When my toddler was about 9 months, our pediatrician told me I needed to move our daughter to sleep in her own room. I was in tears after the at appointment. I couldn’t believe I needed to move my baby out of our bedroom. Then I realized that I’m the one that makes the rules for my family.
And so we never moved her out. We’ve inevitably became a room sharing/cosleeping family. But with my toddler, my baby and my husband, a queen size bed was not cutting it anymore. So we purchased a king size bed. When we’re not cosleeping, we have a toddler bed and a crib in our bedroom as well. Our room is literally only sleeping quarters now. But we all enjoy snuggling in our bed and watching movies on a Saturday night so it’s still comfy!
It just so happens that we also were in deep need of some spring cleaning. So much dust accumulates, especially in dry places like where we live in the desert. Dust mites are literally THE MOST COMMON cause for household allergens. So not cleaning can give you illness symptoms that luckily might just be allergens from dust mites!
So to get our room arranged with our new bed set up, we did some major spring cleaning! Here are the steps we followed below:
- Declutter! Over time, you just accumulate so much stuff in our living spaces. You’re looking for things that don’t belong. You have 2 types of clutter: 1. Things that never got put away in their homes 2. Things that you don’t need or don’t use anymore. The first items of clutter, you’ll either put them away or if they don’t have a home, we’ll find a home for them. For the second items of clutter, get rid of them! Whether it’s trash or you’re going to donate, just get them out of the room! Examples of clutter from our room, my daughters baptismal candle, a ton of books, a lot of my hair products (hair ties, clips, Bobby pins), several of my daughters dirty socks (she usually falls asleep with them on and rips them off mid night haha), 4 large duffle bags, dresses that were hung behind the door and our winter clothes. We found homes for all of these things. For clutter that we got rid of, 2 tower shelves, one 3 drawer dresser, 1 tote of all of my old purses/bags, a box of old CDs (this was hard for me.. I’m a millennial mom here, there were even some mix CD that me and my friend made in high school. My husband got a kick out of those). And we plan to go through our winter clothes but did not do that on this day. So just remember, you set things aside for another day. You just have to actually do the things you say you’re going to do, in another day.
- Remove the curtains to wash or clean your blinds and open them all the way. You should now have a bright room where you can see EVERY ounce of dust!
- Dust your room! Start from the ceiling and work your way down. Get the corners really well and the ceiling fan if you have one. Dust the window seals and all the furniture (even the tv!). Dust EVERYTHING! You can use a vacuum to get some of the dust but you also need to wipe things down with a duster or a rag with some cleaner. That’s the true way to get a high percent of dust out!
- Vacuum and/or sweep the floor! Especially under all your furniture. Shuffle the furniture around so you can get all the dust under the furniture. This is very important, you’ll be breathing all the dust from under your bed throughout the night while you sleep.
- Remove, wash your bedding and vacuum your mattress. Sleeping on your mattress every night creates a lot of dead skin cells and dust. Vacuum as much as you can. I even will do a light shampooing of the surface sometimes or just spray with Lysol disinfectant spray to kill dust mights. I also a bit of bleach to the washer for disinfecting my bedding as well. I like to use this spray on my couches too! And around the entire house after someone had been sick. And remember, although these disinfectants are “chemicals” you need an actual disinfectant to kill bacteria and dust mites are a bacteria that need killing. A little goes a long way, I promise you don’t need to use much.
- Mop any tile or baseboards and walls if desired. I like to use this mop because the mop head is control-able to get all the areas you need cleaned. But mopping is importantly because it’s like wiping the extra dust that can’t be lifted from sweeping or vacuuming. So mop where you can.
- Reset your room! Rearrange your room to put furniture back in its place and put the the bedding and curtains back in.
And there it is! A nice clean, peaceful room! Take a shower and now you can relax with everything being clean! I think this process took us about 10 hours on a Sunday but we got it done. I did the first two steps alone and luckily my husband helped me with the rest since there was some furniture moving required. My daughter also insisted on helping with sweeping, vacuuming and mopping. So we potentially could have finished sooner if we didn’t have our little shadow following us around. I hope this helps, leave a note in the comments on how much dust you found during the process! See the links below for my favorite dusting products!
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