House-Detoxing – Laura Cleans the house. (With Pics)

Last night I had a mini-meltdown. I was tired, emotional and looked around the rooms upstairs to find disaster had hit.

Life has thrown us some giant lemons recently. We’ve suffered with four family bereavements, the upheaval of an extension and started home-schooling.

We’ve had some highs and lows, we had a great high on the weekend when I went to the salon to get my hair transformed! Yesterday, we went to church and participated in Remembrance Day to respectfully think of all those who served and gave their lives for our freedom in WWI and WWII.

So maybe it was just the exhaustion of having a busy and emotionally draining weekend that lead me to have a melt-down.

I felt ready for order.

For peace.

For calm!

So today, I put my war paint on and readied myself for a day of cleaning and sorting. I like to call it “House-Detoxing.”

Fingers crossed I stay focussed on the task. I left my room to assess the situation. What I saw was not pretty.

What the heck? How did the hallway get like this? – I thought to myself as I just stood with my mouth hanging open looking at the scene of destruction.

It didn’t get any better when I took a look in the bedrooms.

Each room looked like someone picked it up, turned it upside down and gave it a good shake.

I also noticed that spiders had taken camp in the corners of the ceilings and fashioned themselves huge webs.

The first thing I decided to do, was get myself some breakfast. I never eat first thing in the morning, but I saw what I was up against and realised I needed my energy.

The plan was to declutter and organise any unwanted toys, clothes and books with the boys’ help. After seeing how bad the rooms looked, I realised that will have to be done tomorrow. Today, I needed to crack on and get these rooms sanitary. So, I let the boys play in the attic (their play room) and I got myself ready.

First things was first. Stairs.

My little cheat is to use a dustpan and brush to remove those crumbs and balls of dust on the stairs rather than dragging the hoover up and down. You tend to walk crumbs up and down while cleaning so I like to brush the stairs and skirting boards down and hoover at the end.

Check out the difference this little trick made:

I grabbed a white bag for rubbish and a bag for life for toys/books I found lying on the floor. Clothes got thrown into a wash pile.

Then I ventured into my oldest son’s room. I recovered from the mini panic attack I had and got to work. Now that I had categorised everything in my head, it was pretty easy to start clearing the room out. I also used the lid of a Lego Head (Lego storage!) to throw all the bits of Lego without having to run them up to the attic.

As I uncovered the top of the toy box, I was horrified to see how much dust there was!

So I took a wet microfibre cloth and cleaned all the surfaces. For the blinds, I found that instead of trying to dust each individual blind, it was quicker to close them first and do it all in one go.

To make the bed, I tucked the duvet into the bed frame and sat the pillows on top, I feel it makes it look more tidy.

I hoovered the floor and all the little corners and gaps around the bed and after about 20 minutes of huffing and puffing, the room was looking much better!

I had to take breaks while cleaning. My puppy kept trying to lay on my lap and stop me from getting up. So I had to give her lots of cuddles and mummy love.

I feel like if I can just get my mind in the right place, and finish the first bedroom, I can do the rest super fast. The next two rooms didn’t take me long at all.

Feeling hot and flustered; I took a moment to be inspired! Rome wasn’t built in a day! I’m probably not going to get the whole house done in one go. But I’ve made a good start and that’s good right?

I really got into the zone and picked everything up off the floor, divided it all between the rubbish, laundry bin and a toy box and then it was easy to hoover and dust.

I was quite shocked at how much dust there was. I think I underestimated how much it travels when you’re having an extension. No wonder we all sneeze and cough a lot!

The bathroom is squeaky clean once more, and the hallway looks safe to walk through again.

The project isn’t complete. There are still plenty of rooms to get done but that’ll have to wait til tomorrow. Now it’s a case of teaching the kids to maintain the cleanliness!

That seems to be an ongoing process. 🤪

Do you feel the need for a house-detox? Did this inspire you to spring into action? I hope so!

If that is the case…then happy cleaning! 😇

Laura

XoXo