A Room-by-Room Guide For Tackling Spring Cleaning While Working From Home

Working from home can be challenging on a good day. Managing your work/life balance and knowing when to log off can be a lot to get used to. Add in being a full-time caregiver, and it's a miracle if you can do the dishes — let alone deep spring clean your home. That said, keeping your spring-cleaning schedule and disinfecting your home from top-to-bottom is something you can actually control during these unprecedented times, and it will go a long way in making you feel better.

Taking care of your mental health should be a big priority right now, so we're here to make cleaning feel simpler and less stressful. The point is, your home is a place where you should feel calm, relaxed, and safe; so if you're hoping to get a few spring cleaning chores checked off your list while working from home, we have the room-by-room guide for you.

First things first, you're going to need to stock your cleaning kit with a few essentials. You actually don't need much to deep clean your home, but there are a few staples you should keep on hand for whenever you're able to squeeze in a moment to clean. A vacuum with a hose attachment and a spin mop will make spring cleaning so much easier for you. Use the hose attachment on your vacuum to dust baseboards, blinds, and even shelves! The spin mop will wring out dirty water and make it easier for you to get your floors sparkling clean without throwing out your back.

Next come the heavy lifters: Clorox® Regular Bleach with Cloromax®, Clorox® Clean-Up Cleaner with Bleach, and Clorox® Toilet Bowl Cleaner with Bleach. Each of these will help you clean and disinfect your home surfaces — making you feel safe and comfortable. Throw in some gloves and cloths, and you'll be ready to go! Ahead, see how to tackle room-by-room cleaning while you're working from home.

For such a small room, bathrooms seem to cause the biggest headache. Why? Because they can just get so gross. While we would typically recommend doing one chore at a time (i.e., vacuum the whole house before moving onto mopping), when it comes to bathrooms, they should be attacked one by one. This is ideally an activity for nap time if you have kids, or a project that can be done during the day when you can leave the windows open for ventilation and can dedicate at least one-to-two hours to the task.

To start, clear away any clutter on the counters and organize drawers and under the sink (now is a good time to throw away any expired products or dried-up nail polish you might keep there). Next, vacuum everything. It may sound strange, but sweeping in a bathroom just pushes dust and hair into the air or into other crevices. Your best bet is to use the hose attachment on your vacuum to really pick up any loose debris (especially behind the toilet).

It's time to disinfect. It's no secret that bathrooms have more germs than other places in your home, so this is an important step that shouldn't be overlooked. First, flush the toilet. Then grab your gloves and apply Clorox® Toilet Bowl Cleaner with Bleachunder and around the bowl’s rim. Scrub and let it sit 5 mins before flushing the toilet again.

Next, fill a bucket with a gallon of hot water and a ½ cup of Clorox® Regular Bleach with Cloromax. Using a cloth, use this mixture to scrub and disinfect all hard surfaces in your bathroom, including grout and tile floors. Allow the solution to contact the surface for at least five minutes before rinsing well and air drying. It's important to do this step on its own, since bleach should not be mixed with other cleaning products. To leave your bathroom clean and disinfected apply this same technique to your bathroom sink and tub Finally, polish off your fixtures with a clean and dry microfiber cloth. Bathroom complete!

Ah, the kitchen. Not quite as germy as the bathroom, but can be equally dirty in its own right. Start the same way as in the bathroom by cleaning up clutter and checking expiration dates. This may take a few hours to do alone, but it's a good chore to get your whole family involved in. While it may be tempting to start this while you have a few minutes to spare between work meetings, this is definitely not a weekday job and should be reserved for the weekends when you can give it your undivided attention. Start with the pantry and end with the fridge.

Once your fridge is totally cleaned out, take your vacuum (I know, again!) and pick up any crumbs stuck to the shelves or inside the drawers. Once those are totally dirt free, make sure you go in with a wet cloth. For the refrigerator’s outer surfaces, use a product like Clorox® Clean-Up® Cleaner + Bleach to kill 99.9% of bacteria and viruses. Spray the refrigerator doors, handles, and on top and let that sit for 30 seconds before wiping away. Then, you can put everything you're keeping back into the fridge. Now that your kitchen surfaces are clutter free, tackle the counters, sink, and outer surfaces of other stainless-steel appliances with Clorox® Clean-Up® Cleaner + Bleach. It is a multi-purpose product, so it makes cleaning the sink handles, stove tops, and hard kitchen surfaces easy.

Next, move onto the floors. Using your vacuum, give your kitchen floors a once over, picking up dirt and food crumbs. Filling your mop bucket with a gallon of warm water, add ½ cup of Clorox Regular Bleach, mix and mop the floors. Once that dries, take one more pass with the vacuum, and you should be sparkling clean and good to go!

Okay, okay. As you might have noticed, bathrooms and kitchens are definitely the most labor-intensive rooms when it comes to spring cleaning. Both rooms require a good amount of organizing and disinfecting, and they're not easy to deep clean in between answering emails. But there are some rooms in your home that you can tackle for a few minutes here or there so that by the end of the day, you have a clean, organized space. Example: the living room.

It starts with the same deal here — a quick decluttering. Scan the room from left to right, picking up anything that is out of place. If its home is within that room, put it away. For everything else, fill an empty laundry basket and put the items away once you're done. Save this task for when you're in a meeting where you need to listen, but you don't need to speak. (It's called two birds, one stone.)

Next — you guessed it — vacuum. Using the brush attachment on your vacuum, dust every surface; that includes, but isn't limited to, your TV, blinds, baseboards, windowsills, lamp shades, and coffee table. Once that's done, get your partner or teenager to help you move the couch and media stand so you can use the floor attachment to vacuum underneath all the furniture. Finish off by polishing surfaces with a damp microfiber cloth, fluffing pillows, and washing and folding all blankets. Vacuum one more time for good measure now that the room is staged, and then — if you can — make that room off limits! Why? Because you deserve to be able to appreciate that clean room for at least 24 hours before someone comes along and messes it up again.

The laundry room is usually pretty neglected, and you can't even see the biggest mess in the room — the one behind your washer and dryer. Once you move the machines away from the wall (carefully, please), use your vacuum to pick up all the dust and dirt. Then, wipe down all surfaces, including hose attachments and knobs. Make sure to mop the floor with your Clorox Regular Bleach and water mixture. After that is done, now you can tackle sanitizing the inside of the machines. Using hot water, select the "extra rinse" cycle on your machine. Add ½ cup of Clorox® Regular Bleach with Cloromax to the bleach dispenser and run the machine. Be sure you run an extra rinse cycle to ensure that no bleach is left behind.

Luckily, finding all these treasure troves of dirt can be a bit soothing and won't take more than 30 minutes to clean, meaning this is a great project to tackle after your morning coffee and before you have to log on for the day.

Last but not least are the bedrooms. Follow the same process as the living room, but with a greater emphasis on organization. Luckily, this is one task you can delegate to other members of your family. Give each person three large trash bags: one for trash, one for clothes they want to donate, and one for toys (or books or video games) they'd like to donate. Hopefully, this will occupy their time long enough for you to get a few tasks crossed off of your to-do list for work. Once the bags are filled, have them put everything away so you can tackle the dusting and vacuuming together. One important tip? Vacuum your mattresses! They're filled with dust mites and other dirt, so it's always a good idea to give them a pass before making your bed with freshly laundered sheets.