Have You Got the Cleaning Bug?

I must make a confession, I quite like cleaning, I like having a tidy well ordered house. It is something that makes me happy and I get a great sense of satisfaction keeping it that way.  For many many years I have followed a daily rota of things I do through the week which helps enormously to keep things in order.  It’s all very straight forward and simple to do and means all my other jobs get done in an orderly fashion too, leaving the weekends free to relax a little and not have to think about these things again until Monday.

Since the lock-down I have continued with the routine, keeping my simple rota helps structure the week so I still know what day it is.  I have however had a little more time on my hands without any extra running around and cleaning has become a bit cathartic.  Some of the bigger jobs that you don’t ever seem to find the time to do have slowly but surely been taken care of.  Nothing better than emptying the kitchen cupboards one at a time and giving each a deep clean and reorganising the’ contents.  I’ve even had the oven and washing machine out to clean behind, curtains have had steam washes, cushion covers and blankets too.  Hanging them out on the washing line to blow is one of life’s little pleasures.

I’m a big believer in natural cleaning as much as I can.  I have a cupboard where all my utensils and products live, all in one place so it’s easy to find everything you need at a glance.  It feels good knowing there are no nasty chemicals and where I have to buy in certain things I make sure they are all environmentally friendly products.  Having beautiful ostrich feather dusters and horsehair bristled brushes is far more pleasing than a cupboard full of plastic.  Baileys Home and Garden are one of my favourite places to purchase such things, they have the most beautiful pieces to stock your perfect cleaning cupboard.

Some of the staple ingredients I use are the simplest ingredients that you can find, bicarbonate of soda, distilled white vinegar and lemons.  Wooden pegs and wicker baskets, enamel buckets, old toothbrushes for scrubbing those hard to reach places, refillable bottles to store cleaning fluids and to use for making sprays.  Nothing gets wasted and items get reused.   Lemon and bicarbonate of soda clean so many things, white vinegar mixed with water cleans windows perfectly add some bicarb with the vinegar to clean away limescale on taps and shower heads.  The different ways you can use these simple ingredients is amazing, you’ll never reach for the myriad of harsh chemical products at the supermarket again.

So throw open those windows, dust those hard to reach corners and embrace the big clean, it will make you feel so much better if you do.

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