Spring Cleaning - Windows

It was a fairly nice but windy day on Saturday so I figured that I better start some spring cleaning and wash all my upstairs windows. The inside of the windows get done every once in a while throughout the year, but the outside of the windows are a completely different story. For the bedroom and bathroom windows, I just washed the outside of the windows by removing the screen and slider and then just reaching out to do the other side. But, for our living room, kitchen and sliding glass door, I mixed up a solution of equal parts hot water and vinegar (thanks Martha) and went out armed with a squeegee. What I actually used was something like what you would use to clean your windshield at the gas station; a great all in one tool with a sponge on one side a a squeegee on the other. It is so great to look through clean windows! We replaced all the upstairs windows soon after we moved in, but the sliding glass door is still the original. It was really filthy but all the others weren't too bad. Another great thing was that I got all the bugs and cobwebs out! Yeah!

Shower Doors

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who hates cleaning shower doors. I have tried just about everything to get my shower door clean and some things work but only with a ton of elbow grease. So, I decided to try something today that I have read about but hadn't tried yet. A little while ago, Tamarie mentioned on her blog a little product called Lemi-Shine. I bought a bottle of it and started using it for it's intended purpose in the dishwasher. It works wonders!! My dishes come out much cleaner and the inside of my dishwasher is free from hard water build up. Well, the Lemi-Shine website http://www.lemishine.com/ says that their product does a lot more. One of the things that it says you can do is mix 1/4 cup of Lemi-Shine with 16 oz of water in a spray bottle and then spray it on your shower door. After letting it sit for a minute, all you have to do is rub a sponge over it and then rinse and your shower door sparkles. I was amazed that it actually worked! So, give it a try. And thanks again to Tamarie for sharing such a great product!

This is a picture of my awful shower doors that was taken when we first looked at the house.

And here they are after Lemi-Shine!

Martha Monday Tip

Today's tip is to sweep the kitchen floor. It sounds easy enough...Here is what Martha says. "Every evening once you've finished washing up after dinner, sweep the floor. This will keep tough-to-clean dirt and grime from building up, which will make the weekly mopping much quicker." This one is definitely something that I am going to have a tough time doing. My kitchen floor is gigantic! So, I am going to modify this one a little bit to say "sweep up the crumbs around the table and high chair." Everything else can wait until it is time to mop the floor. At least all those little Cheerios will be picked up so that they don't become Cheerio dust from being stepped on!

Martha Monday Tip

Ok--I know that it is Tuesday but I still want to share a Martha tip and pretend that it is Monday. This one kind of goes along with the tip from last week...Wipe up spills while they're fresh. Martha says, "Whether it's tomato sauce on the cooktop or makeup on the bathroom counter, almost anything is faster and easier to remove if you attend to it immediately." When I'm cooking, I try and keep a wet dish cloth next to me to quickly wipe up spills. Then when I am all done, I give the counter a good wipe down. I haven't ever really thought about doing this in the bathroom but I guess that it makes a lot of sense.

Martha Monday Tip

Today's tip is to "Clean as you Cook." Martha says, "Instead of filling the sink with pots and dishes, wash them or put them in the dishwasher as you prepare a meal." I love this tip! There are days that I just want to take a break after I have put dinner in the oven, but it is so easy to load the dishwasher with my prep dishes really quick and then take a break. I still put a few items in the sink to wait until after dinner clean-up but doing things as I go makes things a lot easier. I was practicing this tip the other day and I must have done a pretty good job because Guy had no idea what I was cooking for dinner since all the evidence had been put away.

Martha Monday Tip

Today's tip is another thing that I really need to work on...Sort the mail. Martha says, "Take a few minutes to open, read, and sort mail as soon as you bring it inside. Keep a trash bin near your sorting area for junk mail. Drop other mail into one of four in-boxes: personal correspondence, bills, catalogs, and filing." I try and put all my bills in a separate place right away so that they don't get lost among all the other things to sort through so that when the day comes to pay bills, they are all in one place. My dad did a really cool thing with bills...After he opened them and checked when they were due, he would subtract three days and then write that new date on the outside of the envelope. He would then put all the bills in order of when they were due and mail the check by the date on the envelope. It seemed to work pretty good. Catalogs and ads are a whole different story. I try and toss out the ads to places that I never shop right away and the rest get put with the phone books. Catalogs are the same way...I toss them right away if I don't need to buy anything from them or they get filed away and then I go through all of them every couple of months. Hopefully this will help me keep my table and counters cleared in the kitchen. Happy sorting :)

Martha Monday Tip

Today's tip is to manage clutter. This is something that I really have a problem with. Martha says, "Whenever you leave a room, take a quick look around for anything that isn't where it should be. Pick it up and put it where it belongs. Insist that everyone in the household do the same."

While I was cleaning up today, I put this into practice. I finally got all the Christmas decorations put away which also involved taking all the boxes downstairs. So, every time I went into a different room, I looked around to see what needed to put away somewhere else. Sometimes it was just a hat, glove or a random shoe, but all those little things can add up to a lot of clutter. Hopefully this will make cleaning a lot easier.

Martha Monday Tip

About a year ago, I bought Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook. She has a lot of great tips so every Monday, I am going to share a little something that I am trying to implement to keep things cleaner at my house. The first one is to make the bed everyday. This one is kind of a no brainer but it is something that I tend to forget. Martha says, "Tidiness begets tidiness. A crisply made bed makes the whole room seem more orderly, which makes it less likely that you'll let other things-such as clothes and papers-pile up around it." I know that I love being able to climb into bed at night and not have to straighten up the covers before getting in. I'm also trying to teach this principle to Amelia. Hopefully one day she will be able to make the bed by herself. Right now she mostly just hands me all the pillows. So, this is my goal this week...to make the all beds in the house everyday. It is something that will only take a few minutes and it will make the whole room look better.