Spring Cleaning Suggestions????

[5ft Diva]

Here's something you guys may know something about. I'm cleaning my house from top to bottom as well as organizing and de-junking as I go. Last week I did the LR and part of the hall. This week I'm working my bedroom and possibly my boys' room and the rest of the hall. Next week it will be my kitchen and then I'm done. Here's how I've gone about this: First, I made a list of every area I want to go through. Then under that area I made two different columns. One is 'organize' the other is 'clean'. I then wrote down everything in that area that I wanted to organize and everything I wanted to clean even if I ended up writing the same item twice (once for each column). I then went through and figured out how long it would take to do that area and scheduled it on my calendar. Then every day I've worked on a certain area and am just checking off the list as I go.

Anyway, my question is: Do any of you have any tried and true methods? I'm all ears as I am right in the thick of all of it and would like to be done as quickly as possible. I enjoy doing this, but would like to do it efficiently as well as effectively as I have many other plans for the summer.

[Erudite]

Sounds like a reasonable plan to me. And it sounds efficient and doable. How's it coming so far?

I'm making bedroom zone cleaning lists this week to help the kids know what "maintenance" vs "cleaning" means. I'm planning on changing my other zone charts to reflect "maintenance" items and "cleaning" items as well. The one thing that I don't have is a yearly cleaning schedule. I found a good list of items I never really considered in May's Better Homes and Gardens. It started with cleaning the sliding door track and since that hasn't gotten done yet, I haven't gone on to #2. I'd like to add items like those to a yearly plan but haven't figured out where to fit it in.

[5ft Diva]

The maintenance vs. cleaning list is a great idea, E! It doesn't help w/ my particular question, but will help later on down the road. Would you mind sending me a sample of the lists you made for your kids?

As far as how it's going..... It's going great. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I filled an entire garbage can from one of my rooms just the other day. I guess you could say that most of the problem was just too much paper waste. I thought I'd have like tons and tons of D.I. bags, but I've hardly had any. I've just noticed that we have a lot of garbage in our home and the reason we don't realize it's garbage is a whole other story. Anyway, I've done everything but my kitchen and bathrooms and those will be done between now and next week. I'm so excited!!!! It's so nice to have a clean house. Not just a decluttered house, but a clean house, too. Light fixtures and all!