Living Room Floors and Keeping Things Tidy – LifeSavvy


    A brightly lit living room decorated with modern furniture and plants.
    Followtheflow/Shutterstock

    We’re wrapping up the Spring Cleaning Challenge today, so let’s finish out with the living room floors and share a few tips on how to keep the tidiness and momentum going!

    Cleaning Your Living Room Floor

    This week we’ve tackled the living room with a decluttering and dusting session, hit up the windows, cleaned the walls, and even given the couch a solid deep cleaning.

    Now it’s time to tidy up a bit behind ourselves and clean the floor. To do so, we’ll simply revisit our trusty floor cleaning guide from the first week of the challenge.

    If you have a carpeted living room or a large area rug in need of some additional cleaning and deodorizing, we’d also encourage you to revisit yesterday’s couch cleaning tips and use the same tools you used to dry clean your couch to dry clean and freshen your carpet.

    Just like you sprinkled baking soda (or carpet powder) over your couch, you can do the same with the carpet and rugs in your living room—and any staining can be dealt with using the same wet cleaning techniques we used on the upholstery.

    While you’re cleaning, here are some spots in the living room that are surprisingly dirty and you’ll want to give extra attention to.

    • Be sure to vacuum thoroughly under and behind the entertainment center, the electrostatic charge put off by TV and attached devices and equipment is a pet hair and dust magnet.
    • Floor-situated heat vents and cold air returns, especially, collect a lot of dust.
    • Send your vacuum wand deep under the couch and other large pieces of furniture, especially if you have pets—as we move around the living room and use the space, all that air movement pushes dirt and pet hair under the furniture.

    Keeping the Spring Cleaning Vibe Going

    While you’re wrapping up the living room and banishing all the dust bunnies and such tucked away under your furniture, it’s a perfect time to be thinking about simple steps you can take to keep the energy of spring cleaning going throughout the year.

    Here are some things to think about to help you stay on top of things:

    • Centralize Your Tools: Do you have a central location where you keep all your cleaning supplies and tools? If not, now is the time to think about which space would be the best consolidation point for all your cleaning gear.
    • Remove the Friction: Do you put off cleaning spaces because there is stuff on surfaces or otherwise making it difficult to clean? Think about where the stuff comes from and how to stop it from piling up. Does mail always clutter your kitchen counter? Commit to sorting/recycling/trashing it as soon as it comes into the house. Is it hard to clean your bedroom because the closet is overflowing? Time to do some purging and donating.
    • Tackle a Little Each Day: Plan for little cleaning bursts. Spending a whole weekend cleaning after a hard week at work is a downer. Cleaning a little here and there every day after work so the weekend is free much more pleasant. You can plan to always do X task on a certain day, or you can just commit to spending 20 minutes a day doing whatever is in most need of some cleaning and decluttering.

    The biggest thing is to simply think about your cleaning routines proactively. Waiting until you’ve reached the “ugh, this place is a wreck” stage means the cleaning becomes a giant leisure-time-destroying chore. Cleaning and clearing clutter before it becomes a Herculean task, however, means you’ll do it more and dread it less.

    And if you ever need some motivation and guidance to tackle your living spaces you can always revisit the Spring Cleaning Challenge articles, check out our general cleaning tips, and, of course, subscribe to our newsletter so all the fresh content is always at your fingertips!





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