Day 3 - Get a big trash bag and...

Grab the trash from each of your cans in your home and throw it in. Or if you don't want to waste a big bag, just grab the bags from each bathroom, the office, bedrooms, the kitchen, laundry room, nursery and anywhere else you have your cans. Then walk them straight out to the garbage can for pick-up. This one is simple, straightforward and will help relieve your house of any funky smells emanating from these cans. Bonus! If it's warm enough outside, take 10 minutes and spray out some of your cans to keep them fresher longer.

Day 4 - Grab your broom and...

Get to sweeping out areas you rarely touch. One of these that is a common area full of things to sweep up is the entryway. Both our garage entrance, the front door, and the back patio all have things that pile up that need to be swept. So the broom needs to be brought to task in these areas. 10 minutes is more than enough to tackle these three spots in our home, but if you have more or larger areas to clean, focus on just 1 for this 10-minute set. Get to sweeping up for the day!

Day 5 - Get some wipes or surface cleaner and...

Find three surfaces to empty and wipe down. These could be a kitchen island, a stairway railing, a bathroom sink, a kitchen counter or any number of areas. They just need to be cleaned, and they can be done relatively quickly. This has an incredibly positive benefit both regarding smell, sanitization, good feelings and more. Just get those surfaces clean if you want to stay sane and be the best parent out there. Honestly, if your surfaces were already cleaned off, you could probably get to about 8 or more surfaces sanitized quickly. In our house, stuff piles up relatively quickly and for some reason, spraying down doesn't work so well on piles, why I wonder?

Day 6 - Open a drawer and...

Organize it; this one is pretty simple! You could start with your t-shirt drawer. Make sure they are all folded, put them in order, get rid of ones you don't wear anymore and make sure they all smell fresh and clean. Or you could do your junk drawer, pull it all out and either take it to where it belongs in the house or throw it away. Because who has a junk drawer that doesn't need to be cleaned out to make room for more junk?! Lastly, you could open a random kitchen drawer and put everything in the right way; everything is clean. Some of this may sound a little OCD, but it will help you rest just a wee bit more soundly. Also, remember you have 144 sets of 10 minutes each day to get at this stuff.

Day 7 - Pick a bookshelf and....

Choose one specific shelf and go to town on it. And by saying that, I mean to organize it, dust it and just make it perfect. If it has books, categorize them, alphabetize them, or color coordinate them. If it has trinkets or other items on it, dust them, dust under them and double check to make sure you need them. This cleaning will help you clear your mind of the gunk and will also help keep the air cleanliness of your home much better. Get to it!

Day 8 - Open the trunk of your car and...

Pull everything out to vacuum it and then re-organize and sort all of the things you found. This does a few things to clean up your life if you're like us, things pile up in your car, and then you can't find them when you need them. So this will help there for sure. If you have random bulky items back there, it may help improve your gas mileage too, although I'm not sure how many heavy items you'll have. Then the vacuuming is an obvious win, so when you put things in, they don't come out dirty. One way to help smooth this process out is to try out a fit and hard surface floor mat, we have a Toyota Rav 4 and chose WeatherTech. They are a dream and have saved the carpet under them many times over!

Day 9 - Dig through email and...

Organize 50-100 emails. Here are the few different things to can do to alleviate that inbox bloat. One would be to delete them. If you don't need it, don't care about it and don't give a hoot n' holler, get it out of there. The next option would be to archive it into a folder. Make quick and easy folders in your email to file. I suggest a few broad folders, so you don't have 99 folders to dig through every time you need something. A final option for an email is to not only delete it but to unsubscribe; this ensures that stream of crud won't be in your inbox forever. If you want to make this easier, try UnrollMe. It will enhance and simplify the unsubscribe process and will help organize that inbox!

Day 10 - Open your microwave and...

Clean it out. This will help your health and will help you not cross-pollinate your food so much because that is GROSS. The microwave is a catch-all for food and it doesn't have to stay dirty and yucky. So for this 10 minutes, we'd suggest to open the door, look around in that cavern of food heating, get something to wipe it with and just do it! One of the products Molly and I use to save this cleaning need a bit is a food cover. It works like a charm and is really quite easy to clean. Check it out here and see if it is right for you.

Day 11 - Open the cabinet under your kitchen sink and...

Pull it all out, clean it all off, clean the surface under it and just do a general overhaul. There is a high likelihood that you might have things that are expired, things that could be combined, and things that could be thrown away. This makes room for either nothing or new cleaning products you actually will use.

Day 12 - Put your diaper bag in front of you and...

Dump it all out so you can start fresh. Diaper bags are like big junk drawers that you carry around with you. If you never have the time to exchange what's in there or clean it out, then it will pile up forever. So we suggest taking ten minutes on this project for sure! Take some of those stinky clothes and put them in the wash, boil the binkys, clean out the old milk bottles and change out the snacks for new and tasty ones. A little time spent will lead to a lot of reward next time to stick your hand in your diaper bag for a quick grab. Plus, you might just save your back the next time you carry it because it is sure to be much lighter.