Christmas spring clean??

[dontforgettofloss]

Every Christmas I aim to have a clean sparkling house before the big day, and somehow, it never happens, so I'm just wondering if anyone else has a big clean before Christmas, if so, what is your routine? How do you do it?

I do! I do it room by room doing windows, furniture and skirting etc. I bought myself a caddy last year so carry everything I need round with me. Love it!

I like to have a good clean before decs go up so its usually rooms where tree or lights etc will go that get cleaned first.

Yes, me. I have a clear out and clean a room at a time. Wash the windows inside and out and also have a last tidy up around the garden. I've started today. Cleared out and cleaned all the kitchen units and scrubbed the kitchen top to bottom. Washed the window and floor.

The key is to do it before the tree goes up, as it tends to displace things so you're working around clutter. Ship out any dc / pets for the day and wash all towels / bedding, visiting the wm and td in-between cleaning. Get some good music on amd go for it. I find a big breakfast and cake for 11sies helps

Clean as you put the decs up. Damp cloth, wipe any surface you put a decoration on. Wipe skirting before you put anything in front of it.

Vacuum when you finish.

Every year I try but we 3 primary school children, 3 long haired cats that shed like you wouldn't believe and a wonderful husband who has no idea how to tidy up behind himself (unless you count the bi-annual rage tidy he does. Usually happens on a day I have commitments that he isn't happy about that involves me leaving him alone for several hours and so in his annoyed rage he suddenly declares the house a shit tip. This then is followed by lots of hollering at the kids and moving stuff from the lounge into a bedroom, not actually putting anything away and then refusing to leave the stuff we do actually need in the lounge in there.) I will clean and tidy as much as I can in the days running up to Xmas, then Xmas eve morning I'll do the bathroom and downstairs. Dh is home this year so I imagine it'll be more stressful as he'll be telling me to sit down and relax, which is code for "I feel guilty watching you run around like a headless chicken whilst I play video games but not enough to stop playing". I do love him and he works extremely hard and very long hours to support us so I try not to be too hard on him but I do usually end up telling him to get off his arse

Start TOMM now and you’ll be laughing come Christmas

I highly recommend this podcast from a slob comes clean

The key is to not let the day-to-day stuff build up behind you while you deep clean, and not to create more mess while you clean.

Yes, I do. Will be doing early this year since far flung family coming to stay for the usual meet up/present swap 1st week December. And I want decorations up by then so will clean first. Just a bit more than the usual clean, windows, brass and silver, etc.

We have a large antique wooden chest originally from Zanzibar, largely covered with ornamental brass and copper.
It's a major operation to polish it (looks lovely afterwards) so it only ever gets done pre-Christmas, hence I now associate the smell of Brasso with Christmas!

I have my rental inspection at the end of November, so get all clean for that!

@arrowfanatic my dh is exactly the same.
Ive been trying to deep clean, but i find normal housework takes over, so i might get get 5 mins to sort a cupboard out. I want to do my dds room but im scared.

I started following The Organised Mum Method about a month ago, so I’m finding the housework a lot easier to keep on top of anyway. The house is getting gradually cleaner every week and because it’s never that long until the next kitchen/living room things don’t get that bad.

Yes we started it last weekend and aim to finish it this weekend. We will decorate on Saturday but finish the clean up alongside it. We did most of upstairs last weekend so it’s just downstairs now. I always clear out DC’s toys and clothes that no longer fit to take to the charity shop so they have space for the new stuff.

What does visiting the wm and td mean? And what is TOMM?

It does feel and smell lovely when you've really cleaned everywhere

I started last weekend too, armed with a bucket & Zoflora I tackled the skirting boards. A friend has a great cleaner who has turned hoovering into an art form. My carpets look like a Premier League Football pitch with beautiful lines. I normally do it all myself, but, it’s a festive treat to myself to book her in December.
I have an under stairs cupboard I am putting off doing, it’s such an awkward shape, I tend to just chuck stuff in.
The Teenagers space needs doing before the cleaner comes otherwise she will need to wear a Hazmat suite😏

I don't normally but I am doing this year. I tackle a room at a time and am trying to get one done each week in the lead up. Everyone has been warned to pick up after themselves and maintain it (or else!). It's already looking so much better.

The problem I'm having is convincing the kids to part with some toys they've outgrown in the lead up. I feel like swinging open the wardrobe and saying "look all this is yours in one month but you need to get rid of that crap in your room first".

BlueOooo I find that my DC (3 and 5) were much more receptive to a toy clear out when I framed it as "Look - there isn't any space for new toys, so let's clear out some of the old ones that you don't play with any more or are broken so Santa doesn't think you've no space for anything new"

Small niggle - Zoflora doesn't actually clean anything. It disinfects and leaves it's smell behind but doesn't actually remove dirt/grime/grease.

100% the house gets a deep clean first. I use putting up the decorations as an excuse to then not have to do anything other than hoovering and cleaning the kitchen / bathrooms in December.

I dont care if that makes me a dirty slattern or not but it makes life so much easier in December not having to worry about half the housework

We are hosting for the first time this year so I will be joining the big clean too. My plan is half an hour extra per day. I'm going to do myself a cleaning advent calendar and do one job a day on top of the usual housework stuff. My plan is a job and a chocolate for once the job is done then a nice little treat on Christmas eve plus a clean house and no real need for a huge clean up job that takes all day whilst missing out on a fun activity I have planned for dh and the kids

I start the first week in September doing the Holiday Grand Plan - tackling one room per week until early December, then "minimum maintenance" until Christmas. Then about the 2nd week in September, I drastically revise my ambitions, and just aim to keep the house reasonably clean and add an extra job in most weeks.

Realistically, I manage to:
clean the windows inside and out downstairs (and try to at least clean inside upstairs);
check the smoke alarms batteries;
sweep the patio/side passage/front porch area for debris built up over summer once the worst of the autumn leaves have fallen;
dust the downstairs rooms;
declutter a couple of major clutter hotspots;
do my seasonal clothes changes for all in the household (and use that process to give each wardrobe a clean out, and get rid of things now too small from DD's room);
sort through the kitchen food presses for anything out of date etc;
sort through the kitchen plastics press as that gets in the worst mess;
try to give at least the sitting room a thorough vacuuming to the skirting boards (moving furniture) - I'll do other rooms if I get time;
sweep ceilings for cobwebs as this is the time of year they multiply;
use plughole unblocker in the kitchen and bathrooms to keep drains running smoothly;
give the stove a good clean, including the glass door, (and try to remember to book a chimney sweep) and restock logs etc in the log bin outside;

Some weeks, I literally just keep on top of the regular cleaning. But I find that if I focus on a specific room for a week, while I might not get it thoroughly done (I'm out long days and my evenings are ridiculously busy!), I should manage an extra few small jobs at least in each room, as there are lots of small things that make a difference that you can do in 5-10 minutes - and a huge amount that you can do if you can close the door for an hour and you just set to with a positive and active mindset (and there isn't a whirlwind behind you to undo it all again!).

Then again, since we got a cleaning company coming in once a fortnight (about 18 months ago now), that has also made a huge difference! Keeping the house generally clean in between is far more manageable now.

I also found a couple of years ago that keeping the bathroom cleaner actually in the bathroom, along with a couple of cloths, makes a huge amount of sense.

We tend to use Jcloths normally, and we keep yellow ones purely for bathrooms. (Blue, green or pink are all fine for kitchen and general use).

So behind the sink I have a bottle of bleach, a bottle of bathroom spray cleaner, and maybe 2-4 clean yellow jcloths. And a roll of small bin liners in the drawer of the unit. So I can get up on Saturday morning and, almost while I brush my teeth or let something soak into my skin, quickly whizz around and clean the bathroom, throwing that cloth straight into the wash afterwards. When clean clothes are folded (Sunday afternoons, while watching a movie, all the clean clothes built up over the week in the clean clothes hamper near the tumble dryer), I put a few yellow cloths into the bundle going upstairs and the remainder go underneath the kitchen sink (for the downstairs bathroom/storage).

And I can very quickly empty all the upstairs bins and re-line them by having the bags up there, so that tends to be another job I do in a morning on my way down, rather than going up specially to do it.

TOMM = the Organised Mum Method. Basically, each day Mon-Thurs you do one of your main rooms for no more than 30 mins, and on Fridays you do a proper focused deep clean of one room. Then nothing at all on weekends. Means each of your main rooms gets cleaned fo 30 mins once a week, and the whole house gets a deep clean over an 8 week cycle. And you never spend too much time cleaning each day.

I've been doing it and it works really well and we get to Friday with a clean and tidy house. It's hard to make myself stop after 30 mins when there is still more to do usually, but I know I'll come back to that room on the same day the following week so I can pick up from there. There's a support thread in Housekeeping about it as well!

Explained here: www.theorganisedmum.blog

Our decorations will go up on the 8th/9th
The little Advent Tree that we've had since the DC were tiny ) ) will be dug out of the attic on Friday.

DH and I traditionally book a day off in late November to go Christmas shopping but I've got 99% of it covered ( not the food shopping, that's later)

So we'll do a Big Clean and arrange things for the tree .

I am doing the Grand Plan for the first time this year and it's working really well for me :)

I do it and LOVE it ! Write out a list, give each day a number of tasks. And get through it!