30 Day Cleaning Challenge--Day 10

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness

Today's task for the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge at Money Saving Mom is to deep clean the living room.  

These are her suggestions:

• Set the timer for 20 minutes and pick up and put away all items that are out of place. (Bonus: find 7 items to get rid of.)
• Dust the furniture, wall-hangings, and knick-knacks.
• Wipe down the baseboards.
• Vacuum/sweep the room. (Bonus: use an attachment on the vacuum to vacuum around the baseboards and vacuum the furniture.)
• Clean fingerprints on the windows.
• Bonus: Spot-clean the carpets and walls.
• You’re done!

Sorry no before-and-after pictures  today, Wednesdays are usually spent out of the house, and today is no exception, so when I saw that the task for today was "deep cleaning" I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it.  But when I went into the living room to look around, I realized something.  Last week one of the daily tasks was to"surface clean" the living room and kitchen. Even though my main focus that day was the kitchen, I took the time to pick up and put away things that didn't belong--like shoes and books and hair clips--straightened everything else and dusted.

Since then, my family has co-operated in keeping it pretty well picked up every day. We always have a couple of books laying around, we take off our shoes sometimes when we're sitting there watching tv, but something about having it all cleaned up has inspired everyone to pick up behind themselves for the most part.

So this is what I did today:

Picked up and threw away some trash--a couple of tissues and a paper towel that I'd been using on top of a coaster; straightened our current stack of books, a magazine and one of my calendar organizers; fluffed and straightened a couple of pillows and refolded one of our throws. That's it. 

We have a hardwood floor in the living room, so when someone sweeps or swiffers, they usually get the baseboards that are not behind furniture.  The windows are behind a love-seat, so no one really touches them.  Right now I'm in a minimalist stage and I have no knick-knacks on the tables in there (I swing back and forth on this sometimes!) (Can you believe I'm the same person with that disaster of a bedroom yesterday?) It could probably use a dusting, it really doesn't need much else. If there had been time, I would have cleaned out behind the doors in the tv stand, and I made a mental note that I need a pretty basket or something similar to keep the remote(s) in. 

Quite a contrast from yesterday, right!

Until next time...

To see other posts in this series, click on Clean in 30