spring cleaning {part one}.

Y'all. Can I first start by saying that I know I have been so bad about posting lately?! Excuses, excuses, but in the past week, the muffins had their big research project due, we were busily preparing for Open House, and it was the week leading up to Spring Break. Excuse A + Excuse B + Excuse C = mayhem.

But all of that is behind us now because it's the lovely break of spring and I am in spring cleaning h.e.a.v.e.n.! I have so many plans for us, y'all! After this week, we are all going to be spotlessly cleaned and ready for all things spring! Most of this week's posts are inspired by Anna Moseley over at 'Ask Anna'. If you don't already love her blog - you should. She has fabulous posts about how to clean everything around your house (even the stuff that helps us clean our humble abodes). Genius, y'all.

So my first spring cleaning project was to tackle our Dyson vacuum. Anna has such an easy-to-follow blog about cleaning your Dyson, so she really held my hand all the way through this yucky process (yes, it was major yuck). You should know that both Dyson and Anna recommend you clean your Dyson thoroughly every 6 months. Slap my wrist, because in my 1.5 years of Dyson ownership, I have NEVER cleaned her! Poor nugget.

Let's get going! I started out by emptying out the Dyson canister and removing the attachments from the body of the vacuum.

I placed the attachments straight into the dishwasher,

...and got to work on the canister! Y'all do you SEE how dirty it is?! Vom.

I placed the canister in the sink, and separated the yellow and black top from the clear canister...

...by pressing this grey button right next to the red latch that allows you to empty the canister.

I rinsed out the clear canister with water and then used a mild dish soap to wash it very well - embarrassingly, there was so much dust, the soap turned black! So glad I'm doing this!

After washing the clear canister, I ran water over the grey filter to rinse it thoroughly.

I then removed the two filters from the top and side of the body of the vacuum (labeled A and B on my vacuum) and held them both under running water until the water ran clear.

I set all of the pieces out to dry for at least 48 hours to ensure that everything is completely dry!

Next, I moved on to the brushes.

In order to access the brushes, I first located the lock/unlock screws on the bottom of my vacuum (they are grey, plastic "screws" that should be in a horizontal "locked" position before you start cleaning).

I turned the three screws to the vertical position, so that I could remove the plastic cover.

After removing the protective plastic cover, I was horrified at the state of my brushes!

Could my floors BE anymore disgusting?! Ah! Now here's where I had to get down and dirty. Everything was wound so tightly around the brushes, I had to use scissors to cut the thread, hair, etc. so that I could unwrap them from the cylindrical brushes. I told y'all it was disgusting!

But my "down and dirty efforts" paid off, because look at how clean the brushes are now!

I also rinsed the plastic cover off with water - it was surprisingly dusty as well!

• While this project took about an hour to complete, all of the work was extremely easy! Dyson makes it SO easy to disassemble the parts so that everything can be cleaned very well.
• Now that my cleaning tool is actually clean, our little abode can actually be cleaned properly! Hallelujah!

Happy Spring Break, y'all!