How To Get Your Living Room To Look Magazine Quality Clean
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How To Get Your Living Room To Look Magazine Quality Clean
Have you ever stood in the checkout line and gaze over at the home decor magazines wondering why you can never seem to get your living room to look so clean and pristine?
You swear up and down that no sooner have you returned those toss pillows back to its rightful place on the couch that they end up on the floor 3.2 seconds later anyway.
Because kids…
It’s almost always a fruitless effort to keep your living room looking like its magazine quality clean all the time when clearly there are forts to be made, right?
Just like your kitchen but without all the food and grease, your living room is probably the other gathering hub whenever you have people come over.
Here’s how to get your living room to look magazine quality clean without wasting any more time or money:
1. Edit
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Purge & donate or throw out:
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- Get rid of everything that does not belong in your living room. Do you really need 8 remote controllers for the one TV that we own? Maybe not, time to toss those controllers.
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- Imagine coming home after a long day of running errands to finally sit down and enjoy a show on Netflix with your hubby only to discover that you’ve just sat on that one weird doll your daughter was looking for all week. She seems to be perfectly content now, not caring where its been. So you justify that now is the perfect time to donate it to another little girl who will treasure it even more.
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Recycle, Reduce, & Reuse
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- That shoebox that you were going to throw out is the perfect size to place inside your cabinet. Ever thought of covering it in a pretty wrapping paper and reuse it as a pretty storage bin?
- All those magazines are gathering dust in the basket next to the couch. If they haven’t been read in a while, how about donating them to your local library instead?
- Those drapes do look nice, but maybe they’d look much better in your room as a contrasting color rather than be all matchy matchy in your living room with your wallpaper?
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2. Organize
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A place for everything:
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-Decide whether or not you love this item.
-Is it sentimental to you? If not, toss or donate it.
-Otherwise, it is going to be taking up precious real estate in your home.
-Only keep items that are important to you, not your Great Aunt Gertrude (sorry Gertie, not gonna babysit your urn :/ ).
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And everything in its place:
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-Now that you’ve trimmed the fat and made the decision to just keep only the MVP’s (most valued pieces), let’s find a place for them to be proudly displayed.
-Storage pieces can serve both as form and function.
-These can be pretty matching storage bins, wicker baskets, or even old shoe boxes that are covered with pretty wrapping paper
-Just be sure the items you are hanging onto fits into the storage piece and add a nice sized label to storage piece so that you can tell at a glance what is stored inside.
3. Tidy Up
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Dust
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– From top to bottom, from up in the corners of the walls to the bottoms of the baseboards so that the dusts falls to the floors.
– Tip: use an extendable dusting wand to get those tough to reach areas like the chandelier, ceiling fans, and high placed air vents.
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Wipe
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– Wipe down all surfaces with all-purpose cleaner and a dustless rag or paper towel.
– Use glass cleaner for glass and ceramic surfaces
– Use furniture polish for wooden pieces of furniture
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Vacuum
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– Sprinkle some carpet deodorizer onto your carpets, rugs, and couches.
– Spray your drapes/curtains with Febreeze or a similar odor eliminator and vacuum it with a handheld vacuum cleaner.
– Vacuum every surface that you’ve sprinkled with deodorizer and vacuum yourself out of your living room
– This will leave those nice looking carpet lines and it’s yours to enjoy! 🙂
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Wash, Dry, & Fluff
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– Gather up your throw blankets, toss pillows, stuffed animals, and anything else that can be laundered in the washing machine and wash as directed.
– Dry everything as directed and put them back into their designated areas.
– Fold your blankets, fluff your toss pillows, and store your stuffed animals where they will be ready for your kids to cuddle and play next time.
4. Maintenance Mode
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- Now that you’ve done everything on this checklist up to this point, all there is left to do is to sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
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- The next time that you need to straighten out your living room before your guests arrive, just set a time for 15 minutes & repeat these 4 steps weekly or as necessary.
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- Enjoy!
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In Summary, It’s The Multi-purpose Room
Not only is it your living room, it also functions as your makeshift office, your kids’ playroom, your entertainment area, as well as (on occasions) a temporary guest room whenever someone decides to crash for the night.
Anyone can see why your living room is often called the other congregating hub because it literally is your multipurpose room.
So naturally, those toss pillows were meant to be more than just pretty to look at because they need to serve many purposes like building forts, stepping stones because the floor is lava, and also a place for guests to rest their sleepy heads too. Lol
Our living room works hard for us in so many ways but that doesn’t have to mean that we can never keep it clean.
As long as we do our part to keep it up, it will serve all of us well for decades to come.
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