My Super Messy Bedroom! also my work area Part I

The Bedroom:

The actual uncleaned state of my room

Bedroom cleaning at my age is a challenging activity. One of the major hurtles I had to overcome was actually caring about it being clean. Having a clan bedroom was something that just wasn't important to me so forcing myself to actually clean my room took some effort. The first method of cleaning I tried was taking cleaning little by little. This method was a complete failure because it really wasn't a necessary activity in my day. The next method I tried mimicked the method I used to clean my bathroom, which was shoving all the clutter I had around my room onto the floor. Surprisingly this was not at all motivating as far as cleaning my room, due to the fact that the floor already had so much visual clutter on it. So i took some drastic measures.

Step 1:

Everything shoved outside the door into the hallway

Because of the ineffectiveness of my previous attempts I took inspiration from the book Switch and I changed the situation that I was in so that I would be motivated to clean my room. The first thing I did was take just about everything from any surface in my room and shoved it in the hall outside my room. 

Cautionary Tip:

make sure you have all of the cleaning supplies you need to clean your room inside your room before removing all of the items. Excess buildup in hallways can cause path blockage not allowing access to the outside world.

Step 2:

I cleaned all of the surfaces in my room with a vacuum cleaner, it is appropriate to be as liberal as necessary with the vacuum because it is the main way to remove dust from the room. I used the vacuum on the walls, in the lights, on picture frames, etcetera, just go crazy with this. 

Part II of the bedroom cleaning looks at the cleaning products used and finishing touches

The Bathroom: Part III

Organizing and Putting Stuff Back in the Bathroom:
Step 1:

The Cabinet space available in my bathroom.

The first step to re-organizing a room is looking at the space you have for your things. In my case there are two shallow drawers one deep drawer and two cabinets.
Step 2:
The next important step is to look at everything you plan to put back in as determined in the first section.http://housecleaningproject.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-inaugural-room-bathroom.html and decide where you want to put those things. My way of doing this is such: in the top shallow drawer I will put the things i use most like my tooth brush, tooth paste and pill organizer. the second drawer down I will put things I use a little less like various medicines, tweezers ect. The deep drawer will hold the taller things such as hairspray and lotion bottles. The left cabinet will hold a stock of toilet paper and my sisters various beauty and hygiene products along with her towels. the right cabinet will hold the same but for me.
Tips:

• Make sure you clean the various things you put back in you bathroom because a nasty toothbrush holder just wont match your newly clean bathroom.
• keep your in-bathroom stock of toilet paper within reach of the toilet, this will avoid some terrible situations.

Regrets:

This room took me a very long time to clean, although i wasn't constantly cleaning the entire project (including blogging) took about three days. The length of time in which it took me to clean the bathroom somewhat defeats the purpose of the blog to be an easy way to clean but it was most certainly effective.

Until next time happy cleaning. Look forward to the next room, my horrifically messy teenage bedroom.

The Bathroom: Part II

Cleaning the Bathroom Surfaces:

In this section I am going to try out a few different cleaning products both popular and alternative. in the popular corner I will be using Windex to clean the mirror and Comet and Mr.Clean for other bathroom surfaces. In the unconventional corner I will be trying the ubiquitous sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) also I will be trying the evenly popular vinegar. the wild card cleaning product I will be trying is Borax. It is a product I have never used so we will see how it works. 
Product Stats:
Comet:

Various cleaning products being tested in my bathroom

Comet is a dry powder cleaner and is recomended as an all pourpuse cleaner. it has one active ingrediante : Sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione dihydrate which is in the mixture with a concentration on 1.2%. the cleaner is toxic and can irritate the eyes. it recomends that the product not be used on silver, painted surfaces, walls, soft plastic, aluminum or rubber items (exept tires). the package also warns against mixing with other cleaners especially those containing ammonia
http://www.cometcleanser.com/
Mr. Clean:
Mr. Clean is a liquid all pourpuse cleaner that is advertized to be a grease cutter and limited disinfectant. Sodium Hydroxide is the active ingridient and it is at a .34% concentration (there are also grease cutting agents in the unactive ingredients). the product is toxic but does not contain phosphate, clorine bleach or ammonia. the product is not recomended for carpets and alumium surfaces.

http://www.mrclean.com/en_US/home.do?gclid=CPqkyuru2qQCFQITbAodI39DKA

20 Mule Team Borax:

borax has olny one ingrediant: Sodium tetraborate (aka borax). it is safe on nearly any suface when used apropriatly. it is toxic and is a possible eye irritant.

http://www.20muleteamlaundry.com/

Vinegar:

Vinegar is a popular cleaner due to it's acidic nature it is not toxic an often used in food. as far as claning products go vinegar is very inexpensive ($0.89 for 32 oz of the bargain brand). its major drawback is the distinct odor it has.

http://www.heinzvinegar.com/

Baking Soda:

Also known as sodium bicarbonate baking soda is a very versatile housecleaning product. it is a basic material so it acts diferently on materials than vinegar which is acidic. it can be used on a large variety of surfaces. like vinegar it is also very inexpensive ($0.89 for 1lb box of bargain brand)

Vacuuming debris from inside drawers and cabinets

http://www.armhammer.com/

Ok The Actual Cleaning:
Step1:
The first step to cleaning in the bathroom is is a through vacuuming of all the surfaces, and i mean all of the surfaces. vacuum the walls, light fixtures and everything else. one of the most important places to vacuum is inside the cabinets, lots of crud gets in there and it is good to get it out because that is where most people keep all their bathroom stuff. I recommend using the brush attachment for most of the surfaces, use the floor part of your vacuum for the floor.
Step 2:
use your favorite all purpose cleaner to clean the sinks and the counter surface (if you have natural stone counter tops use only a stone safe cleaner I recommend pledge). I tested all of the cleaners above and found some interesting results: borax was easy to use and left a great shine but had some difficulty with cleaning the grout, and hard water buildup. baking soda was reasonably effective on tile and grout but left a powdery residue even after wiping the surface down with clean water. vinegar was a so so cleaner because it smelled bad and wasn't terribly effective, but when paired with baking soda vinegar was the most powerful cleanser blasting through tile grout stains and soap scum. Mr. Clean was an effective cleaner at all of these but it had a horrific chemical smell and an absurd color, comet was the last product I tested and it was reasonably effective and had some bleaching capability along with the bleach toxicity and smell. after considering all my results borax is my winner so I used it on all of the rest of the floor surfaces. when i got to my shower borax just would not cut the soap scum on the floor of the shower so I went back to baking soda and vinegar to clean it. the methods I used for cleaning were scrubbing with a sponge then drying with a towel and in the shower I scrubbed with the sponge then used the shower to rinse the mess out.
Step 3:

Thats one clean bathroom!

Look how shiny!


Until next time happy cleaning!

My inaugural room: The Bathroom!

The Bathroom Part I:
The bathroom I have decided to clean as the first room on my project is the bathroom that my sister and I share. She is now at college so really it is all mine. Bathrooms have a nasty ora around them when it comes to cleaning, but honestly they are one of the easiest rooms to clean and sort through, because the belongings inside usually are not of high emotional importance. You don't have to fight sentiment when getting rid of things.

everything out of the cabinets and on the floor and counter,
what a mess!

Cleaning the bathroom:
Step 1:
The first thing I did when starting to clean out my bathroom was empty all of the cabinets onto the floor. Don't be shy here you need to get everything out of the place where it hides. Be sure to get anything out of your shower as well. Then put everything in a massive heap in the middle of the floor. I was completely amazed by the sheer volume of stuff that was in the cabinets when I could see it all on the floor.
Step 2:

on the left is the"get rid of" basket, center is"keep" basket
and on the right is the trash can.

The second step I took was prety darn simple. I took two laundry baskets and a trashcan and laied them out in the hallway outside the bathroom. One of the laundry baskets I designated as "keep" the other was for things to get rid of and the trashcan is self explanatory.
Step 3:
Start sorting. Keep this as mindless as possible and quickly sort through item by item. If you get held up on an item just keep it, it is your house, but if you later run out of space you might have to make the hard decision to get rid of it.
Tips:
Consolidate:

My sister's various bottles of the same products. left two
are shampoo right two are conditioner.

It is always a good idea to consolidate two bottles of the same product. An example of this : my sister has two bottles of each her shampoo and conditoiner both are fairly empty. This is a great time to pour the contents of one bottle into the other (use your judgement so you don't overflow the bottle). Sometimes you can run into the issue of having too many variations of one type of product (seven different kinds of toothpaste) in this situation I would get rid of some and limit yourself to a reasonable amount of variety. Another alternative if you want to avoid wasting the product is methodically use up each partial container. Stay disciplined with this it is easy to think you have run out of the product and you them add a whole other variety from the store.

In part II I will cover the actual cleaning of the bathroom surfaces and in part III I will cover organization and replacing the items.

Until next time, happy cleaning!

My new house cleaning adventure!

Introduction:
I am embarking on a monstrous new project, CLEANING MY HOUSE. I am a senior in high school and I decided to clean my house as a project for my English class which I will document using this blog. my goal is for it to be similar to a Haynes automotive manual except for the content will be cleaning my house. I am going to clean each room in my house (hopefully one each week). and then report how I did so here on the weekend.

My House:
My house is a dutch colonial style house built in the mid 1970's in southeast Denver. it is about 2,500 square feet and needs some work. Both of my parents work and I go to school so there is not much time to take care of the house so it is in a constant state of being far to cluttered and dirty, with the economy the way it is we don't have our cleaning lady come anymore so there is nobody to take care of the house. Which is why I am attempting this project. It is high time that the house has a through cleaning and I am going to show you how I do it, as I do it, I will document my mistakes and successes when trying different cleaning methods and I will share the methods I use to take care of the clutter. Finally I will show easy techniques on how to keep the house clean. So if you have the time follow along and get your house clean or just read the blog so that you have the extra knowledge on how to make cleaning your house easier.