OUT OF SIGHT, out of mind…

That’s how many of us treat the attic. After all, the attic can be a place we don’t visit very often. A hotspot for clutter, clearing out the attic can be a major challenge. 

In this week’s instalment of Taskmaster, we’re looking at the best ways to clean your attic, and organise it so that keeping it tidy becomes a less daunting task. Or, dare we say, it even a fun one.

Read on for tips on how keep your attic clean.

Bust that dust

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If you haven’t cleaned your attic in a while, the chances are that it is going to be layered with dust when you get up there. In preparation for moving things around, you’ll want to give every surface — including the tops of boxes and storage contained — a good dusting. A handheld hoover is the best way to go about this, and if you’re sensitive to dust, you might even want to wear an N95 mask and goggles. 

Getting rid of the heavy dust will make the rest of the project much easier. That’s why it’s the best place to start. 

Take out the trash

Most of us use our attics for storage, and there’s no doubt that you’ll have plenty of valuable things up there that are worth keeping. However, it’s almost a certainty that there will be plenty of loose stuff that has been tossed up there over there years that you don’t need. 

Before you start poring over boxes and making the tough choices as to what stays and what goes, weed out the loose items that are definitely for the bin. Keep a large bin bag by your side as do your first round of hoovering so you can empty the attic of any loose mess, giving you a clearer path to reorganising and streamlining the stuff that you actually need.

Box clever 

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Now that the attic is free of heavy dust and whittled down to its main contents, it’s time to start clearing everything out. Ideally, this is a two-person job as it’s safest to pass boxes or storage containers down to someone on the level below rather than try to carry them down yourself. 

By taking down boxes and going through them two at a time, you’ll be able to efficiently establish what can stay and what can go. With this approach to decluttering, you’ll move faster and you’ll clear up space in your storage containers, which will eventually mean more space in your attic when you move everything back up. But we’re not quite there yet…

The deep clean

After the boxes have been brought to the level below, it’s time to treat your attic to a proper deep clean. Moving boxes will have kicked up more dust, so now it’s time to bring in the heavy-duty hoover, go over the floor and the walls, and into every corner of the ceiling. 

Before moving everything back into the attic, make sure it has all been thoroughly dusted. Ideally, use large, see-through, tupperware containers that are well labelled, so in future you’ll know exactly what’s what. Tupperware containers are also easy to keep clean compared to cardboard boxes, requiring a simple bit of a general surface spray, a wet microfibre cloth, and something dry to remove the dust.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be ready to move these spotless boxes into your newly spotless attic, cleaner and more spacious than ever before.