Spring Cleaning Day 10: Bedroom Floor and Baseboards

We’ve popped into the ol’ bedroom every day this week and now it’s time to wrap things up by heading down low to the floors.

If you’ve been following along at home, you’ve decluttered surfaces, dusted, deep cleaned your bed, and even washed your bedroom windows and window treatments this week. Yesterday we even dragged all the junk out from under the bed and cleared off the closet floors to prepare for today—baseboards and floor day.

When we’re done, you’ll be ready to relax this weekend with a wonderfully clean and refreshed-for-spring bedroom.

What You Need

Tackling the floors in your bedroom isn’t much different than tackling the floors elsewhere in your house, except the bed makes it particularly awkward to get to a significant amount of floor space in a way that other pieces of furniture simply don’t. Even a twin bed takes up around 20 square feet of space and a king-size bed takes up around 40!

Dyson Multi-Floor Ball 2

From top to bottom, we use our Dyson over every square foot of our house.

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Let’s start off by looking at the tools everyone needs, then we’ll tack on a smaller second list for folks that don’t have carpeted bedrooms but instead have hard floors like wood, laminate, or tile.

• A vacuum with a floor or upholstery attachment
• Microfiber cleaning cloths
• White vinegar
• Dish soap
• A small bowl

You might be wondering why people with carpet need cleaning cloths and dish soap—any low-to-the-ground surfaces in the carpeted room, such as baseboards, decorative trim on furniture, and such, still need to be wiped down in addition to the vacuuming.

O-Cedar EasyWring Mop & Bucket

Tile? Hardwood? This ultra-soft ultra-effective microfiber mop is perfect for all hard surface floors.

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For folks with hard floors, you’ll also need:

• A bucket and mop
• A towel

Wipe Down the Baseboards and Low Surfaces

Before we bust out the vacuum, let’s get the sneaky dust ‘n’ grime off the baseboards. Maybe you vacuum your bedroom so regularly that your baseboards are sparkling. We commend you, and you can skip this step. But if you’re in the same boat we are—your bedroom could use some serious deep cleaning after a long winter—it’s time to clean them off.

1. Fill a bowl with warm water, a splash of white vinegar, and a drop of dish soap. (If you have hard floors, go ahead and skip the bowl, simply prepping your bucket of mop water with more warm water, a half cup of vinegar, and a few more drops of dish soap.)
2. Grab a microfiber cleaning cloth, dampen it, and wipe down your baseboards. The baseboards behind large pieces of furniture can be tricky. If the piece is too heavy to safely move by yourself, consider using a broom handle to push your microfiber cloth along the lip of the baseboard so you don’t have to move the heavy piece in question.
3. Don’t forget the lesser-seen baseboards or trim work if they continue into your closets—those get pretty dusty, too, despite life behind the closet door.
4. While you’re down there, look for any other low-surfaces you might have missed earlier in our spring cleaning romp around the bedroom. Detail work on the bottom of furniture and the side rails of your bed should get a close look.

Vacuum the Floor

Vacuuming isn’t particularly complicated, but there’s a strategy to getting the most out of your time—especially when deep cleaning.

1. Start with the vacuum in the upright position, vacuum around all the major furniture and in the closets.
2. Use the vacuum hose with attachment to get under the furniture, including the bed. Using the larger flat floor attachment if you have one is ideal, especially for the large span of space under the bed—although if you have carpeted floors, the upholstery brush or stair tool that came with your vacuum can be useful for really pulling dust and hair out of the carpet.
3. Use the crevice tool or small brush to get into all the little spots behind dresser legs, behind the headboard, and so on.

Hard Floors? Time to Mop

The beauty of hard floors is that you can get them unbelievably clean. Carpet might be cozy under your feet, but it’s a mystery box when it comes to cleaning if you ask us. At some point, you just have to stop vacuuming and accept that you probably got all the dust. But with a damp mop, you can get hard floors literally shining.

1. Fill your bucket with warm water, a half cup of vinegar, and a few drops of dish soap.
2. Soak and then wring out the mop until it is damp but not dripping, and mop all the open space in your bedroom.
3. Use a damp microfiber cloth to swipe along under the dressers and other furniture where it is too awkward to maneuver the mop.
4. Grab your towel and immediately dry the floor. (We baby our hardwood floors and never leave even the slightest bit of water sitting on them, but there’s more to the towel drying effort than that.)
5. Take your very slightly damp towel and slide it under the bed as if you were laying it out to dry under there. Move the towel about on the hard floor under the bed to capture all the dust the vacuum was unable to fully snatch up. You’ll be surprised at how effective the scoot-the-flat-towel-around trick is at capturing the last of the dust.

You did it! We wrapped up the second week of the Spring Cleaning Challenge and now both your kitchen and bedroom are rocking a showroom shine. While it’s great to get all the different parts of your home clean, there’s certainly something to be said for a truly deep-cleaned and fresh bedroom—and now you get to enjoy falling asleep in one.

Enjoy your weekend and, if you’re coming into this marathon cleaning series for the first time today, be sure to follow along on our Spring Clean Challenge landing page or get the lessons, along with all our other great content, delivered right to your inbox!