Tips for Cleaning Your Home Throughout the Winter Season

Just as one does an annual spring cleaning, so too is it important to do a winter cleaning. If you think about it, the home becomes a very busy place in the dead of winter. Children and adults alike do less escaping to the outdoors and spend more of their leisure time inside. Naturally, the home can begin to feel more cluttered and less organized. That’s okay. What is important is that you go through each room of the house and get rid of items that have had no use, or put them away in their appropriate place. More on this in a moment.

I’ve mentioned before that cleaning a room for 10-15 minutes a day can do wonders for keeping a house tidy. It’s important to continue a weekly deep cleaning as well. By deep cleaning, I mean dust and wash your floors. I know on paper this sounds daunting, but it’s necessary for keeping a clean home. During the winter, I add disinfecting to the list more prevalently. It’s important to wipe down doorknobs of entrances and light switches, as well as give toys and other items a good disinfecting. I also infuse thieves essential oil throughout the home to help with purifying the air. It smells amazing too. While some go through Young Living, I prefer to support my local health food store. The gentleman carries organic essential oils that you can trust are not synthetically made.

Once you’ve established a good cleaning routine, go through your rooms and evaluate what items are just accumulating as clutter with no specific meaning behind them, and just donate or trash it. I promise you, you don’t need five pairs of bed sheets; you don’t need all those random signs from Marshals that you once loved that now fill up ridiculous surface area on your TV consoles or furniture. All the tumblers; get rid of the ones that sit in the far back of the cabinet. Can I keep going? Okay, I’ll stop. The point is, you don’t have to be completely minimalist to recognize that you live with excess. That excess that was once considered a blessing is now, in turn, a source of stress because you’re running of out of storage and space. I too have even been in situations before that, in my excess, I can’t find the one thing I need most of all, and it can be so frustrating. The solution is to evaluate what truly has meaning to you, ask yourself why, and then determine if you can part with it. The more you get rid of, the more free you’ll feel. You won’t feel like inanimate objects control you anymore—you’ll find that you feel more empowered to have and create a space that directly reflects who you truly are. 

For those who take the time to go through their belongings and get rid of excess, I would strongly encourage you to move forward with using clear bins to store and organize items. When you can see what you have, it makes life a whole lot easier. We use a label maker as well to mark boxes for even more transparency. 

We are proud owners of a dog. We love dogs. For me, it has always been a struggle loving animals but despising the mess that comes with them. It seems like winter can bring the peak of messiness when having pets. They are inside more often, and when they do go out, you’re greeted with dirty paws. Have a system in place and communicate it with the family. In the winter, we make our dog come in through the garage, use a microfiber towel to wipe her down, and then she is free to go about the house. I don’t let her run freely through the house dirty. I want to be able to enjoy my dog. When you don’t set boundaries with your pets, they can quickly become unenjoyable. We utilize the doggy baths at Tractor Supply locally through the winter. For $10, all the supplies are provided to you to wash, dry, and groom your pet. We do this quite regularly to keep her shedding at bay and keep her feeling clean through the winter months.

People often ask me why I am so big on cleaning and organizing. My response is often that is the one thing I can control, and it’s the biggest way I show respect for my home and family. The love comes naturally, but the respect I have for what we’ve worked so hard for is where the challenge is. Challenge yourself to create a space through the winter that is welcoming and that is peaceful. Below I will include a winter to-do list that will help guide you through the season as you organize and clean your home. Save it to your camera roll, share it, but most importantly, stick to the cleaning schedule that you set.