Spring Cleaning

After enjoying my visit with my mom and then driving to and from Ventura County for a lesson, I just didn't feel like unhooking my trailer once I had Izzy unloaded. Instead, I decided to take it home so that on Sunday morning I could do some much needed spring cleaning.

At our old house, I could park my trailer on the street out front and take my time. Our current neighborhood HOA doesn't allow for overnight street parking, so getting the trailer home and back again in one day makes for a lot of driving. We've lived here for four and a half years, and I had never brought the trailer home. Instead, I've lugged the vacuum and other cleaning supplies out to the ranch and dragged all of the bedding and towels home to launder. Then I had to do the reverse - take the clean laundry back to the ranch and bring home the vacuum and cleaning supplies.

So much easier to clean when it's right in front of my driveway.

While it got the job done, it was a pain in the patootie to do. Besides a lot of driving back and forth, I had to unload everything out onto the dirt while I cleaned. Invariably I ended up tracking dirt back into the trailer. For this trip, I left my truck and trailer parked just outside of our main gate - it's a quiet road well outside of town, so it was perfectly safe, and my husband picked me up with all of the laundry which I did that evening after my lesson. 

​In the morning, my husband drove me out the front gate to my truck and trailer so that I could bring it home to clean. With everything already freshly washed, I tackled the vacuuming and wiping down of every single surface. The inside was a wreck. There were plastic water bottles bouncing around, a broken coffee mug, and piles of musty show pads that hadn't been washed after the last show. Besides needing to clean all of that, the floor and carpet were both really dusty. The bathroom also needed a good scrubbing as did the doors and windows. 

Once everything is out, it's pretty easy to clean.

I unloaded all of my show pads, chairs, and show paraphernalia and got to work. I vacuumed the bedroom area, the bench seat and every inch of floor. With a bucket of steaming hot water and a soft cloth, I cleaned the kitchen and bathroom and then wiped down the floor.

I recently heard the term, The Ikea Effect, which is a "cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created." The term comes from a 2011 study where it was discovered that "labor alone can be sufficient to induce greater liking for the fruits of one's labor." It is amazing how much more you like your stuff after you've given it a good cleaning. 

Recently, a Facebook friend and her husband bought a brand new, super swanky living quarters trailer. AWC shared a great YouTube video where a woman shows the most amazing way to make the bed in your trailer. If you've ever had to do it, you know that it is a full on workout. My bedroom area has a really low roof, much lower than in the video, so making the bed is very challenging. This video shows how to get it done in less than five minutes.

After washing all of my bedding, I "made" one of the spare beds in my house with the trailer's sheets and blankets. As suggested in the video, I rolled everything up into a tight package and carried it down to the trailer. It took me less than three minutes to make the bed using the roll up strategy. Thank you, AWC, for the best life hack ever. I couldn't believe how well it worked.

You can see how little headroom there is.

In less than an hour, the inside of the trailer was sparking clean. I took a quick inventory of what was running low - trash bags, spoons and forks, and paper towels, and replaced them. I reorganized the show stuff, dusted off the chairs and RV mat, and put everything back in. Since I was working on pavement, I didn't track in any extra dirt.

Once I was finished, I quickly changed into riding breeches and headed out to the ranch. I parked and unhooked the trailer, and then had time leftover to ride Izzy.

From now on, I'm bringing the trailer home to clean it; it was so much easier!