The painters were coming to paint the Lounge and a few other rooms this month so my overhaul plans for the house were changed and I decided to Spring Clean the Lounge even though it is not Spring time.
When we were working on the Lounge I thought about 5 things not to forget for next year PLUS a Bonus Tip.
All of these of course could refer to practically any room in the house but because I was working on the Lounge my examples are based there.
1. Furniture Pads
When you buy a new piece of furniture you should fit felt pads to the furniture feet or legs; especially if you have wooden floors..
If you haven't got ones fitted then do this while you are Spring Cleaning.
If you have fitted them then check each time you are Spring Cleaning to see if any need replaced or any have come off and put new ones on.
In this case the pads had been on since we bought the Nesting tables 10 years ago and were still doing fine BUT note they always catch all the hairs and fluff so need to be hoovered well regularly too (see pic on right & this was after I had pulled off some of the hairs) .
The best thing to do is to buy more pads than you need to start with so that if one gets dislodged or has worn very thin and needs replaced then you have one of the same type and thickness to put on because you do not want to end up with a difference in those chair legs - no wobbling.
New suite - Furniture pads were added
2. Scratches and Scrapes
No matter how careful we are the longer we have an item the more scratches and scrapes will appear on it.
When you see them during your very detailed Spring cleaning either write down a note about each of them or take a picture of them.
This is to remind you later what you have to go back to touch up and what colour it is because at the time you find the scratch you probably will not have the right product to do the touch up.
You know you will forget about this later when you are not seeing it each day.
I have to get black scratch touch up colour for the bottom of our Clavinova (electric piano) and a dark reddish brown for the piano stool.
3. The Grooves in Furniture
I love to damp dust rather than ordinary dusting because it doesn't just displace the dust (and annoy my nose).
But even with that some items with grooves and ridges still hold that dust unless we take that extra bit of effort.
I have two items like this in my lounge - The Roll Top Desk and the Clavinova.
They don't look bad from these angles.
(Also reminds me of the fact that we need to remember to dust all sides and backs of items - you never know know who will have a different view of your furniture etc. depending on where they are sitting or standing in the room).
We even think they are dusted ok because we went along each one with the cloth but later sitting to the side of them the dust can still be rather noticeable.
The only solution for me is to get a small thin brush, put a furniture cleaning wipe over the bristles and use this in between the ridges.
I use a wipe and not the cloth as the cloth is just that bit thicker and then the brush doesn't seem to get right in to the depth of the grooves.
See the difference even after just a few grooves are cleaned with the wipe on the brush.
4. Vertical Blinds and Roller Blinds
We tend to remember to take down the curtains and get them cleaned but quite often we just dust over the blinds.
Not always good enough because if we let them go too long they can be really hard to get cleaned and I know all about that from when I moved into this house 4 years ago.
This time I saw two parts of the blinds that needed my attention, one on the left of the window and one on the right.
So out comes one of my favourite gadgets talked about in a previous blog post
Yes my Steamer and this is the result even looking in closer.
5. Candle Wax.
More and more we are all bringing candles into various rooms and setting them in different places.
The more candles we burn the more chance of candle wax dripping and staining items and if this goes unnoticed for too long we just may not be able to get rid of the marks.
As you can see I have marks on the logs in my grate but I don't mind that too much.
In front of the grate in plain view I had no drips and if I had they would have been noticed and cleaned up shortly afterwards but we had never checked in under the grate until now and that could have meant the Sandstone fireplace being stained and I may have had great difficulty getting rid of that but fortunately the wax had only dripped on the logs.
Oh does anyone know how to get candle wax off logs - in case I do decide to try it?
Well that covers my 5 Things to Remember when Spring Cleaning.
And I haven't forgotten
The Bonus Tip.
DON'T FORGET - The Things Dropped Down between Seats of the Sofa
We don't see them but they are there or rather they may even be on the floor under the sofa which you haven't moved for months.
Yes folks we lost the remote control of our DVD player in the lounge.
It was a DVD player which did not have all the necessary buttons on the player itself so it really needed the remote to be suitable for our family who are lazy when we sit down to watch dvds together.
No doubt you can guess what had happened after several months - because we watch a lot of dvds.
Yes we went out and
bought
another DVD player
Then this month we sell our suite and there is the remote control lying on the floor where the sofa had been.
