How to deep clean your house

Ready to deep clean your house? It can be intimidating to start with, but some handy tips, tricks, and a checklist can help you get through it. This guide will walk you through deep cleaning your house room by room, and give you some quick extra tips that will help you. 

The living room

• Freshen up the furniture. Take off cushions, vacuum upholstery, and even use an upholstery cleaning spray. Fabrics can hold a lot of odours and a lot of dust, so cleaning things like sofas and armchairs thoroughly is the key to your living room feeling and smelling fresh.

You could also launder all the throw pillows and pillow covers. 

• Clean down the walls and wall hangings. Take down all the framed artwork and photos and dust with a damp but not soaked microfibre cloth. Don’t spray cleaning products directly onto the glass, as it could seep around the edges and damage the picture. You can then clean down your walls with another damp cloth. 

• Dust under and around all permanent furniture and other fixtures. You can move these to dust around them. If you don’t want to waste energy moving things around, you can use a hoover attachment to clean the floors and a thin dusting wand for tricky spots. 

• Bonus task! Take a good look at video games, DVDs, CDs, records and books. Is there anything you could get rid of or sell for some extra pennies? 

How to deep clean your house: the kitchen

• Clean your major appliances. Wait until the fridge is nearly empty to deep clean the kitchen, so you can deep clean your fridge and freezer at the same time! Wipe both the fridge and freezer out with a damp soapy cloth. Next, go back in with a clean damp cloth to clean out any soapy suds. You can even rent an air compressor to clean dust off your refrigerator coils. This will help your fridge run more efficiently. Do the same with your pantry. 

If you can, pull the fridge out from the wall so you can clean under and around it. You can do the same with other appliances like your dishwasher and stove. Whilst you’re at it, deep clean inside the oven and dishwasher. Both of these should come with cleaning instructions, but a general rule is to buy an appliance-specific cleaning product and follow the instructions on the bottle. 

• Tidy countertops. The kitchen is a room where clutter often seems to develop on countertops. So, move everything off the counters! Make sure you find spaces for everything that is practical and accessible. If you don’t have space for something, let it go!

Then you can clean down the counters. Wipe them down thoroughly with a hot, soapy cloth. Do this with the backsplash too. Then dry the counters and start putting items back. Only put back on the countertops the things you use daily. 

• Clean your cabinets. If you have wooden cabinets, these will need regular cleaning and polishing. You can use wood cleaner for these, but painted or laminate cabinets can just be cleaned with warm water and dish soap. Clean down the front and backs of the doors, and the tops and bottoms of shelves.

When the shelves are dry, line them with newspaper or shelf liners so that the paper collects the dust. This will make your next deep cleaning session much easier! 

The bathroom

• Clean the shower and bath. Shower curtains and doors can get pretty shabby looking over time. Curtains collect mildew and get stained, and doors get water and soap marked. 

If you have a shower curtain, take it down and wash it. Rehang it before it’s completely dry. 

If you have a shower door, heat distilled white vinegar and wipe it on the doors. Keep them damp with this for 30 minutes. Then, scrub with baking soda on a non scratch sponge. This will remove old watermarks and soap scum and have your shower doors sparkling. Wipe down the shower walls too. 

If your shower floor or bath has dark marks or rings on it, bleach these and scrub with a rough sponge or cloth. 

• Declutter your bathroom cabinets. Bathroom cabinets tend to fill up with cosmetics products that get used for a while and then abandoned. So, pull everything out of all your bathroom cabinets, and toss out anything out of date. Remove any duplicates and anything you haven’t touched for a while. Wipe down the items you want to keep and the cabinet shelf. Reload the cupboard neatly, organising items into categories. 

• Get your hands a little dirty. Get behind the toilet and sink and really clean them down with disinfectant. These small areas can be traps for hair and dirt. 

How to deep clean your house: the bedrooms

• Launder your bedding. It’s recommended that bedding (especially pillowcases) gets washed a couple of times a week, but this can be hard to keep up with. When you deep clean, you can catch up with this and earn some bonus points by washing your duvet and pillows too.

Give them an extra spin cycle to help them dry faster. Dry down-filled pillows on low with clean tennis balls to stop them from clumping up. Air dry synthetic pillows outdoors. Use a laundromat with a large drier for the duvet. 

• Freshen up your mattress. Whilst all your bedding is off, clean your mattress. Sprinkle it with baking soda, leave that to sit for an hour, and then vacuum it all up. Then flip or rotate the mattress and repeat. 

• Clean under your bed and other furniture. 

• Declutter your wardrobe. Read our blog post about effectively deep cleaning your wardrobe here! 

Quick tips to help you deep clean

• Start high and work your way down. 

Tackle hard to reach areas first. You don’t want to spend hours cleaning and polishing your floors only to knock dust and cobwebs down from the ceiling and then have to clean the floors again. Clean the ceiling first, then the ceiling trim and light fixtures. Then you can focus on cleaning the walls and baseboards. 

The ceilings and ceiling trim should only need a wipe with a wet cloth and perhaps a run over with the duster. The floors may need a clean with something more hardy as they will get dirtier. 

• Dedicate a day for deep cleaning each room. 

Sure, you may be able to do the whole house in one very focused day, but the quality of the work will decline as you get tired and lose motivation. If you dedicate a day per room or a day per two rooms, you’ll still get through the cleaning quickly, but you’ll have the energy to do a good job.

• Declutter before deep cleaning 

Decluttering is sometimes the most important part of deep cleaning. A cluttered home will be harder to keep clean. Clutter will also make your efforts to deep clean your home much harder. Decluttering can be anything from clearing and sorting paperwork and bills to offloading old furniture, clothes and children’s toys. 

If you know you need to deep clean your house but this means offloading some things – be it paperwork, furniture, clothes, or anything at all – that you can’t quite bear to part with, consider self storage. Here at Currie Easy Self Storage, we have flexible storage solutions to support you no matter your situation. Give us a call or contact us today to find out how we can help you, so you can start your deep clean before spring!