Show Us Your Life: Cleaning Tips

Today on Kelly's Show Us Your Life we are showcasing CLEANING TIPS. I absolutely love a clean and tidy house. There is something comforting and warm about walking into a clean and clutter free home. Doesn't even have to be my home, ha! I try to keep our house clean and picked up all the time but as every mom knows that can be very challenging.

Here are just a few of my tips for keeping a clean and tidy house:

1. I pickup the downstairs before going to bed each night. This includes putting all toys away, folding blankets, putting pillows back in place on the couch, washing bottles, clean kitchen counters and make sure all dishes are in the dishwasher. Basically putting things back into place. I love walking downstairs in the morning to a tidy and clean family room and kitchen. I also make our bed every day. Even if it's 3:00 in the afternoon. It makes me feel put together when it's made.

2. I do laundry two days a week, Wednesday and Saturday. I do towels both days and wash bed sheets every Saturday. This helps to keep the laundry from piling up and waiting to get put away. I usually have to do Ryan's laundry every other day. One of my favorite lifesavers is a waterproof mattress pad that snaps around the rails of his crib. It eliminates having to pick up the mattress when changing the sheets. It just lays right on top with no need to change the "pretty" fitted sheet

3. I make a list each week of what I need to clean. I write down bathrooms one day, dust another day, vacuum another day etc... For me after I vacuum I feel like I've tackled a big portion of a dirty house.

Unfortunately Ryan has been a light sleeper lately. I'm worried if I vacuum while he's sleeping I might wake him up. The other night I went to check on him and lightly touched his back, he was sleeping on his belly with his knees under him and butt in the air. As soon as I touched him he popped his head up. I jolted out of the room, ha! He started to fuss a little but thankfully went back to sleep. I hope it's a phase and my deep sleeper will return soon.

4. Here are some of my favorite cleaning products. I use the Oxy Deep for stains in the carpet. Works so great! I love Clorox Wipes, I have some in every bathroom. And they are great for the kitchen. I love Soft Scrub for the kitchen sink and bathroom. Also works great on a glass top stove. Some of my other favorite products are Dreft stain remover, Magic Eraser and Lysol toilet bowl cleaner.

(Oh I just love this pic of Ryan! He's giving me the look like "really Mom, another picture",HA)

5. When cooking I always clean as I go. One of the major reasons I don't like to cook is I hate the clean up. I clean as I go so then there isn't a huge mess to clean when I'm done. I HATE leaving dishes in the sink. We fill up the dishwasher during the day and usually run it every few days. I put away the dishes in the morning that way we can fill it during the day.

6. Do you use Dawn Foam??? We use it A LOT! I love it for washing bottles since I wash them by hand. I was buying a bottle a week when Matt googled and found the recipe online. Amazingly it's 2/3 water, 1/3 dawn soap. So we just keep some regular dawn soap and fill up the dispenser when it runs out. Saves SO much money. Thanks Dawn for charging me for water!

Hope these have been helpful tips and inspired you to do some spring cleaning! Reading the links from Kelly's site have definitely inspired me to kick spring cleaning into high gear.