Holiday Cleaning Tips

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

A few weeks or two ago, I lost my mind and invited my family to dinner on Christmas Eve. Now, Christmas Eve used to be a thing for my family — an easy family dinner hosted by my aunt and uncle and later by my parents. But that dissolved years ago. For a few years, my cousins had an annual holiday bash on Christmas Eve. But eventually that moved to a Saturday before Christmas before being shelved too.

So, for the past few years, we’ve dug into Chinese food after attending the Christmas Eve service at our church. It’s easy and simple and worked.

Until, of course, I lost my mind and started inviting family over for a home cooked Christmas Eve meal. Still, I think it will be fun — once I finish cooking, baking and cleaning.

Speaking of cleaning, I have a process that works for us.

First, I tackle all the counters, tables and surfaces downstairs — grabbing everything that doesn’t belong and either putting it away or shoving it in my office to be dealt with later. Then, the kids and I clean the surfaces and fluff the pillows. It’s especially important that the pillow stand just right — and that the paintings are straight on the walls. I know, it sounds odd, but it’s a thing with my family.

After that, I tackle the floors. My favorite way to do this is to sweep while someone follows me with the vacuum, sucking up the debris. Usually my husband takes the vacuuming job, but Will is good at it too. In the absence of help, I just do it myself. Unhappily.

Finally, I set the table and pretty everything up. That means arranging the center piece, ensuring that the candles are lit and that the decorating are all looking pretty.

And the kids clean the bathroom sinks. All in all, we can do the whole job in about an hour.

My philosophy? Just make it look nice — as nice as you can — and the rest will be fine. Good food is a great distraction too.

Back to the floors for a second though … I recently had the opportunity to try the Swiffer BISSELL® SteamBoost™ — and OMG, this steam mop works wonders. It’s so easy to use. You simply assemble it (about 3 minutes, at most), fill the resevoir with water and secure a special SteamBoost pad to it. Then you plug it in, and in no time it’s heated up and ready to steam the dirt off your floors.

I put it to the test on two well-trafficked floors: our kitchen and bathroom. These are rooms that I clean often since there is so much activity in both, so I wasn’t sure how much this mop could do for us. Ha. It practically laughed at me. After a little time with the mop it was shiny, streak-free and absolutely lovely.

How are you spending Christmas Eve? Do you have a celebration with family?

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.