Ahhhh, spring! Bees are buzzing, flowers are blooming and I’m over here sweeping the floors. It’s spring cleaning time again.

This year, I’m searching for ways to cut to the chase and make my annual (okay, quarterly because kids) cleaning spree a little bit simpler. Plus, I’d love to find ways to make everything just a smidge more environmentally friendly.

Deep Clean Your House for Spring

To make your house sparkle, grab a few key supplies:

• white vinegar
• baking soda
• lemons
• Bon Ami cleanser
• Borax
• essential oils – lemon, lavender, citronella, etc.
• cloth dust rags

These are all products that are readily available in most grocery or big box stores. You can DIY your own dust rags from older t-shirts, cloth diapers or other soft clothes. We actually cut up diaper changing pad covers. The soft-yet-tough terry cloth scrubs off even the most stuck on of messes on the counters or walls. Yes, walls. Did I mention I’ve got kids?

Even with my sometimes messy kids underfoot, I actually use all of these cleaning techniques in my own house. And I keep on using them because they work!

Spring Clean Your Laundry Room

Start with your top-fill washing machine. Set it to the hottest and largest setting. Fill up your machine, then add a cup of white vinegar and 1/4 cup baking soda. Close the lid and let it agitate for 3-5 minutes. Then open the top again and let it sit for a few hours. When time’s up, dip a dust cloth into the water and wipe down all the exposed parts in the drum.

On a front load washer, add the vinegar and baking soda before you start the machine. Then let it go through a complete cycle on the hottest setting. When it’s done, use a dust cloth to wipe down the rubber seal around the door.

If you have counters in your laundry room, wipe them down with a mixture of vinegar, baking soda and your favorite essential oil. Use just a drop or two of the oil to cut the vinegar smell. Spray onto the counters and wipe with a dust cloth.

Cut Grime in Your Kitchen

I don’t know about you, but my kitchen sink stinks to high heaven after a few days of heavy dishwashing. All the food and bits of stuff gets stuck down in there and just plain smells.

When it gets really yucky, I peel a lemon. Yup, a lemon. I drop a few pieces of lemon peel into the garbage disposal. Then I run the water really hot and turn on the disposal until it’s flushed through.

For a deeper clean in your sink drain, add 1/4 cup baking soda to the drain and pour in a cup or so of vinegar. It should bubble and foam. That’s the cleaning action! Again, run the water really hot or pour some boiling water down the drain to flush. You can use this strategy on any sink in your house!

To really clean your counters, sprinkle a little bit of Bon Ami cleaner and use a smidge of water to mix it into a paste. Follow the directions on the container to rinse your counters clean. You can also use Bon Ami to clean pretty much any non-porous surface in your home, from the kitchen to bathrooms!

Make Windows & Glass Sparkle

You know what makes windows sparkle? Vinegar.

If you’ve been tracking so far, you’ll have noticed that vinegar is a theme in eco-friendly cleaning.

Create a mix of vinegar and water. Spritz it onto your windows, mirrors and any other glass surfaces in your home. Wipe clean with a dust cloth.

Kill Mold ASAP

Mold and mildew just love to take up residence in my showers and on my kids bath toys. They get really slimy, really quickly.

When I’m looking to get rid of mold in the shower or tub (and anywhere else), I squirt a little bit of vinegar onto the moldy places and let it sit. Then I rinse it off with really hot water.

For really stubborn mold or mildew, make a paste with a bit of baking soda and water. Scrub the spots that need extra attention, then repeat the vinegar mold removal steps. Rise with hot water.

For bath toys, run a hot bath. We’re talking scalding temperatures. Add a good bit of vinegar and let the toys soak in the water for a while. Then add some baking soda and let everything foam up a bit. After soaking the toys a little longer, drain the tub and rise each toy in hot water. Let them dry on some of your DIY dust clothes.

Tackle Tough Floors

Finish your cleaning up with a good clean floor. Grab some more vinegar and add about 1/2 cup to a gallon of hot water.

While it cools off just a touch, do a quick sweep of your floors to get up all the big crumbs and dry messes. Then mop as normal with the vinegar solution.

You can cut the vinegar smell by adding a few drops of essential oils to your floor solution. Literally, just a drop or two will do the trick.

To freshen up your carpets, sprinkle baking soda over them. Let it sit for a while. You could do this as the first step in your spring cleaning routine. Or, if you know no one will mess with it overnight and before you start cleaning, sprinkle your carpets before you go to sleep.

When you’re ready, just vacuum up the baking soda! The natural odor absorbers in the baking soda will capture the yucky smells and leave your carpets springtime fresh!

What are your spring cleaning tips and tricks? We’d love to check out your best ideas!

When my parents were house shopping, way back in the early 1980s, they made a list of possible properties. Then they went to each and every home to take a tour. And then, after weighing all the options and running the numbers, they made a decision. They took their time, were careful.

Cut to 2015. And I’m looking for a house across the country from where I currently live. There won’t be any in-person home tours for me, just a bunch of online listings with a ton of (possibly misleadingly staged) photos. My contact with the listing agent or home owner will be almost exclusively through email.

So far, we’ve been pretty lucky. There haven’t been any real issues for us yet, knock on wood.

Find a Rental Home from Far Away

How have we managed to hit the rental property lottery so often over the course of a decade of military life? Honestly, I don’t know.

But this year we’re on the hunt yet again. Except that this time there are several continents and an ocean in between our current location and where we’re looking for homes.

This year, we’re trying a few different techniques to find our next rental home from far away.

Start With the Basics

First, you need a place to move. As long as you’ve got a general next location, you’re golden. Take my advice, gained over the last 10 years, and do not house hunt before those orders drop. It just leads to disappointment all around.

Once you know where you’re headed, start narrowing down your possible options.

Here’s what we look for:

• short commute distance
• BAH rates
• schools
• playgrounds and parks
• running routes
• safety
• public transit

Once we’ve set up these parameters, it narrows down our search area. This allows us to focus on just one or two specific zip codes or a few neighborhoods instead of hunting everywhere.

All the Real Estate Apps

My first step in years past has been Craigslist. Even I’m cringing right now, typing the sentence. Even as recently as 2012, going the Cragislist route might have been okay. But between then and now, it’s gotten a good bit sketchier.

Which leads me to the apps. We’re talking Zillow, Trulia and MilitaryByOwner. Most properties are cross-posted, but there could be a rare gem that’s only listed on one of the apps. We’ve also noticed that sometimes the same property has different pictures on the different apps.

I really like MBO because it’s military specific. The homes listed as typically owned by military families, either active duty or retired personnel. And they’re looking for military tenants. You can also search by proximity to your preferred base.

I’m constantly scanning the search results on all three of my apps. I mix up my filters, switching up zip codes and rental prices.

Using the real estate search sites allows me to narrow down my search, excluding any houses that don’t fit my exact criteria. That saves me some heartache in the long run.

Power of Facebooking

Back in 2015, I found a home in the perfect location with the exact right features via Facebook. The current tenants, another military family, posted their rental property that was coming up for a new family. I reached out, sent a message and within just a few days that house was ours!

In just the last few years, tons and tons of Facebook groups have sprung up aiming to help families PCSing. They are location specific and members can post housing searches and listings.

These Facebook PCS-specific groups as well as more general military spouse groups create easy ways to grab houses before they hit the market. Plus, by using your connections, you’re able to rent a property that is already military family-approved!

Lots of Legwork

I love leg day at the gym, but don’t really enjoy chasing down real estate leads. Still, getting into the most ideal home for us does require a good bit of work.

With each promising house that pops up in the searches, I mark it. It goes onto the list of the day. My husband and I sit down to go over the options every night or so. the houses we decide to keep on the list each get an email via one of the apps.

Now, not every email we send doesn’t get a response. The people we do hear back from, we review those responses and decide which homes to pursue further.

This process of email, review, respond and pursue keeps on going until we find “the one.”

Enlist Extra Help

Now, in the past, we’ve done this mostly alone, with maybe a little help from Facebook connections and military spouse groups. That’s just not cutting it with an OCONUS move.

So this time around, we enlisted the expert advice of a Realtor. We chose someone who also happens to be a military spouse. She’s totally in touch with the unique concerns and considerations of this lifestyle. It’s been so helpful to have an extra set of eyes looking for properties!

Plus, should we need someone to visit a home or give us a neutral opinion, she’s right there for us. And our Realtor can also get paperwork started on our behalf.

Seriously, I don’t know why we didn’t go this route sooner!

How do you search for your next home when you’re far away? Share your tips and tricks!

By Marguerite Cleveland

     Now that my husband and I are facing retirement from the military, I’d like to share some things I wished I knew or would have done differently.

• Buy or make the measuring board that tracks your children’s growth. This cool idea wasn’t invented when I started out and it was so sad to paint over those measurements over the years. This way you can take it with you from duty station to duty station.
• Buy the Trailer or RV. I really wished we had done this our first big move all the way across the country as the travel pay would have almost paid for it. It would have been nice to have our own place to stay and carry a little more stuff when we have had to wait for housing or a place to live.
• Always take advantage of Temporary Lodging Expense(TLE). When you PCS you get a certain amount and days for travel and you don’t need receipts but to take TLE you must have a zeroed out lodging receipt which shows you have paid for the lodging. I’ve met so many people who have camped out in their house while waiting for the movers when they could have had a bed to sleep in each night. In addition to lodging it includes a meal allowance based on the number of dependents based on their age. You don’t get this at all if you don’t use it. It is good for 10 days, five at either end of a PCS move or you can break it up how you like up to 10 days. This is for CONUS moves; there are different rules for moving overseas.
• Keep a ledger with every address you live at. Bonus points for keeping the names and phone numbers of people you knew when living there. You will need this for security clearance updates, some job applications, if your child goes into the military and many more. It is nice to have it listed in one convenient place.
• Always travel with the bolts, screws and other small parts to put your furniture back together. Nothing is worse than trying to find which box those parts are in when trying to set up a bed when everyone is tired and ready for bed. I know people who have elaborate systems for color coding the moving boxes. I have never been that organized but I can see how useful that could be.
• Save every piece of military paper work EVERY PIECE. You cannot imagine how many times we’ve had to reference obscure paperwork over the years. My husband has a big binder for orders, awards, school certificates and then everything else goes in a box. He has had to verify he has attended a school and now facing retirement he has had to dig up quite a few things from his service.
• Always embrace your new duty station. I can remember a move to Fort Leavenworth when we were put in extremely small, substandard housing. At first glance it would appear to be a terrible assignment. It turned out to be one of my favorite. Everyone in the neighborhood had young kids the same age as mine and families would often do impromptu potlucks and we’d all eat outside to get out of our small spaces. There will always be a silver lining if you are willing to look for it.

     What are some things you wished you had known about military life that could have made it easier?

Marguerite Cleveland is a freelance writer who specializes in human interest and travel stories. She is a military brat, a veteran and now a military spouse.  Her military experience is vast as the daughter of a Navy man who served as an enlisted sailor and then Naval Officer. She served as an enlisted soldier in the reserves and on active duty, then as an Army Officer. She currently serves as a military spouse. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two sons. Visit her website www.PeggyWhereShouldIGo.com

By Marguerite Cleveland

     I am sure not many of you remember Pcs’ing before cellphones and Facebook but it was so tough to stay in touch with your military sisters with mail crossing or getting lost between new addresses. I love Facebook, it has given me a way to keep in touch and reconnect with people I know from all over the world. I also find Facebook pages or groups are a great way to learn about your new community and meet new friends. With the busy military lifestyle we live and the different time zones friends and family live in, Facebook provides a great way to keep up with what is going on when phone calls aren’t convenient or expensive plus there are photos and videos. In five minutes each morning, I can quickly post an update on what I am doing and then scroll through my feed and get updated on all my friends and family.

     One of the first groups you will want to join when you arrive at your new installation, especially if living on base, is your neighborhood page. If you know someone in the neighborhood you can often get added before you arrive. These are a wealth of helpful information from schools to local sports teams for your children. Military neighbors are the best and this has been my go to group for all kinds of help.

     I love to travel and a group of spouses set up a travel page for our area. When you move there is also this sense ‘I need to see as much as I can before moving again.’  This page streamlines the process with a group who is willing to share all the must sees in our area. We even have a few bloggers and writers that provide links to more in-depth descriptions of fun destinations to explore. I love just flipping through the posts to get ideas of things to do on the weekend.

     So how do you find Facebook pages and groups that are a good fit for you? Start by using the search function and putting in your installation followed by spouses. A quick search for Fort Stewart Spouses turned up 5 groups as well as the installation’s official Facebook page and the MWR page. Once you join one then Facebook will suggest additional options. Another way is to ask your fellow spouses who live in the area.    

     A caveat, when using Facebook make sure to monitor your settings to ensure your account is private. When using groups or pages pertaining to the military use private or secret groups that vet their members. Remember OPSEC. Just use good common sense, if you want to meet someone you haven’t met before use caution and meet in a public place. Consider meeting at a location on your installation, then you know they have been vetted to have access to the base.

     Facebook is a great resource for military spouses.  How have you used Facebook to navigate this crazy life we lead?    

Marguerite Cleveland is a freelance writer who specializes in human interest and travel stories. She is a military brat, a veteran and now a military spouse.  Her military experience is vast as the daughter of a Navy man who served as an enlisted sailor and then Naval Officer. She served as an enlisted soldier in the reserves and on active duty, then as an Army Officer. She currently serves as a military spouse. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two sons. Visit her website www.PeggyWhereShouldIGo.com

Every three years, I swear that I’m going to do it. I’ll actually organize the house to PCS better, to make things more efficient. I’ll sort, store, trash and donate starting six months out from our move. I swear I’ll be super prepared!

And yet, here we are, 3 months from our next move with a house that is even more of a disaster than the last PCS. All my promises of doing better, organizing more effectively, apparently disappeared along the way.

But this time I don’t have the luxury of just letting things go again. I need to get my house into optimal PCS mode.

Organize Your House to PCS Better with Pro Tips

It’s crunch time. We’re coming up on this move sooner than later; the days are literally speeding by!

So I called in a pro, Melissa Rogers of Modified by Melissa. She’s an organization guru! Plus, as a military spouse, Melissa totally gets the need to be ultra organized to prevent PCS disasters.

Make Papers a Priority

Melissa’s number one tip is to sort and separate your paperwork and documents before the movers arrive.

So, good news for me! We’ve been doing this for years! I’d still like to go back through and weed out the documents we no longer need and pull out the ultra important stuff.

Paperwork that should be hand carried includes birth and marriage certificates, health records (a digital file is fine), professional licenses, insurance, and anything else that’s irreplaceable. If you’re traveling with a pet, keep copies of their health documents with you, too.

Melissa recommends sorting and storing these valuable papers in a binder or folder with lots of pockets. Another great option is to scan all of these important documents and store them digitally. Even if you need to “official” copy with a seal, the digital files at least create a papertrail.

Liquids & Lotions

I’ve got a few bottles of half used perfume and lotion floating around at all times. That stuff is expensive! I’m not about to trash it just because we’re moving. But I also don’t necessarily want to waste precious suitcase space on those toiletries either.

However, actually packing your liquids can be iffy.

To help your spillable stuff make it safely, Melissa recommends that you put a bit of plastic wrap under the cap, over the opening. Tighten the cap down over the plastic wrap. It will create a seal and stop spills.

Another option is to place your liquids into sealable plastic bags. If something does spill, it will at least be contained in the bag!

To help you unpack later, try to sort your liquids by type: cleaning supplies, soaps, lotions, perfumes and so on. Sorting this way will also prevent your stuff from getting mixed up or spoiled if spills happen. Plus, you’ll be able to quickly place each bag into the correct spot when you unpack!

Keep Things Separated

Did you know that packers will just pack everything in one area? Yup, if it’s in the same general area then it’s all going in the same box! This explains why my linens keep ending up with the board games.

According to Melissa, it can help to sort your belongings and put some space between things.

Consider putting all your towels and other linens together, maybe mixing in other blankets or clothes. Keep artwork and other wall decor in the same section. Basically, if you want things packed together, put them in the same spot to begin with. And if you’d prefer to keep your knives out of the breakables, put them far apart on packing day!

Clean Out Your Closets

I’ve been making passes through my clothes (and my kid’s clothes) for the last six or so months. I’m trying to weed out things that we no longer wear or that are too small or just plain worn out.

I always seem to skip cleaning out my pantry and supply closets though. Which leaves me with boxes of random non-perishables and half-empty bottles of Windex.

Before the movers come, make a sweep of your kitchen. They’ll pack anything that it’s a liquid. We learned the hard way when we opened up a neatly wrapped package containing a 1/4 full bag of white sugar.

Melissa recommends that you pull out anything you really don’t want to see again. Some items to consider removing include anything open, expired, or that you plan on eating between pack out and move out.

Do the same hard edit to your cleaning supply closets.

Trash or “regift” whatever you don’t want to take with you.

Keep the Movers Out

Truth time: you’re gonna need to keep some things secure during the pack out process. Documents, packed suitcases and those last minute cleaning supplies are all things that you 100% do not want the movers to pack.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about orders or passports getting mixed into moving boxes.

To prevent that type of calamity, keep everything you’ll need after the packers leave and on the road (or on the plane) in a separate locked room. Put a sign on the door to keep movers out, too. Living OCONUS? Consider adding a translated sign in the local language, too.

What are your best PCS organization tips and tricks? We’d love to learn some new ways to have a smooth move!