Monday 16 March 2009

Day 2 - Sitting Room & Dining Room - The Spring Clean!





Having rooms with quite a minimal uncluttered look is great for speed cleaning, but the one drawback is that as soon as a few things are left out of place it can look untidy very quickly. On Day 2, I concentrated on the front sitting room and dining room. These 2 areas are always pretty tidy but they just needed that extra clean for Spring - especially as the sun was streaming through the window and showing up the dust! There are no before pictures because as I say, the areas were tidy enough to start with, but now they gleam! We have the luxury of having another small family tv room at the back of the house which is where the children can relax with their toys and computer games, so I always try to keep these 2 front rooms as tidy as possible as they are the first rooms you enter from the front porch.

I took everything out of the display unit, cleaned the inside and sorted and de-junked the contents of the cuboards and drawers. I vacuumed the curtains and dusted the curtain track. I cleaned the window and damp dusted all surfaces. With my trusty vacuum, I dusted the ceiling corners and picture frames and then moved all the furniture and cleaned behind and under everything. All paintwork was washed down with warm soapy water and dried with a clean cloth and the floor was cleaned (also behind and under the furniture!) with Lakeland's laminate floor wash and a microfibre cloth. The beauty of Lakeland's floor wash is that you use just a damp cloth wrung out in the solution and leave the floor to "dry" naturally. I have had my leather sofas a long time and everyone always comments on how new they look - they get a lot of daily use - I find the best thing to clean them with is just a barely damp cloth wrung out in some warm water with just a few drops of washing up liquid. Then dry with a soft clean cloth. I have my loose rugs cleaned once a year just before Christmas, so all they needed with a through vacuum (and yes I did clean the floor underneath!).

Anthea Turner (The Perfect Housewife) says that your sitting room should be clean, tidy, uncluttered and a reflection of your lifestyle. I finished these rooms exactly a week ago and with a quick 15 minute clean every other day they have stayed looking exactly as they do in the photos!

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