Deep Cleaning the Living Rooms - Part One

On Wednesday evening this week, in readiness for our visitors from New Zealand, who are arriving in just over a week's time, I decided to start deep cleaning our living rooms.

We have two adjoining reception rooms. The one at the front of the house is the main living area, where we sit to watch TV.  There's a lot of furniture in this room, compared to the back room, but it does help to make it feel cosy.

The room at the back is where we have the wood burning stove and where I tend to dry my washing indoors.

We don't often sit in this room, it tends to mainly be used for bike storage and laundry on a day to day basis.

I began the deep cleaning process on Tuesday night by doing a bit of a declutter in both rooms.  I've been meaning to do this for a while. First to go was the video recorder/player, as we just don't use it and all the videos we have are pretty old and never get watched.  I untangled all of the cables and removed the player from the cabinet, rearranging what was left as I did so.

I then went to the entertainment/games cupboard and took out all of the old videos and any DVD's we no longer wanted to keep. I amassed quite a pile, which were removed to a box for the next Give and Take.

The next day I began the deep clean in the back room, by getting out the ladders and starting to clean the bookshelves from top to bottom on my side, taking off all of the books that were on them.  There were only a few to declutter because I regularly look through them and pull out ones that I no longer want to keep.

I removed any cobwebs that might be lurking on the ceiling and washed down the shelves before putting all of the books back.  I honestly can't remember when I last deep cleaned these shelves, possibly a good few years ago, so it felt good to do it.

Here's the before:

One side of the chimney houses mainly my books and the other side are OH's books and our vinyl. OH's side is a bit chaotic.  He doesn't like to order his books by size or category or anything, so they were crammed in any which way, making it a bit of a mess.

On Thursday afternoon I took everything off the shelves on OH's side and tried to create some order. I even got him to part with quite a few books, which was a bonus. Here's a picture of what he decided to part with.

I was very proud of him, as he hates letting go of books. They were duly added to the new and rapidly growing G&T pile.  Here's the end result of cleaning both sets of shelves.

The chest of drawers on my side also got pulled out and polished and I hoovered and mopped the alcove before putting it back.

I then stripped and washed the covers on our old and very large IKEA sofa (pictured above).  I'd love new covers for this, but it is a model that has been discontinued for many years. Although very large, it is very comfortable for lying on, which is why we've kept it. I pulled it out and cleaned underneath and behind it, before finishing off by hoovering and mopping the rest of the floor in this room.

It was very satisfying to finish deep cleaning this room and to know that all of the dust and cobwebs have been banished for the time being. In my next post in this short series, I will document progress in the front living room.