5 Tips for Keeping a Clean Home During the Holidays

This holiday cleaning tips post is brought to you by Swiffer® as part of a Type-A Parent Community Sponsored Post.

This holiday season, we had a LOT of traffic walking in and out of our home.  With holiday luncheons and cookie exchanges to Christmas parties and holiday gatherings, our floors got a lot of use and collected a lot of dirt and food.  Heck, at one point, I dropped a bottle of wine (ok it actually fell out of the fridge), dropped cooked chicken (I guess I was too excited cutting it), spilled cocoa powder (loose lid apparently) and spilled milk (after telling the kids not to spill milk) on our kitchen floor.  I don’t know if I was going for a spilling marathon or what!  Ha ha!  Our poor kitchen floor seriously needed some cleaning and pampering!! Those who do not have enough time to clean the whole house may consider hiring a Recurring Residential Property Maid. Don’t forget to clean your home’s exterior, too! Call on professional pressure cleaners to clean up your driveway and your exterior walls.

In our home, we have tile in our entryway and in our bathrooms.  Granted, the whole home isn’t covered in tile, but with a big family and working from home full-time, I like to be able to mop and clean the floors both quickly and efficiently.  That means no ringing out a mop or sloshing around a bucket of water.  Nope.  I want easy peasy and effective!  One of my biggest pet peeves is to walk on a tile or stone floor and feel stickiness under my feet or even crumbs.  The Swiffer SteamBoost Steam Mop helps to eliminate that pet peeve!

Putting the Swiffer SteamBoost Steam Mop together was simple.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I was able to put it together in less than a minute.  Then I poured water into the water tank on the mop.  Note, it is helpful to fill it up with a pitcher or measuring cup that has a pointy end (like a triangle) so you don’t spill water while pouring it in.  Even if you do, it’s just water anyways.  Once you’ve poured the water in, twist the cap shut.

Before plugging the Swiffer Steam Mop in, be sure to attach the cleaning cloths (these smell so so good by the way!!).  I placed the cloth on the bottom and flipped the mop over.  Then I pushed the corners of the cloth into the inserts on the corners of the mop.  Plug the Steam Mop in and wait for the blue light to come on.  Once the blue light is on, it’s ready to use.  Simple and effective!!

5 Tips for Keeping a Clean Home During the Holidays

1 – Put away the Christmas decorations as soon as you’re done decorating.  This will reduce clutter and avoid more messes (like kids opening up the boxes and pulling things out). You may consider renting climate controlled storage units if you need additional storage space for your holiday decor and other items that make your home look cluttered.

2 – Sweep on a daily basis.  I find that the mess is less when I sweep on a daily basis.  It prevents from crumbs and spilled foods from being tracked throughout the house.

3 – Get the family involved.  Have you ever heard of the saying, “Many hands make light work?”  By giving everyone a job, cleaning the house will get done more quickly and you’ll be teaching your kids responsibility at the same time! You might even consider a cleaning service to do a big once-over cleaning on your home, such as the maid cleaning service NYC.

4 – Clean up the mess as soon as it’s made.  While this is definitely something we as adults do, it may be something our kids don’t do.  If messes are left behind, they can easily be spread throughout the house and are harder to clean up as time goes by.

5 – Use the Swiffer SteamBoost Steam Mop on your tile or hardwood floors.  I love the Swiffer SteamBoost Steam Mop!  Not only was it easy to put together, but it works!!  On some of the dirtier parts of the floor, I did have to go over them a few more times, but there was no scrubbing and no sweat at all!!  Oh yeah!  You definitely want to have this device on hand to keep your home clean during and after the holidays.

This sponsored post was brought to you by Swiffer®. For a limited time, get a $15 prepaid card when you purchase a SteamBoost Steam Mop Starter Kit between 11/24/13 and 12/31/13. Swiffer BISSELL® SteamBoost™ combines a dirt-dissolving cleaning solution with the power of steam for a deep clean that gets messes mops can leave behind. Also be sure to like Swiffer on Facebook and follow @swiffer on Twitter.