To Do: Spring Cleaning

To Do: Spring Cleaning

Spring cleaning fever continues to rage in our apartment! I’m no Martha Stewart, but I have a basic checklist for airing out the apartment after a long winter. Even though Rob and I have a housekeeper who comes once a week, there are still a lot of jobs that need my attention a couple times a year.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

  • Clean all baseboards and molding (this takes forever in a San Francisco Victorian apartment)
  • Scrub walls with magic eraser sponge
  • Clean all window, framed art and mirror glass
  • Throw out stuff in “junk” drawers
  • Flip the mattress and eradicate dust bunnies
  • Clean papers off of the desk
  • Organize pantry
  • Clean medicine cabinet
  • Unpack summer clothes
  • Put away winter tweed and wool clothing
  • Purge closet of unwanted clothes and organize remaining
  • Buy flowers for the table
  • Take inventory of house needs and measure
  • Spend $100 at to the Container Store
  • Buy new furniture
  • Pick out paint colors

And here’s what I still have to do:

  • Paint!
  • Install new furniture
  • Take old clothes and other donations to thrift shop
  • Take shoes to cobbler for repair
  • Host a clothing exchange party for other unwanted clothes and shoes
  • Clean the refrigerator

I can’t believe how much I’ve already cleaned over the last few weeks. Go me! What do you include in your spring cleaning ritual?

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There are 6 comments for this article
  1. Sara at 3:57 pm

    the clothing exchange party sounds like fun! we have a big bag of clothes to take to the thrift store but we dont know where a good one is and keep procrastinating. We did make a trip to the dump to get rid of some junk in our “cave” (little storage closet in the basement), my next project is a nice little entryway table and to finally hang the mirror in the entryway also.

  2. hyb at 4:07 pm

    This is when I get the motivation to file away ALL of my papers from last year. I have a whole Spring Break ritual to organize my box-o-receipts-and-letters into a neat binder organized by month. It saves me the hassle of having to file continuously during the year, and thanks to electronic billing, my folder gets smaller and smaller every year.

    Oh, and isn’t the magic eraser sponge the most magical cleaning item ever? I use the kitchen version religiously – it’s made my life with white appliances sooo much easier.

  3. love.boxes at 4:10 pm

    The thing I am putting off is organizing my books which tend to take over every room, I think it would be a cool idea to have a spring cleaning book exchange kind of like your clothes exchange.

    On another subject, have you visited the Daiso store in SF and if so was it a fun place, it looks so cute and I am dying to go.

  4. mrsem Author at 4:40 pm

    I haven’t been to the Daiso store, although I do look at it each time I drive through Daly City. Japantown is full of similar stores 🙂

  5. Marissa at 7:36 pm

    It sounds like you are on top of things!

    In addition to cleaning . . . my list includes yardwork . . . we are sucking it up to get sod (instead of seeding a lawn) this weekend and we have some fruit trees to spray too. I hope to clean out my email account too–file away what I want to keep, delete old stuff.

  6. k8 at 9:44 pm

    i finally cleaned our disaster of a garage this weekend. It came a close second to closet cleaning as one of my favorite spring rituals.