The Cleaning CHALLENGE!!!!

Anybody that has known me for some time knows that I'm a little bit of a neat freak.  But not the type where the room has a hospital sterile look, but the type were they have an organize mess and is dust clean.  When I was single, this was an easy thing to keep the place tidy, but now is more like mission impossible. Living with my husband has added an immense amount of stuff to clean around the 600 sq/ft apartment. The increase in items has re-triggered my asthma, bad allergies that keep me up at night with congestion and sneezing attacks.   It totally sucks for me, so I had to come up with a way to clean in stages.

Stage 1:  Easy Maintenance

This pretty much basic daily maintenance like taking out the garbage, wash dishes, make the bed, keep the bathroom clean, and do laundry(husband shore) and put it away.

Stage 2: Surface

This involves cleaning counter top, bathroom sink, and vinyl type floors.  Easy to do but it's a little more time consuming. 

Stage 3: Vacuuming

To most people this would be an easy challenge, to me this requires an inspection of the ground before starting to suck up stuff with the vacuum.  First I must pick up everything of the ground. Then, I must make sure there aren't any tiny accessories that have drifted away from on my husbands toys.  This could be something as small as a plastic knife no bigger than a quarter, or at times clear plastic parts that simply can't be seen at first sight.  This require natural light and laying on the ground to see stuff popping off the carpet.  

Stage 4:  Dusting

Easy dusting is the bedrooms toy shelf.  This simply required to be taken down one piece at a time, dust the surfaces and boxes and then find a way to put it all back.  Many of the items are in boxes so is easy to wipe down and put back up.

Hard:  The rest of the apartment is up to my husband.  While this might seem lazy from my part, I'm simply not comfortable touching or moving any of the stuff on the shelves.  He has several eight shelf DVDs cases that have between 10-15 figures on each shelf gently glued by their feet.  You knock one down and down the rest go too.  This is totally not a mess I'm going to get into.

This is my challenge.  I have a week off from work coming up in February.  I must prepare.