< BACK TO BLOG

Essential Spring Cleaning Tips for Renters

March marks the beginning of spring, a time of renewal—and not just outdoors. Spring cleaning ensures that your indoor space gets a warm-weather makeover, too. If you tend to put off spring cleaning until it's more like summer cleaning, you're not alone. Make the process easier on yourself by simplifying it with these tips.

  1. Build a spring-cleaning kit. Instead of rifling through your linen closet for a different cleaner every time you move to a new room, assemble a bucket full of everything you'll need to clean your entire apartment. Include items like all-purpose cleaners and glass sprays, sponges and rags, and plastic gloves. This will simplify and speed up your spring cleaning.
  2. Start with a soak. You probably dread cleaning certain parts of your home, like the bathroom tiles and the area around the kitchen sink—basically any spot that requires scrubbing. You can avoid applying any extra elbow grease if you start your cleaning session by steeping these areas in vinegar. Soak paper towels with white vinegar, then lay them over the parts of your kitchen or bathroom covered with stuck-on grime. Go about your cleaning and return to them an hour later, when the acid in the vinegar will have broken down the gunk. It'll be much easier to wipe away.
  3. Use natural cleansers. If you're concerned about the chemicals that traditional cleaning products bring into your home, it's easy (and cheap) to DIY your own all-natural cleansers instead. For example, you can use a mix of plain seltzer water and salt to scrub down your fridge. In general, household items like vinegar, baking soda, and lemons can be combined in a variety of ways to create powerful, natural cleaning products. Just consult the internet for DIY recipe ideas.
  4. Don't over-vacuum. Maybe the part of spring cleaning that really makes you procrastinate is the deep vacuuming. It's a hassle to move big pieces of furniture out of the way to vacuum underneath them, so don't. Instead, just shift them a few inches to each side and vacuum the newly unveiled patch of carpet. You'll still remove the majority of the crumbs and with much less work.

Spring-Cleaning Organizing Tips [Martha Stewart]
7 Spring-Cleaning Tips [HGTV]
8 Spring Cleaning Tips to Get It Done Faster [Reader's Digest]

Public Domain/Pixabay/jarmoluk