We may earn money from the companies or products mentioned in this post.
Welcome back to Day 4 in the Spring Cleaning Challenge!
Today we are going to focus on toys, and the general clutter that every home seems to collect. I made another fun printable checklist. Print it off, and get to work!
Gather 2 Boxes (or trash bags)
Label, or designate one box for donations, and one for trash. Spring Cleaning is all about starting fresh. Let’s stop stepping over broken toys, or staring at toys that never get played with.
The Floor
Now I know we did a general pick up and put away on Day 2 with the Living Spaces, but if you have kids, 2 days is plenty of time to mess it all up again with toys. Don’t bother putting things away right now. Just start picking up and making decisions. Is it broken? Trash. Do the kids play with it? Donate if they don’t. Create a Keep pile if they do. Just designate an area for toys being kept.
The Toybox
Now that the floor is cleaned off, head to the toy box. One effective way is to dump the whole box out. Then as you sort through it, you can move your keep pile into the toy box. Do not put anything back in that is broken! Just don’t! Have your children help, if they are old enough to understand what you are doing. My 6 and 5 year old are pretty good (sometimes they want to donate every single toy they own), while my 3 year old can often just be in the way as she rearranges the piles.
One Drawer at a Time
Great, you’ve done a lot already! I think it’s safe to say, we don’t just have 1 toy box. We have a couple different areas we keep toys. So after I go through the main toy box, we move onto all the other toy storage places. Treat it like the toy box. Dump it out, and one item at a time decide – Trash, Donate, or Keep. Put them away, and move onto the next one.
Clean and Sanitize
Unless a toy has been puked on, they don’t get cleaned all that often. Periodically I’ll find the kids “bathing” their dolls, but even then it’s not a good deep clean. Now that you have your piles sorted – put your donate in the car, and take the trash outside.
Grab a bucket of hot water, and your favorite cleaning agent. Since we’re cleaning toys here, I like to keep it safe, and use something I know won’t harm the kids if they stick it in their mouth – because you know it’s going to go in a kids mouth at some point! A small amount of ammonia mixed in a large bucket of hot water is my personal favorite cleaner, but switching the ammonia out for distilled white vinegar will be safer on the toys. Have a decent pile of rags on hand, and get to work scrubbing the toys down. At this point, you can involve all your kids! It will teach them responsibility for their stuff, as well as hard work. Plus, you get to spend a little extra time with them while getting housework done.
General Clutter
If you no longer have kids at home, or you didn’t spend your whole day cleaning toys, this is a good time to take care of the general clutter. Clean off your dressers, office area, junk drawers. The places in your home that attract clutter and never let go of it.
Wahoo! You’ve finished Day 4!
Go grab your extra entry into the Affresh Giveaway.
