The Raffle House guide to spring cleaning your home — quickly

Spring has sprung. The blossoms have been and gone. And many of us are digging out our summer clothes, which makes now the perfect time for a quick spring clean. If you haven’t got hours to spare on top of work, seeing family and friends and general life admin then we’ve got a handy guide to quick spring clean. There’s no faffing here. We’ve organised it room by room and reckon you could breeze through it in under two hours. The only thing you’ll need to come back to is the oven, but more on that later. Where possible we’ve also suggested eco-friendly cleaning materials.

Bathroom

First up is the bathroom, if you’ve got a rusty shower head, unscrew it and pop it in a bowl of baking soda and white vinegar for an hour. The rust will literally melt away. And while we’re on the topic of vinegar you can also use it to clean the loo. Pour it around the bowl and leave for an hour. Or if you want extra ‘va-va-voom’ you can use Coco Cola instead — it’s disturbingly effective.

For tiles, sinks and baths a spray bottle filled with equal parts water and…you’ve guessed it vinegar, can be used to spritz them. Wipe down afterwards with a cloth. You can even spritz water-stained shower doors with this. Or if you have a shower curtain then pop it in the washing machine.

Bedroom

Next, it’s on to the bedroom. Whisk the sheets off the bed and shove them in the washing machine — maybe not with shower curtain though. If you’re feeling strong enough, prop your mattress up against the wall for an hour to air it out.

Got carpets in the bedroom? Then baking soda is your friend, again. Sprinkle it liberally across the floor, leave for a few minutes and then hoover away. This will freshen it up nicely and more importantly — quickly. Since you’ve got the hoover in hand have a go at vacuuming around and underneath, if you can, any heavy furniture.

Next up are the windows, wash the insides with your magic vinegar mixture. Finally, wipe down any surfaces, headboards, blinds and skirting boards with a cloth slightly dampened with water.

Living room and dining room

Having cracked the bedroom and hopefully had a cup of tea and a five-minute breather it’s on to the living and dining room. We’ve strung them together because lots of city dwellers have them as one room. Got a rug? You can do the baking soda trick again but make sure you hoover it twice, once in each direction to get everything out. As you did in the bedroom a cloth over the surfaces will remove the dust, if you have a lot of wood furniture though you can use a dab of coconut oil on the cloth. If you're dusting a lampshade a lint roller is recommended.

Sofa in need of a spruce up? Apparently, most have a label on them which tells you how you can clean them but we’ve heard from the good people at Sofas and Stuff that it’s better to dry clean. Failing that just hoover the crumbs off!

Lastly, tackle the windows with your spritz solution.

Kitchen

When addressing the kitchen on a quick spring clean it’s best to go straight to the main offenders e.g the oven, fridge and freezer. The oven is the only thing in this guide that once tackled will need leaving overnight. To clean it mix baking soda and water into a paste and spread it all over the interior surfaces of your oven — except for the heating prongs. This is probably the most fiddly and messy bit of the whole clean but worth it. Leave it on overnight then wipe off, the baking soda will have gone brown as it absorbs the grease. Lovely.

Clean the fridge out with the vinegar spritz and wipe down. Go through the freezer and chuck out anything with freezer burn. To clean the oven top and other kitchen surfaces cut a lemon in half and dip in baking soda then get scrubbing. You can also steam clean your microwave by popping a bowl of water in it and turning it on for five minutes, then giving the inside a wipe with a dry cloth. And finally clean the floors with a recipe from the blogger Amanda Watters of castile soap, tea tree oil and warm water.

Job done, we told you it would be quick!

And while cleaning your home doesn’t have to be taxing if you’re still in need of inspiration to get started we’d recommend checking out the following Instagram accounts:

Lynsey Queen of Clean — Lynsey has become a social media star since appearing on Channels 4’s ‘Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners’. Her relentlessly cheery attitude and focus on using eco-friendly products is inspiring.

Mrs Hinch Home — 28-year-old Sophie has made cleaning an artform. Apparently she prefers cleaning her home to clubbing and with 2.3 million Instagram followers there are clearly many who agree with her.

This Girl Can Organise — not so much a cleaner but an organiser, Nicola Lewis makes people’s homes look amazing. Checking out the ‘before and after’ pictures of her client’s homes is deeply satisfying.