Spring  Cleaning for Normal People: The Simple Mom Guide to a Deculttered Home (any time of the year) by Tsh Oxenreider.

Early on in graduate school, several friends and I used Spring Break as an excuse for grand adventures.  As long as we stayed away from typical Spring Break hot spots, airfare was cheap and nothing was terribly crowded.  The first year we went to DC and NYC.  The next year was Italy, and the third year included France and Spain.

Now, Spring Break is a very different affair.  Instead of traveling across the globe, I travel into the deep, dark interiors of our house.  Spring Break equals Spring Cleaning.  Last year, I devoted most of break to the kitchen.  I was frustrated because I ran out of time before I could do the rest of the house.  This year, I relied on Tsh’s awesome eBook to see me through.  She just finished using her own advice to deep clean on her blog, so I thought this would be a good time to recommend the eBook.

If you dread doing a deep cleaning on your house, this handy little guide is worth every penny. Her collections of recipes for non-toxic cleaners are invaluable. I love Tsh’s step-by-step approach.  It was brilliant to start with a quick de-cluttering of the whole house.  Starting off by tidying up everything gave me nice momentum to go deeper each day. I actually only managed to do the first floor of the house over Spring Break.  Now that summer is here, I plan to tackle the upstairs.  My favorite moment of spring cleaning came at the end of the week.  My ten-year old stepdaughter went looking for dust to examine in her microscope. When she couldn’t find a speck on our many window blinds, I did a little happy dance!