Monday Motivation #57 | Spring Cleaning: Furniture, Appliances & the Forgotten

I’m back with some more spring cleaning motivation for you today. So far we’ve covered some spring cleaning history, tools, surfaces overhead, walls and vertical surfaces, and linens & curtains. 

This week we will discuss furniture, appliances and the forgotten. The entire transcript of this episode (and all the other spring cleaning episodes) will be on the blog for you to refer to later. The blog posts also have links to helpful tools and resources for each of the topics we’ve discussed in this series. 

SHOW NOTES

Blog Post with transcript and notes, click below or go to theartofhomepodcast.com/blog and search "MM 57"

https://www.theartofhomepodcast.com/post/spring-cleaning-furniture-appliances-the-forgotten

Transcript

Allison 0:01

Happy Monday, homemakers! Welcome to Monday Motivation, brought to you by the Art of Home Podcast, where we are exploring how homemakers cultivate a place to belong. I'm your host, Allison Wheats. I'm a wife, a mom, a granny, and I've been practicing the Art of Home for over 30 years. Thank you so much for joining me for a little Monday motivation today. Every Monday, you can meet me here for homemaking tips, ideas, and encouragement in this short form episode. If you like what you hear today, be sure to check out our long form episodes that come out every Wednesday where we feature stories of homemakers just like you and deep dives into topics related to homemaking. I am back with some more spring cleaning motivation for you today. So far, we've covered some spring cleaning history, tools, surfaces overhead, walls and vertical surfaces, and linens and curtains. This week we will discuss furniture, appliances, and the forgotten. Just so you are aware, the entire transcript of this episode and all the other spring cleaning episodes will be on the blog for you to refer to later. The blog posts also have links to helpful tools and resources for each of the topics we've discussed in this series. Alright, let's get into it. Cleaning furniture. Hopefully, you have a regular system for cleaning your furniture that involves dusting andor polishing your wood furniture and vacuuming or spot cleaning your upholstered furniture. Think about your seasonal cleaning of these items as just a little bit extra. Maybe you typically only dust the top of the coffee table. Great. Now to be a little extra with this job, dust everything. Remove everything from the coffee table, on top, underneath, in the cubbies or the drawers, and thoroughly dust or if necessary, clean those surfaces. Before you put stuff back, do a little purging and then return what you are keeping in a neat, organized way. If you notice something broken, scratched, or with chipping paint, either make a note to come back to it and fix it on a specific date, or ideally take care of the repair right away. Bookshelves, same thing. Take everything off, wipe down all the surfaces of the bookshelf, assess for repairs, purge, and return items. Real wood furniture should be dry dusted every week or so with a swiffer or a feather duster or microfiber cloth and conditioned once or twice per year with lemon oil, beeswax, or other natural conditioner. Remember, wood is porous, so it gets thirsty. You want to condition it twice a year so that it doesn't dry out and crack. Now, about those chairs and couches. As we've already discussed, winter breeds dust and dirt all over the home from heating sources and tightly closed windows. Summer can also bring more dirt into the house as kids and pets play outside, but it also brings more sweat and body oils. Yummy. So a good pass with a vacuum hose over your upholstery in the spring will get rid of the winter dust and the spring pollen. And then depending on how much you and your people perspire during the warm months, you may need to steam clean the upholstery after you vacuum it in the fall. Slip covers are easy peasy. Just remove and throw them in the wash. Most experts recommend, however, that you do not put them in the dryer due to the shrinking risk. Just hang or dry flat. Leather furniture should be dusted or wiped down with a slightly damp cloth on a regular basis and vacuumed with a soft brush attachment. To keep your leather soft and to prevent cracks, condition it once or twice a year with the conditioner that is appropriate for the type of leather. Make sure you clean under the cushions of your couches and chairs as well. We'll talk more about that shortly. Appliances. In Monday Motivation number 18, I discuss cleaning common large and small appliances. So be sure to listen to that. I will link it in the show notes. But here's a little bit more information on this topic. Washer and dryer. These do a lot of work for you, so take good care of them. Regularly wipe down the seals, gaskets, filters, detergent trays, and the high touch areas of the washer and dryer. About once a quarter, you need to deep clean the drum of your washer by using special washing machine cleaner and running the clean tub cycle. If you don't have a special cycle for cleaning the tub, you can just run an empty hot water cycle. Wipe down all outer surfaces to remove spilled laundry soap and dust. And for the dryer, at least twice a year, you need to clean the lint trap screen with warm soapy water to remove residue that can be left behind from fabric softener sheets. And then you need to clean out your dryer vent hose to prevent fires. My husband and I recently did this, and it was so easy and very satisfying to see all that dryer lint come flying out of the hose vent on the side of the house. You can buy a dryer duct cleaning tool for less than $20 that attaches to any regular household electric drill. It's a long, thin tube that extends up to 30 feet, maybe more, and it has a round brush on the end of it, similar to a toilet brush. And it's very easy to do. It works really well. And I'm going to link a video in the show notes that will show you how to do it. And I will also link the tool that we used. For the dishwasher, refrigerator, oven, and stovetop, I do go into a lot of detail for weekly, monthly, and seasonal cleaning on Monday Motivation 18. So give that a listen. Be sure to give all of your small appliances some extra seasonal TLC as well. Consider things that might need to be descaled and or disinfected, like coffee makers, kettles, ice makers, and humidifiers. There are a few other large appliances in the home that need some special seasonal attention, but probably from a professional. So as part of your spring cleaning checklist, make sure you schedule seasonal maintenance on your air conditioner, your boiler or furnace, water heater, septic tank, and plumbing systems. The forgotten. Seasonal cleaning provides an excellent opportunity to give some attention to areas of the home that we often forget need to be cleaned every once in a while. The forgotten falls into two groups, out of sight, out of mind, and familiarity blindness. The first is exactly what the name implies: spots that we hardly ever see. So we forget that they need to be cleaned. The second consists of everyday items that are so much a part of the environment we don't even notice that they are there, much less that they need cleaning. When you're going to tackle the first group, remember three phrases on top, underneath, and behind. Think about the tops of things that haven't seen a dust rag in a while. Get out your sturdy stepladder and check places like the top of the doors and the window frames. We talked about that last week. The top of cabinets and tall furniture, like the China Cabinet or a wardrobe, the top of taller appliances, specifically the refrigerator, the tops of books and other items on a shelf, and the tops of picture frames hanging on the wall. Next, go in the opposite direction. Get to floor level and clean all of the underneath places. Under the bed, under the washer and dryer, under the fridge, in the oven, etc. When it comes to cleaning under appliances, you really need to pull them away from the wall so that you can get to the floor to sweep and mop and vacuum as needed. We'll talk more about that in just a minute. Pull up the couch and the chair cushions and vacuum thoroughly. You might even find some treasure under there. Under chairs and bar stools, specifically the rungs and the legs of wooden chairs, those can get really dusty, and the bottom of the chair legs will collect all kinds of dust bunnies and hair. So be sure to clean those off. And finally, the out-of-sight, out-of-mind places behind things should be addressed at least once a year. Bigger furniture pieces like the couch should be pulled away from the wall so that you can vacuum the back of the couch and the floor behind it. If you can, pull out your larger appliances from the wall so that you can clean the floor, which we just talked about. That's the underneath of the appliance, but also the back of the appliance. For example, the back of a dryer can get really dusty with lint, and the coils on the back of a refrigerator should be vacuumed with a soft brush attachment once a year to keep it cooling efficiently. And while you have it out, you can clean the sides of the appliance where food or laundry soap might have dripped, and the walls and the baseboards behind the appliance that you normally can't get to. Group two, which I am calling familiarity blindness, includes things like garbage cans and recycle bins. Your kitchen garbage can should be cleaned at least once a month because it gets really, really gross. You can either spray it and wipe it with an all-purpose disinfectant or take it outside and hose it down. It's your choice. The same goes for bathroom garbage cans and diaper pails. Other garbage cans in the house probably only need attention a couple of times a year if you use a liner of some sort. And don't forget the outside garbage cans. Cleaning those out a couple times per year will reduce odors and prevent attracting unwanted pests of both the insect and the animal variety. Nothing says welcome to a hungry raccoon like smelly garbage cans. Ask me how I know this. In the bathroom, don't forget to clean your shower head, specifically if you have hard water. You can descale a clogged shower head by putting a descaling solution like CLR in a plastic bag, and then attach that bag to the shower to the head with a rubber band around the neck of the shower so that the whole head is submerged in that solution at the bottom of the bag. Let it soak for a couple of hours, remove the bag and run the shower on hot for a few minutes. No more clogs. Do you have faux plants and or faux flowers? Those can collect some serious dust. Take them outside, give them a good shake or blow the dust off with a leaf blower. Just be careful with a leaf blower, make sure it's not so powerful that it's gonna blow all of the leaves off. Throughout the house, you should give cabinet fronts along with the knobs and the pulls a good wipe down once or twice a year, but more often in the kitchen and in the bathroom. When's the last time you clean the floor of your closets and pantry? During seasonal cleaning is a great time to move everything off the floor and vacuum up those dust bunnies hiding in the corners. While you are in there, check the top of the shelves in the closet as well. So there you have it, seasonal cleaning for furniture, appliances, and the forgotten. I hope you feel motivated to give these areas some special attention during your spring or seasonal cleaning. Don't forget to check out Monday Motivation number 18 for more details on appliance cleaning. The entire transcript of this episode and a few links will be on the blog. I will link that post in the episode description, or you can go to the Artof Home Podcast.com slash blog and search MM57. That's MM57. That's all for this episode. I will be back on Wednesday with a brand new homemaker portrait and next Monday with our final episode in this spring cleaning series floors, carpets, and rugs. Until then, keep practicing your art of making a home.