Cleaning...Urgh.?
Question:Hey, I have a problem and it's called cleaning. I hate it with a passion. My problem is this, my family is trying to sell our house and I have to clean my room majorly... if you have ever moved, you know what I mean. My attention usually seems to... er. wander, while i clean. I need a STEP-BY-STEP way of how to majorly clean your bedroom. Im also a person who has... difficulty. with letting go of junk lol. So i also need to know what I should probably keep and what piles and stuff or whatever. PLEASE no " put on some music and get goin." It may work for you, but it sure doesn't work for me ahaha. A good way, maybe over, i dunno, three or four days of cleaning... you know, do this much the first day, this much the second day... blah blah blah.
Answers:
Cleaning a room (your room) really isn't as hard as you may think or believe.
Just follow these easy steps to completely clean your room.
Step one: The bed
Step two: The Laundry
Step three: The nightstand
Step four: Random stuff
Step five: Dressers and closets
Step six: Bookshelves
Step seven: computer desks
Step eight: The floor
Step One: The Bed
Making the bed makes a room look good fairly quickly.
1-Remove stuff from bed, and wash if necessary.
2-Replace and tuck in sheets.
3-Place warming blanket (down or otherwise (unless its summer out)).
4-Place the decorative blanket.
Step Two: Laundry
1-Retrieve laundry from around the room
2-Sort in light, dark, colored, and towels/rag piles
3-Send a load down to laundry, and place the rest of the piles on the bed
Step Three: The nightstand
1-Remove items from nightstand, and sort
2-Clean glass/top of stand, and apply a wood-oil if necessary
3-Place sorted items in respectable places, and throw away garbage
Step Four: Random junk
Move random junk to their respective places, and vacuum where they used to be if your going to place them in their original places.
Step Five: Dressers and Tabletops
1-Remove and sort items from dresser/table tops
2-Wipe down dresser/table
3-Replace sorted items, and remove garbage
Step Six: The Bookshelf
Remove stuff from bookshelf, discard garbage, and sort items into different piles, the ones shown here are:
1-wires/electronics
2-tools/knives
Step Seven: The Computer Desk
1-Stash headphones, cameras, and other portable electronics
2-Remove garbage and dishes
3-Clean surface of desk
Step Eight: The Floor
1-Remove garbage, and sweep floor with a magnet for BBs, and look for nonmagnetic objects
2-Vacuum the floor, starting with rugs, which you should roll up and store on the bed while vacuuming the floor
3-Vacuum the floor, and replace the rugs
4-Use the extension tool for your vacuum to get around edges
Step Nine: Relax!
1-Put all the tools you've used to clean your room in their respective places, and go downstairs and get a Coke!
2-Look at your beautifully clean room!
3-magazines
4-school stuff
5-hardback books
6-paperback books
7-product boxes
8-stray CDs
9-Jewel cases
10-pens/pencils
11-packages
The best way for me to clean my daughters urgh messy pig pen is get several large trash cans new of course. I is for trash real trash papers, food, price tags, and trash. 2nd is for giveaways or sell things she never touches or has not in many years. 3 is for the save pile. and a 4th is for the laundry that is piled all over the floor. It takes usualy 3 or 4 days but the first day is always the worst and the last is always the best I can vaccum and see the floor. Remember if you haven't touched something in over 6 months it's out of here.
The way I do it is to just pick a place in the room and start there. Don't go to another part till you have that part cleaned. Eventually, work your way around the room and before you know it, you will have it all cleaned. Then just keep it that way buy cleaning up all the time.
Nobody likes to clean. I have to do it all the time after my family.
Ok, well when it comes to throwing stuff away, throw things away that you haven't used in over a year. Sentimental stuff can be kept, but hopefully they are small things you can put in a box together and label. Laundry...of course, gather all of your dirty laundry and put it in your hamper and then in your closet or in a corner in a room. You could also just take it to your laundry room in your house, but try to make sure when the laundry is ready to be put away, try to do it asap. Get a trash bag and throw all of the trash in your room away, and empty your trash can also. If you get frustrated, just stop, leave the room, and continue later. Just don't mess what you have already cleaned. Good luck.
i know how you feel, i'm the same way! i find it helps to have music AND a tv on, (just because i like background noise) but with both of them on at the same time i don't get distracted by them as much because i can't distinguish one from the other!
as for the letting go of junk thing, when i recently cleaned out my room, i found things from 10 years ago that i have never used, never missed and had no idea why they were still there except for the fact that i just couldn't let go of them.
...so0o0o, if you're a pack rat like me, you just have to say to yourself "self, am i ever going to use this again? or have i used this recently?" DONT BE AFRAID TO THROW STUFF AWAY! i ended up throwing 6 bags of trash away by just not getting carried away with thinking about any one particular item.
.and while my room is still a bit cluttered, at least you can see the floor now!!
it also helps to pick up all of your laundry first, wash things that need to be and hang up others...PICK ONE CORNER OF YOUR ROOM and DONT STOP TILL ITS FINISHED!
if you pick a section a day (i.e. desk, underbed, closet...) you won't become overwhelmed and you'll actually make progress
GOOD LUCK!!
I completely agree with "glorious angel" that breaking it into little steps is the easiest way to go, but you've still got to do something to keep yourself from getting sidetracked.
Two things will help with this: get yourself a timer and 3 empty boxes and write on the boxes "throw away", "give away", and "put away". Putting anything that needs to go somewhere else in the house in the "put away" box rather than leaving your room will mean that you won't get drawn away from what you're doing so easily.
Print off the steps that 'Angel' gave you, and add/remove any that you need to so it suits your room. THEN set a timer for 15 minutes and see how many of the steps you can get done. At the end of 15 minutes, cross them off and take a breather (but stay in your room!). Do this twice in a row (i.e. 30 minutes of following down the list).
When you've done two lots of 15 minutes, take the "throw away" box and empty it into the trash, then get the "put away" box and put the stuff from that where it lives. Leave the "give away" box unless it's getting too full, in which case get another one. Grab a drink, snack, make a QUICK phone call or whatever as a reward and then go back into your room and do another two lots of 15 minutes.
It's amazing how much gets done this way - I've used it to "crisis clean" my house several times after it got out of control, and it only took a day or so. Even packing a whole houseful of stuff for a big move took a lot less time this way.
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