10 Monthly Cleaning Habits

Self Care is trending, let’s hop on the wave. Here is a list of 10 things you can do every month like clock work to keep your home decent. Pro tip- if this load is too much, choose 5 you can do on the 1st of the month, and another 5 you can do on the 15th. You can break it up however else you’d like. So turn on an infuser with essential oils, open your windows and lets get to cleaning. I promise you will feel better after all of this that can take just one hour or so

1. Clean out drains.

First, grab a long tweezer tool that will be used just for this 1 thing, Here is one that I get from Amazon and it’s great.
ick out all the tangled hair in your bathtub and bathroom sink, 9/10 times there will be tangled hair in there, so you might have to feel around with the tweezers until you have grabbed something. Don’t freak out too much, it’s just hair and it’s yours. After you have gotten as much as the hair tangles out, it’s time to do the fun part. Take about 1/4 cup of baking soda and pack it into your drain. Then, you will take about 1/3 cup of vinegar and and pour it into the drain. Try not to jump up and down from the excitement. Ok go ahead and jump, it is pretty exciting. Let the baking soda mixture sit for a good 15 minutes and then rinse with hot water. Let the hot water run for a good minute or 2. Bonus points if you can turn on the power sprayer and aim it down there. Now your drain should be clear and draining properly. Give yourself a pat on the back.

2. Scrub your bathroom sink down.

Nobody wants to wash their hands in a dirty sink filled with germs. Don’t subject yourself and specially your guests to this. This is easy and straight forward. Ya know what to do! But if you don’t, here are some easy steps. Start off by clearing everything off your bathroom sink. This means those 5 toothpaste tubes with no caps and toothpaste dripping down the sides. Any jewelry you have sitting there, used up floss, etc etc… A good habit to build is to rinse everything off (if possible). Run your tooth paste tubes under hot water and pat them off with a paper towel.

While you are here, do yourself the favor and clean out all of the holding cups and trays. You know, the ones where you keep your toothbrushes and other things? Start off by emptying them out and filling with hot water. Sit them inside your tub so that they are out of your way and generously spray them down with your choice of antibacterial spray. You want to give them a good spray so that the solution can completely coat them inside and out and break the grime down.

Go the extra mile and put your toothbrush heads into a cup with mouthwash. You don’t need much, just enough to cover the brush head. You can use any mouthwash you have or also make your ever so popular baking soda and vinegar mixture. Put about 1 tsp of baking soda and enough vinegar to cover the head. If you have more than 1 toothbrush in your home, make sure to use a separate cup for each one.

Now, while those things are sitting and breaking down in the tub, lets get to work on your sink area. First off, it’s great practice to spray off your backsplash wall. Spray with an antibacterial cleaner and let it sit while you do the rest of the sink. I like to use scrub free paste to clean my sinks. The texture of this paste sends me to heaven. Here is a part I want to stress, use a BRUSH when scrubbing. I can’t tell you how upset it makes me watching people scrub with a sponge. It’s just not going to get inside of the crannies very well. You can try to argue this all you want, but once you use a brush, you will see the difference. I like to use a little brush like this one.

It’s also a good idea to have a set of detailing brushes because a lot of grime collects in the crevices of the faucets. Please don’t skip that step. Here is a decent little set that should have all the tools you need

Okay now go to town with the paste and scrub all of your sink and faucet entirely. It should look like a scrubbing mess when you’re done.

Here’s another thing I bet ya didn’t think about. If your faucet is the kind where you push the lever up and down to run and stop the water, give it a quick check up by pushing it up. I bet you will find buildup in that little hidden area. You want to make sure you give this part a scrub.

When you are done scrubbing, rinse it all with water. This might get messy, but it’s worth it. You definitely want to rinse with water first and not try to clean off with a towel, it will just be messy and unnecessary. You can grab a cup and start pouring gently starting with the faucet so all the dirty water runs down. Most likely your sink has grooves and borders that will guide the water, so it shouldn’t get too out of control. Make sure to wipe off your backsplash too with a damp rag or paper towel. Put a good pressure while you wipe so that you break down any stubborn splashes on there. Give it another spray if you have to and wipe until it’s sparkling clean. Wipe the rest of your sink off and dry the top areas so that no water is left sitting anywhere. Don’t forget to give you mirror a good wipe too. Don’t you feel great already???

Don’t forget about the cups we left soaking in the tub. Dump the dirty water into the toilet. Bring them back to the tub and give them a power rinse with the shower handle sprayer if you have one. This will break up further spills in there without having to scrub. Squirt some scrub free inside and scrub it down with one of the suitable brushes. Make sure to scrub the exterior and bottom too. Rinse, and done! Now just dry them off and return to their spot. Now you have clean tooth brushes, clean holding cups, toothpaste tubes and sink! Look at the difference this little task makes even if the rest of your bathroom is not in the greatest shape.

One last thing. While you’re at it, spray your light switch plates off will ya? It takes about 5 seconds. Spray with your antibacterial cleaner, and wipe. Soooooo easy. Look at you! Now you’re ready to conquer the world.

3. Thorough toilet area cleaning

First off, lets just start by giving the toilet bowl a good scrubby. Use any of your favorite toilet bowl cleaner or you can make your own little concoction with about 1 tbsp of baking soda and 2 tbsp of vinegar. Mix the two in a cup, give it a good stir and then pour it into the toilet away from the water if you can. Go to town with your toilet scrubber. Make sure to get under the rim of the toilet as much as possible. When you are done scrubbing, flush the toilet and do the following. Take your resting bowl and plate for your scrubber and plunger and dump the dirty water into the toilet, flush. With the new toilet water, Squeeze some toilet bowl cleaner and clorox into the bowl and put your brush and plunger in there for a few minutes. Let them sit in there while you work on the following Clean behind and around toilet area. This is one of those areas that go unseen forever until you notice one day what’s back there. For some reason, all the dust and garbage likes to run off to this deep forbidden end. Here is an easy, squeamish free way to clean it. First off, put on some protective gloves. Let’s pick up all the garbage first. This means the empty toilet rolls *eye roll*, bottle caps, pieces of tissue paper, q-tips, etc etc. Now that you have picked up all the rubbish, move your toilet cleaning brush and plunger out of there so you have a clear space to spray and wipe. Pick your choice of Antibacterial cleaning spray. Here are a few suggestions that are my faves. (link to cleaning sprays and home made remedies) Starting from the top of your toilet, spray it allllll down with your spray. You want to start from top to bottom so that you don’t get dust onto the freshly cleaned floor. Spray the top, the seat, the rim, all around the exterior. Now grab yourself a good amount of paper towels- maybe about 3 and get to wiping. Use as many paper towels as you need, this is a dirty job. Finally when you get down to the sides, make sure to get in all the grooves and around the little screw caps. This is where a lot of germs like to gather for their weekly meetings. Make sure to give these busters a good spray. Alright, now that you have gotten all the dust and God knows what else off the toilet, it’s time to clean the surrounding floors. This whole exercise will tell you how good or bad your toilet hygiene is. So it’s probably a good thing you are doing this so you can assess your habits. If you are feeling up for the task, spray the surrounding toilet walls from about 3 feet up from the floor. Also spray your baseboards and all the floor around there. Grab some more paper towels and start cleaning the walls and working your way down. It’s probably a good idea to give the floors at least 2 good wipes. The first one is to get all the dust off, and the second and 3rd time is to do a deeper sanitation and detailing of the job. And Walah! Doesn’t it feel like a new toilet?! Next step. This is where you want to use some serious stuff like clorox spray. Spray the toilet scrubber and plunger resting bowl and plates. Give them suckers generous amount and clean them off with paper towels. Repeat this process one more time time. You should feel pretty confident that they are much cleaner than they were before now. When the plunger and brush are done soaking, shake them up in the water, raise them up and flush your toilet. If you’re a bit OCD like me, you’ll probably want to shake them up again in the fresh toilet water. After doing so, bring them out and dry the plunger down a bit with paper towels. There is a little trick to let your scrubber drip all the excess water. What you do is you lift the toilet cover and seat, and place the brush in between the seat and rim of toilet, brush facing into the toilet bowl. close the lid and seat shut so that it holds the brush in place and let it sit for about 5 minutes for the excess to drip off. Now you can return it to its clean toilet bowl :) This little project may have given you energy to keep the cleaning going, hopefully? If so, one more simple thing you can do is shake your bath rugs up and vacuum your bathroom floor, give it a quick wet swiff while you’re at it. That’s it! you have an impeccably clean toilet that won’t embarrass you with your guests and you got all the hair off the floors. That’s about half the battle of a bathroom so give yourself a pat on the back! do a little bit of organizing. All homes are different. If you’re a make up girl, clean out your brushes and organize your makeup/hair area, organize your desk Do a deep vacuuming of your home brew yourself a nice cup of tea and sit back and enjoy the site Clean out empty boxes, containers etc… As consumers we can be pretty messy sometimes. I know that in my home, I am constantly buying products, opening them, leaving the boxes floating around somewhere and then I move onto something else. Make it a habit to pick up this kind of garbage when you see it and give it a toss into the recycle. It’s very straight forward and easy. However, if you don’t have that kind of self discipline yet, try to make this a little monthly ritual where you go around your home and look for obvious trash. You’ll be surprised how many things you find that have just been sitting around forever

4. Clean off your kitchen island and other areas that collect junk.

We all have that one place where we just pile everything on top of when we walk into the home. For me, it’s my kitchen counters and my home desk. I don’t know what it is about these areas, they are just so juicy and my mouth salivates at the thought of adding more junk on the ever mounting pile that is supposed to be my beautiful chic desk. Kidding kidding. But you know what I mean. Why do we do this? We convince ourselves that we are just going to temporarily place said objects onto these areas and clean it up later. Fast forward a few months and it has now become a baby mount Everest. You might as well add little G.I joe figurines to complete the hideous site.. Why why why? Set a 20 minute timer on your Alexa or whatever gadget you use, and laser focus on this task. Put every. single. little. thing. away. Even down to the penny you threw in there because “it might be one of those pricey collector pennies” into their designated area. I mean it Mister! Get to work and clear that space off! The crazy thing about this is when you make some time to sort all of it out, you will realize how easy it would have been to just put those things away, and that probably more than 50% of it was trash! *face palm*. Congratulations, you have just invented an innovative way to display your junk collection and add a touch of drama when looking for your keys.

5. Clean out your trash bins

I know its a weird concept, but trust me you’ll be glad you do this. Take bins to bathtub and squirt some dish soap and about 1/4 cup of clorox. Fill each bin about 3 inches of water and let it sit. spray the rets of the interior and expterior of the bin with an antibacterial and degreasing spray. My favorite is lysol or mr clean. The reason why we only fill 3 inches is because thats where a lot of the garbage is stuck to, so you want to loosen it up.Hot water is best. Let sit for about 30 mins to an hour while you hand other business. When you come back, dump the water into your toilet, carefully. most likely there will still be some buildup, use your power sprayer to loosen as much up as possible. Now you are going to use a DESIGNATED scrubber to scrub them down with soap. so go ahead and use some more dish soap and antibacterial agents toggle it a good scrub and rinses. wallah! no more dirty garbage bin. While you’re at it, maybe you can clean the area where the bin goes too, but I’ll leave that for another blog,.

6. Disinfect all touch zones

I bet you haven’t paid attention until now. Just just take a good look at all these touch zones. Germs galore! Grab an antibacterial spray and lets get to town on those nasty touchy germs. Switch plates, door knobs, fridge door etc. Spray all these things down one by one and dry them off with a paper towel. Do one at a time so that you can catch any dripping spray. Check out the Favorites blog for tips on which sprays I like most.

7. Organize your hair and makeup area

Make sure that you take all the tangled hair off your brushes. If you have stubborn hair embedded deep in there, a little trick I like to do is use a regular wide tooth hair comb and run it through the brush. The picks will grab a lot of the hair and bring it up.