Summer Goals - 30 Days to Clean

So I am getting into Summer in a big way.  I'm taking the time off from my office to spend it with my boys accomplishing several goals.

One of the big goals I have for this summer is to deep clean and de-clutter my house.  I'm always trying to simplify and clear away the stuff that is constantly accumulating in my house.  Five people creates a lot of stuff!

Pinterest is such a great place to find lots of methods for cleaning your house.  There are daily lists, weekly lists, and monthly lists for cleaning your house.  I've got lots of them pinned to my Clean Home board.

But really, I'm not ready to start a daily, weekly, or monthly cleaning schedule because I keep stumbling over the stuff and the mess the house has gotten into over the past few months.

I found a 30 Day Spring Cleaning Challenge the other day on Pinterest and decided to try it. You can find it HERE.

 There are 30 cleaning tasks to complete -- one for each of the 30 days -- and I liked that each task is something that I could easily complete without feeling overwhelmed.  The list begins with the Kitchen.

They even have links on how to clean some of the areas.  I started with the microwave and the oven and followed their links for how to clean them.  

Here's my microwave "before" picture.  My momma will absolutely die when she sees this picture!  In my defense, I rarely use the microwave.  It's mostly used by the boys.  I was a little shocked when I opened the door and saw this mess.

Notice the microwave is missing the glass turntable.  Someone broke it . . . one of those Ferrell boys.  Yuk.

I followed the directions in the link on How to Clean the Microwave . . . mixing the vinegar and water in a microwave dish and microwaving for 5 to 10 minutes.

The toothpicks keeps the water from exploding when you move it.

Everything wiped off easily.  I ordered a new turntable for the microwave from Amazon.  Here's the final result:

Next I moved on to the oven.  I actually have a double oven.  We use the top oven the most so I started with it.

The glass was gross.

I followed the link suggested for Cleaning your Oven.  HERE.

I mixed up the paste using hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and Dawn dishwashing detergent and followed the directions.

You let the mixture soak for 4 hours and then you wipe it off.  The final step in this procedure is to use the self-cleaning program of your oven which seems to be redundant after spreading the mixture over the oven and letting it soak to clean the oven.  But I followed the directions anyway.  Here's the final picture of the top oven following this method.

With the racks . . .

And the glass door looks better, but there are still some little dots on it that need to be scrubbed off to be perfect.

In cleaning the bottom oven, I have decided to just use the self-cleaning program only and see if I could see any difference from the procedure I used in the top oven.  I'll post pictures of that later.

So day one is complete. It may have taken more than one day. :)  

Of course, I'm committing to the 30 Day Challenge not necessarily the 30 Days Consecutively Challenge.  :)  My real goal is just to work through each day until I get it completed.  I really love looking into the microwave and oven and seeing how clean they are now.

Nice and clean for Spring!  or Summer!  Ha!  
Nice and clean for . . .

                                  the Ferrell boys and me!