Speed Cleaning........



Speed Cleaning - Now I don't know if that is one word or two words (and neither does my spell check) so for the sake of speeding (no pun intended) this along, I chose to use two. My definition of this activity is "the act of cleaning your house faster than you usually do because the realtor has called and wants to show it".  I never really knew too much about speed cleaning until we put our house on the market. But, it's something you become an expert at whether you want to or not. At least Grandpa and I have. We can now whip around this house and get it ready for showing in 25 minutes!  Of course, it depends on how long it's been since the last showing....the longer in between showings, the messier it gets and it may take longer to get it back into shape. I loved last week - had an open house on Sunday (four people came) and then throughout the week, we showed it 4 more times. It was great! In fact, I think between a couple of the showings that were close together, we broke our own record and finished in about 15 minutes!

Speed cleaning takes a good 'plan of action'.  First and foremost, you need to have gutted your house before you put it on the market. Get rid of the junk, clutter and the "I may need that someday" stuff. Once you have done that, you have just saved yourself a lot of headaches and anxiety when those calls start coming in. I mean, it makes sense....less stuff laying around, less hassle trying to get it put away and out of sight. That brings me to a very important lesson Grandpa and I learned from embarking on this newest hobby. When you put stuff away, be sure to use the same spot each time. We learned that the hard way....the first couple of times we did it, we had trouble finding some things. In fact, I think some things are STILL missing, not to be found until we move. I suggest having a small area in each closet for shoving stuff into, preferably the closet in the room from which this stuff usually resides. Right now, we have our hiding spots down to a science so we are able to hide stuff and find it again in a flash!

Some other little 'tricks' we have discovered are. If you have scatter rugs on the floor, the minute you get back into the house, pick them up and store them for the next time; especially, if you have dogs! Immediately exchange the good decorative towels hanging in the bathroom for crappy ones when you return. I mean, do you care what you dry your hands on? Save the nice ones to make the bathroom look like it's worth a million bucks....well, least $4.99.  Invest in a lot of Fabreeze.....this stuff is great for making the place smell 'April fresh'. Have all ceiling fans running. This eliminates people fooling around with the the pull cords and breaking off the little decorative item or whatever you have hanging from it. In our case it was a little crystal (of course not REAL crystal) duckie on our kitchen ceiling fan. Be sure to leave the garage door opener out in the open or you might have people digging through your drawers or cupboards looking for it. If you are REALLY ambitious, you can bake a pan of cookies so the house smells real 'homey', especially in the winter months when it's closed up. Then put the cookies out for your visitors to nibble on. Hey, when you are trying to sell a house, I'm not above baking even though I never bake any other time. Assign tasks. Grandpa always heads outside to the yard to get it into shape and pick up doggie doo-doo while I start in the house. It works a lot better than the two of us standing and staring at each other trying to figure out where to start.

Now, these are just a few ideas. If you follow these plus any others that you might come up with, you too will become experts at speed cleaning.....just remember, the record stands at 25 minutes (or 15 minutes on a good day)!!