Call your mom and tell her about your new cleaning hacks.

If you’re looking for a local cleaner that will pick-up and deliver your Longview dry cleaning, visit DriveCleaning.com today.