Time for a good old spring clean!
The days are longer, the weather warmer, so now’s the perfect time to have a spruce up, room by room. Sarah shares her brilliant tips
Sarah Beeny offers her tips
HELP FOR THE HALLWAY
Maintaining high-traffic areas like hallways needs a bit of lateral thinking. I’m a big fan of the Unnatural Flooring Company (unnaturalflooring.com) that has natural-looking carpets, which are in fact man-made and virtually indestructible, so they always look in great nick.
My spring-clean tip Use warm, soapy water, a toothbrush, a blunt knife for stubborn grime, clean cloths and an old towel to sparkle-up flooring and woodwork.
IT’S IN THE BAG
When you start your spring clean, do it with two bags – one for rubbish and one for the charity shop – and make sure that you fill both by the time you’ve finished a room. Owning less ‘stuff’ makes life clearer and more enjoyable. It also means cleaning next time will be much easier, so make it your mission to collect less things between this big clean and the next. A good exercise is to put everything in the middle of the room and clean all the edges really well – this way, you know you’ve properly cleaned underneath things and also got the chance to rearrange the furniture a bit. It’s no coincidence that the rise in moth and other insect problems in homes has come along with the decline of the good old-fashioned spring clean-up.
My spring-clean tip Tackle one room at a time and do a really good job.
BEDROOM REFRESH
Just like sofas, mattresses and headboards need to be vacuumed. Take the mattress outside and beat it, or, at the very least, turn it to get dust to settle in the opposite direction.
My spring-clean tip Re-cover your headboard using a metre or two of fabric and a staple gun. Job done!
KITCHEN SECRETS
Get stainless steel looking fab by using baby oil after cleaning it. Make sure you rub it in with kitchen paper; if you leave a residue, it will collect dust. For badly stained pans, pop a couple of dishwasher tablets in the bottom with water and boil for about 30 minutes; it will lift the debris. I love the local oven-cleaning companies that arrive in vans and dip most of the component parts of your oven in cleaner to make them look brand new. This also ensures that the environment is not damaged by people throwing out ovens just because they’re grubby.
My spring-clean tip To clean a microwave, cut a lemon in two, place the halves inside and cook on high heat for 10 minutes. Dry the interior with clean kitchen roll.
BATHROOM BOOSTERS
You need a lot of elbow grease for a sparkling bathroom but it’s well worth the effort. Scrub, clean, then polish everything – from taps, plug holes and loos to mirrors – with a dry cloth. Grout can be bleached or, if really bad, you can hack it out and re-grout (avoid painting with grout paint as it looks terrible). Shower curtains can be soaked in a bath in a little bleach. My spring-clean
tip A useful weapon to zap limescale is Viakal (amazon. co.uk). For a more natural option, use lemon juice.