Cleaning the House After an Illness: The Master Bathroom

I finally had the master bedroom in an acceptable state, and it it only took me a week to get there.  As much as I knew I couldn't have gotten done any faster, I still knew that it seemed like it would take forever to get the house clean at the rate I was going.  I was very excited to be moving on to a second room.

In order to keep my master bedroom from returning to it's old messy ways, I continued to start my routine the same way I did the week before.

1.  Make the bed.
2.  Get dressed (shoes)
3.  Starting at the bedside and working around the room I looked for dirty and clean clothes, trash, and things that belonged in other rooms. 
4.  Put one load of laundry in.  Come back to put it in the drier/hang dry, then come back to fold it.  Have children put away.

Then, into the bathroom I went.  Now, unlike the rest of the house, the bathrooms had been *kinda* kept up.  I mean, going without cleaning the bathroom for 2 months would have been just gross, so the few times I felt good over those months I did at least a quick clean.  That said, it was still in desperate need of a good clean.

The first day, however, was not about cleaning.  It is a small room, so the first day was the pickup day.  

I cleared off the counter of all the random bottles that had gathered there. 
I picked up dirty clothes and towels off the floor.  
I also went ahead and emptied the trash-since it was overflowing.
Ooo and I put the roll of toilet paper ON THE ROLL.  I seems that I am the only one that is is able to do that at our house, and it had not been done in awhile!

Once again, since just picking up made it look SOOOO much better!  And, it took me 5 minutes-tops.

I divided the rest of the bathroom chores into four days.  

Day one-wipe down mirror, sink and counter.
Day two-wipe down toilet and scrub bowl.
Day three-wipe down tub and shower door.  

Notice I said *wipe down*.  Yes, it needed a full fledged bleach scrub down, maybe even find some sort of creative cleaning agent to get the grime out of the corners.  But, at this point, deep DEEP cleaning was not the point.  I was not doing spring cleaning.  I was recovering my house to 'live-able' state.

On day four I swept up the floor, mopped the floor, and put the bathroom rug in the washer.

Each day before I started working on the bathroom, I would do the bedroom checklist, and then pick up anything on the bathroom counter or floors.  By the end of the week I also emptied the trash can again.

One very major thing that I did not do was to open any cabinets or closets.  There are 2 full sized linen closets in there.  One we use for toiletries (and a number of things we probably need to get rid of) and the other is for towels and linens.  They both needed (and still need) a huge purge, but the goal was not to declutter, just recover.

I then created a daily checklist of things to do.

1. Check for counters and floors for clutter and trash.
2.  Replace toilet paper if needed.
3.  Flush toilet if needed. With 4 young children it sometimes doesn't get done.  Gross I know!
4.  Look to see if anything MAJORLY needs to be done-like toothpaste all over the sink or an obvious mess somewhere in the room.

I also decided to do one of the other clean-up items each day.  So I would rotate cleaning mirrors and sink, toilet, shower, floors, and trash once a week.  The trash I do go ahead and empty if it needs it more often (well okay if something else really needs done, I do that, too, lol).

I added this checklist to my daily bedroom checklist.

So, now almost 2 weeks had passed.  I did kinda wonder just how long it would take me to reclaim the entire house, but at least I could tell where I had been.  It also loved that the clean space was something I saw all the time and could use for motivation.  I just hoped I could keep it that way!

God Bless,
Lisa