Cleaning Your Home After COVID-19
Thursday, July 16, 2020
2020 has been a year of unprecedented circumstances. When the WHO announced a global pandemic, countries across the world were forced to shut their borders and ask the public to stay at home. We spent months away from work, school, and socializing. Whole families on lockdown in their homes have found themselves with more time, less money and in a lot of cases far more stress to deal with than ever before.
While we may have had more time to do housework, the demands on our homes have been extremely high. With husbands and wives working from their dining rooms, teenagers grazing in the kitchen on the hour, every hour, and toddlers running through the house and garden, our usual routines have gone out of the window. Living our whole lives at home could mean your house is in need of a deep clean! Especially as lives are starting to return to normal.
It’s time to get organized and bring your whole family together to share in the big clean. After all, everyone has contributed to the mess, right? It doesn’t matter how old your children are; they can help! Especially for teenagers. If they can operate an iPhone, then they can definitely work the dishwasher and washing machine. So sit down, write a list of jobs that need to be done and then work out together who can do what. Toddlers enjoy helping parents and can take on tasks like polishing or dusting the tables. Once you have a list ready and have delegated jobs to your whole household, it’s time to get scrubbing and start returning your house to its pre-COVID glory.
Unless you are a domestic god or goddess, then you probably haven’t kept on top of all the chores. Just keeping things tidy when you have a house full is a task in itself. With constant traffic in and out of your home, you will find there are plenty of jobs to do in every single room. Let’s start with the dusting!
Dust will build up regardless of how much is going on at home. There are loads of places you will notice this, but you should start with the highest point of your home and work from there. A great way to tackle dust is with a hoover first; that way, you can be sure that you have removed all the particles that end up floating in the air and resettling. Start with your lights and lamps. Hoover gently with the brush attachment, then using a microfiber cloth or duster, gently wipe off all surfaces. You should pay attention to your blinds and windows next. Blinds can be particularly tricky, especially if you have Venetian blinds with the slatted wood or metal. However, there are some great tips for cleaning dust off blinds like this on YouTube. British cleaning sensation, Mrs. Hinch has lots of top tips which will make your life so much easier.
Skirting boards pick up a lot of dust and dirt, particularly if you have pets. So get down on your knees and repeat the hoover method, follow this with a damp microfibre cloth and a cleaner. Zoflora is an excellent choice as they do an incredible range of scents and kill 99.9% of germs. Leaving your home not only dust free but also germ-free.
As you are going through your home dusting it, you should take a good look at your walls. It is likely that there are handprints you have gone blind to over the last few months. Particularly if you have children, unfortunately, everyone touches the walls at times, and this can leave a greasy, dark stain. Using sugar soap could help to lift these marks off the walls. Don’t rub too hard as you will remove the paint. If you realize that you have some heavy-duty staining, a quick lick of paint will really make a difference. Your house will feel and look fresher. You shouldn’t have to do two coats, and you also won’t have to cut in. The idea is to just roller over the walls to brighten things up a little.
Your carpets have probably been neglected! While a vacuum does pick up most of the dust and dirt, it doesn’t remove everything. This can leave the air in your home feeling a little heavy. There are some great tools that help you to scrape the fibers of your carpet before you hoover. It is hard work and will take quite a lot of effort, but once you see what dirt your vacuum has left behind, you will be amazed especially if you have pets. The stairs, if they are carpeted, will trap dirt, dust, and fluff in the corners. This can be easy to miss in your general clean, but when you take a closer look, you will be shocked at just how much you have been missing. So use your scraper method to get right into the corners and edges of each step. Hoover it all up at the end, and you will instantly notice a difference.
A job well worth doing now is carpet cleaning. Right after you hoover, you can either hire a wet vac and do it yourself, or you could have a professional team come in and shampoo all your carpets. It is a straightforward job to do yourself and shouldn’t take too long. Most machines will have attachments so you can do your sofa and curtains also! Shampooing your home will give everything a fresher look. Even if your carpet doesn’t look dirty, you won’t believe your eyes when you clean the first bit!
Another thing to remember when cleaning your home is the items you use TO clean your home! Your washing machine is likely to have seen quite a lot of dirty laundry over the last month or two, so this is a great time to give it a deep cleaning. It’s very simple to wash a washing machine. Simply add bicarbonate of soda and vinegar into your detergent draw and then run a normal washing cycle. Make sure it is completely empty before you do this! The bicarb and vinegar will work together and break down the grease, which can cause your machine to get bogged down. They will also eliminate any odor that may be in your drum. This will give you a lovely deep clean and will improve the quality of your washing too!
Once you have gone through your home and restored it to its pre-COVID glory, then it’s a good time to start thinking about a cleaning routine, if you don’t already have one. One of the most simple things to do to keep your home looking great is to make sure you complete tasks and don’t put anything off until tomorrow. This sounds obvious, but how many times have you cooked a family meal, then left the washing up for the morning? Even though it would have only taken 15 minutes to do, you have just set off your next morning with a cleaning task. It is far nicer to come downstairs to a tidy kitchen, and you could then use your morning to do something constructive such as bleaching the sinks or cleaning your plugs and drainpipes. This will help you to keep on top of the big jobs and will keep your in-depth cleaning sessions to a minimum.
Your family really does need to get involved. The chores shouldn’t all just fall on you, and it’s unfair to expect that. Even if you aren’t working at the moment and are at home looking after the children, then you will have your work cut out. It’s important not to be told by your children or your partner that they have ‘had a long day’ this is not an excuse to leave everything to you. If the whole household did just 20 minutes of housework a day, then your home will be sparking and in showhome condition all year round.
There are multiple resource sites that will give you an excellent idea of what cleaning kit you should have at home in your cupboards. Keeping the right cleaning products, clothes, and brushes will make the household chores so much easier, so do your research and arm yourself with everything you need to keep on top of the chores. Don’t forget, you can make it fun! Get your favorite tunes on or even listen to an audiobook as you are tackling the bathroom.
Of course, it’s also important to remember that a family home cannot be spotless all the time. The mess is part of life, and it is possible to live around it and not have any issue. Family is important, and if COVID 19 has taught us anything, it is that time with the people we love is more important than anything else. So keep your home clean but not at the expense of coming together and enjoying the precious moments that you have.
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