Baby Boy's Room

I put off cleaning Baby Boy's room until almost the very end of my great endeavor.  I really did have a logical reason:  it's easiest for me to clean while kids are sleeping, and he sleeps the most often, but I can't clean while he's asleep in his room.  Basically, today I took advantage of a rare opportunity:  he was awake, but content to play alone in his infant bouncer; the girls were both asleep.  Also, it was pretty incredible to see that, once I finally got started, this may have been the lightest cleaning job I've had yet!

Action Plan:
1.  Clean light fixture and fan
2.  Clean windows and blinds
3.  Clean door frames
4.  Dust furniture
5.  Clean baseboards
6.  Vacuum floor

As I started at the top, I realized that Baby Boy's room was probably the cleanest in the house.  Why?  We painted it right before we moved him in there, which was a short six months ago (only I would call six months "short" in regards to cleaning).  Before we painted, we cleaned the entire room, so it was in pretty good shape.  I started, as I always do, by washing the light fixture globes and wiping down the fan blades (which I cleaned with ACV).

I moved from there to Windexing the only window in the room and cleaning out the window tracks.  Again, it was reasonably clean, which surprised me; I'm not an expert here, but it seems to me that the east/west facing windows have been significantly less dirty than the north/south facing ones.  Also, the windows that face the neighbors' house are cleaner, and this particular window fit both criteria.  There were no dog nose-prints, no dead spiders or frogs in the tracks, and even minimal outside dirt.  Another happy surprise was that the blinds didn't need cleaning at all; Mini-me used to be in that room, and had pulled down her blinds a few months before.  We bought new ones (more specifically, she did), and they have been closed and hidden behind light-blocking curtains ever since then.

The dirtiest place in the room ended up being the outside lower surface of the bedroom door.  Years' worth of grimy fingerprints had definitely taken their toll, and it took a cloth with ACV, followed by a Lysol wipe, followed by a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, to clean the door to my satisfaction.  After that chore, the dust that I wiped off the surface of the frame seemed like nothing.

Again, the furniture was relatively dust-free, and I am seeing a pattern in Baby Boy's room and the girls' room:  they have less surface area and less clutter ON the surface area, so there's less dust.  It was really quick to clean all his furniture -- like, less than five minutes. Hmm...maybe I should reduce display items in other areas of the house as well, if it's this easy to clean.  On second thought, that would mean doing yet another purge of my books, and I don't think I've got the stomach for it...

I finished up by quickly wiping down the baseboards, which, again, were much cleaner than other baseboards in the house have been.  I moved all the furniture to do a thorough vacuuming, used the hose attachment to get a few stubborn bugs in a corner, and was done with the entire project in less than an hour (about the time, incidentally, that Baby Boy decided he was tired of being alone and was ready for dinner).