House Cleaning Archives - Page 11 of 13

House Cleaning

Keeping your carpets clean with regular cleaning

Posted on August 28, 2012 by owner

With all elements of house cleaning in every room as you clean dirt, dust and grime will, despite your best efforts fall downwards eventually ending up on the floor. You may use a duster and try to collect all dust but some will inevitably drift away. Crumbs and bits of food from surfaces in your kitchen and dining room you may try to collect with a cloth or dustpan but again some mess will always end up on the floor. This is why when doing your house cleaning cleaning your floors is the most important job.

With tiles, wood and laminate floors cleaning them is relatively easy, though sometimes some scrubbing may be needed. With carpets trying to scrub can cause damage and it isn’t as simple as sweeping or vacuuming to get up all signs of dirt.

Vacuum cleaning is important though and it is important to do it regularly to save you work long term. If you are cleaning rooms including wiping sides and dinging tables make sure that when you finish you always vacuum. Leaving dirt on the carpet will simply allow it to drift down into the carpet and get walked in.

If any food is left on your carpet problems may well be worse and staining and odor may be difficult to remove once left.

What about when your carpet is getting very dirty though, it might look a little grubby or it could be that it smells far from fresh.

In either case a steam clean is going to be your first option, steam cleaning kills bacteria and loosens dirt, allowing small particles to then be vacuumed, steam can also get rid of general stains and tarnish, though may not always get up more stubborn stains. For house cleaning in general a steam cleaner is hugely useful and is an investment worth considering, though they are also available to hire or you may well have a friend who will lend one to you for your home cleaning.

If you drop something on your carpet it can be a nightmare, you of course should act quickly but this may not be enough, its also often at the worst times, such as when you have guests over for dinner, that stains occur and though you’d like to drop everything and get down on your hand s and knees an start scrubbing you can’t.

How to deal with a stain depends on the type of stain, for liquids such as wine and juice soaking up the moisture is important, if the moisture is soaked up before it can dry completely then there should be little staining. Use salt or soda crystals to soak up liquids but remove them and replace them several times in quick succession rather than letting the liquid dry within the slat crystals still on your carpet.

With oil and food stains where the substance is oily the problem is oil clings and holds the stain with it. Although soap or washing up liquid can help Swarfega or other degreasers generally used in garages and auto-shops are useful to have around the home for house cleaning and take the grease and the stain right out of a carpet, as well as clothes and table clothes, ideally used before the oil dries on but even if a stain has gone unnoticed and been left.

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Post School Holiday House Cleaning

Posted on August 15, 2012 by owner

In the summer it is tough to keep up with house cleaning if you have children at home that are constantly creating mess and taking up your time. When children come to go back to school though it is time to get your home back in order, however this can take time and can be as intensive as a spring clean as you get everything back where it belongs and try and get children’s rooms back to some semblance of organization.

If you try to get your house cleaning done just before the children go back to school you may think you’ll have it done and out of the way so when the children are in school again you can get back to your normal daily routine. You may even think that your children, bored as they can be towards the end of the holidays, may want to help you or be able to tidy their own rooms. One problem of course is that you get something tidy and it could easily be back to messy again as soon as you turn your back.

If you get your children to help tidy their rooms though it can sometimes be more effort than just waiting until they return to school and doing it yourself. Children have a tendency while tidying to want to play with everything they come across, they also often find toys and games they forgot they had and so start actually getting out things that were put away: and if not while your helping them tidy their rooms then they may decide to do this afterwards. Leave your children to it to tidy their rooms without your help and progress is often slow, how they put items away can often be inefficient and it can be advantageous for you to know where they are putting things, partly in case they forget.

Also it is good to clean as you tidy with children’s rooms, as with any part of your house cleaning, thereby not just putting things away but making sure they are put away clean. Items and surfaces can be dusted, and disinfected if needed, clothes can be organized and dirty washing taken away, you may also want to pack away some summer clothes.

Doing house cleaning jobs including children’s rooms yourself once they are out of the way can be less stressful if you are going to have the spare time during the day, though one disadvantage is that children coming home from school and finding their rooms tidied often seem to want the one thing you have put away in the wrong place and so proceed to tear the place apart looking for it.

Of course in some cases the toys, games or other possessions they are looking for can’t be found as they are gone, one very real advantage of doing post school holiday house cleaning with the children in school is you can throw old items away that you think they no longer need or use without them being able to object: just keep items stored away somewhere such as the loft for a while just in case they are more attached than you realize and do want something back, often though after a few months when they haven’t asked you where something is this is good enough proof that they won’t miss it.

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Outsourcing Cleaning and Janitorial to a Local Cleaning Company

Posted on August 5, 2012 by owner

If you do your cleaning internally, either with a dedicated member of staff or using your other staff you are almost certainly wasting resources when you could outsource your cleaning functions as well as other janitorial and maintenance work to a maid service or similar.

If you are having cleaning done by your other staff you are going to be taking up time when they could be focusing on their core jobs that are what create value for your business, so don’t just think of the cost of the wages of those staff, who may well be paid more than the hourly rate for a maid service anyway, it is also costing you the value of the work they would produce.

If you have a dedicated cleaner you are also probably wasting money though, it may seem on the face of it that the hourly rate you pay a cleaner is less than you would pay a maid service but there are extra costs. For a start how about the extra payroll costs, you may be paying for various benefits that you give to all employees even if they work a few hours each week including holiday pay and sick pay.

How to Enjoy your Summer Cleaning

Posted on July 17, 2012 by owner

Clean your bathroom: then use it before anyone else has a chance to make a mess

You can’t get away from the job of cleaning your bathroom, including scrubbing the sink and the bath itself; you also can’t get away from the fact that it won’t stay clean for long, especially if you are in a hard water area and a residue builds up fast.

Make sure that after your hard work then you are the one to enjoy the fruits of you house cleaning work and get to enjoy a nice relaxing bath in your nice clean bathtub: you deserve it and it should make your house cleaning a little easier with something to look forward to.

As you clean your house take entertainment with you

House cleaning can be very repetitive and very boring, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be entertained while you do it though. You may well watch TV while you iron but if you have a laptop or tablet computer you can do the same by taking them round the house with you and watching a DVD or just something online as you clean. If this sounds a little awkward for what you have in mind then try using a mp3 player and don’t limit yourself to music but consider an audio-book, which can make time fly.

DIY Tips: How to Clean Hardwood Floors

Posted on June 12, 2012 by owner

Hardwood floors are low maintenance but certainly not zero maintenance, like any surface that is part of your home cleaning they will of course need regular cleaning to get up dirt and spills and every now and again they may need more extensive maintenance.

A hardwood floor that comes with a finish on it or has been waxed is especially easy to clean and wipe with a cloth or mop or sweep. The finish stops dirt getting ingrained but the surface itself needs looking after and is in many ways more fragile than the wood it protects.

If a hardwood floor comes with a finish don’t add wax or other treatments to it, until the original finish really is past it. Also be careful what cleaners you use, they should be non abrasive and if possible PH neutral or slightly acidic, in which case it is important to wipe residue away afterwards.

The best thing however for hardwood floor cleaning is to sweep regularly wipe with a simple wet cloth or mop as soon as any spills have been made. This way dirt won’t have a chance to get walked in which can not only stick and make a floor look dirty but damage the surface through scratching away the finish.

With varnished wood the varnish itself will eventually wear down but is easy to reapply so you shouldn’t need to worry too much; wax is better at protecting the wood from moisture but can be slightly more tacky and mean dirt sticks and the wax itself starts to look dirty.

You could of course simply leave your wood bare or stained, yes wood can get damaged and wooden floors are expensive but if you have proper wooden floors, and not veneers, then any damage can be got rid of by sanding or stripping down the boards.

With harder woods especially though the wood shouldn’t get damaged easily and will age with time in such a way that it will develop character, especially with a wood like oak that will also age through darkening.

If your hardwood floor does need cleaning more thoroughly to remove trodden in dirt and stains then use a specific hardwood floor cleaner, these are formulated to leave your floor looking not just clean but add to the luster while some floor products, especially those containing ammonia, may dull wooden floors.

The main thing that can cause serious damage to wooden floors is water, the effect on plain hardwood floors is more that water can stain, water has more of an effect though on soft wood such as pine and on stained and varnished floors where these can be damaged themselves. Do make sure that if you use water to clean a floor dry it up and it is better to use a damp cloth rather than more water; if you do spill water accidentally then do clean it up.

Hardwood floors should make your home cleaning easier overall but it is easy to ignore them, remember that if you do ignore the needs of your wooden floors you may have more work long term.

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House cleaning for summer time

Posted on May 21, 2012 by owner

As long as the weather’s nice you won’t want to be indoors much at all let alone doing your house cleaning while the rest of your family and friends play outside or go to the beach in summer.

Here are a few tips to make sure that your house stays reasonably clean and tidy but you still don’t get to Autumn and find the Summer’s over and you never got round to enjoying the weather as much as you planned.

First of all prepare, if you are going to spring clean leave it until towards the end of the spring so less will build up by the time summer starts. Clean and dust as well as getting your oven, fridge and other appliances clean.

If you have children they are likely to spend a lot of the summer outside and so bedrooms may have a chance of staying a little more tidy, but start tidy and there’s a better chance they won’t just dump things as they come in and out. Also before the summer comes pack away winter things, things you don’t use in summer including clothes just get in the way and create more work for you.

One of the biggest summer cleaning jobs is keeping floors clean, with people coming in and out a lot and bringing in dust, dirt and grass floors can suffer. Choose one main way in and out of your home and get people to stick to it. By doing this you will have less floors to clean, ideally it will be the way in closest to your kitchen and a bathroom, which are the main things people come in for. You may want to get out summer toys and games for the garden though and keep them close by the door or in a shed to make them more easily accessible without people having to traipse around the house.

Doormats are good but you’ll have to be strict to make sure people use them. If you are having a lot of people over you could have a runner going from the door to the garden to the bathroom and kitchen to keep carpets clean, this could even be old cardboard that you throw out at the end of the day: this is especially important if you have a pool and will have wet people coming in and out as well.

Think about what parts of your home will see the most use during the summer too, it may be easier to move objects likely to get dirty or damaged out of the way until the summer is over.

Then of course if this still seems too much you can take your family for days out: as long as there’s no one at home they can’t make mess meaning you don’t have to chase after them and keep things tidy. Days at the beach or at a park are great and if friends invite you to garden parties accept: you could even take it in turns with friends to have each other’s children over so they can only make a mess at one place at a time.

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Keeping hard floors cleaner and cleaning more efficiently

Posted on May 8, 2012 by owner

With house cleaning there are some jobs you can’t get away from and can’t really make easier, dust will always end up settling on surfaces and men will never learn to lift the toilet seat it seems. With other jobs though you can save yourself a lot of work by planning ahead and through how you clean. One of these house cleaning time saving opportunities is your hardwood floors.

Hardwood floors are a big job within anyone’s house cleaning regime and so there is a lot of potential time to be saved.

One obvious option is to have a no shoes policy, this isn’t always practical and with dogs and children especially it may have little effect, dogs especially bring in dirt on their paws normally but children aren’t perfect.

Rather than a no shoes policy a clean shoes, and paws, policy may be more practical. Make sure you have floor mats at every door, don’t forget your back door. Not all mats are the same though and some are great at soaking up moisture, others good at brushing off dried on mud and dirt. The best option is to have a brush mat outside each door on the doorstep to get the worst off shoes and then another mat to soak up moisture on the inside. Then of course you have to make sure people use both: this can be tricky with dogs though.

The moisture soaking doormat will help if your dog doesn’t just leap over it, keep a towel by the door though and try to get up the worst of the dirt and dog scented moisture as possible to make all of your house cleaning and not just the hardwood floors much cleaner.

Other ways to stop your dog bringing in as much dirt includes trimming the fur on their legs that soaks up mud, water and also grass burs and other organic matter that then gets strewned around your home. Also trim your dog’s nails often to stop getting scratches on your floors that then allow in dirt to the unprotected wood.

When it actually comes to cleaning your floors within your house cleaning routine start with sweeping and vacuuming, sweeping makes vacuuming easier and better at getting up the little bits of dust and dirt with any larger bits and pieces gone.

After vacuuming clean any remaining marks and dirt, this may seem nonsensical to do it this way round but if you try to wipe up marks when the vacuuming isn’t done you can actually make matters worse by getting dry dirt damp that would just vacuum up otherwise.

You may not even need to clean up any extra dirt after sweeping and vacuuming, if you do then a quick damp cloth may work, don’t forget though that a lot of spills will mop up much more easily if done sooner rather than later. Rather than try and clear up a mess while the rest of the floor is still dirty though if possible bring forward the hard floor part of you’re your house cleaning so you can do the job properly straight away.

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House cleaning health benefits

Posted on April 23, 2012 by owner

If you suffer from allergies such as Hayfever the temptation may be to shut yourself up indoors to keep out the pollen, insects and other causes of your allergies. Sometimes though the causes of allergies can be inside your home and opening up your windows and letting in some fresh air may be the best thing for you: to make your home a safe haven you must clean and clean while thinking specifically about getting rid of causes of allergy symptoms.

Changing how you go about your house cleaning may take a little getting used to but will be worth the effort if it leaves you feeling better and lets you relax symptom free in your own home. You may well also find you sleep a lot better and if you snore this too could be caused by allergens in your home causing swelling and dryness in your mouth and throat as you sleep or excess mucus.

If you have really bad allergy problems you may even want to consider taking some really drastic actions in your house cleaning and removing those things that are difficult to clean and which attract dust and dirt. This could mean getting rid of your carpets even, perhaps only in the bedroom to begin with, even if you use rugs instead these are much easier to keep clean.

You may though get away with simply hovering though, when you clean any rooms start by dusting from the top down so dust eventually ends up on the floor, now afterwards you should of course vacuum but leave the room for a half hour to an hour before doing this: it lets the dust that is swept up into the air when you dust float down on to the floor ready to be vacuumed up.

Some dust gets deep down into your carpet as do spores and pollen from outside and also other dirt such as bits of food, which give off a nasty odor and mold spores. A steam clean should be done at least every six months as part of your house cleaning to keep your carpets clean of allergens and other nasties that may cause you problems.

Another thing that you may not have thought of is the furnace in your home if you have one, this will usually have a filter to collect the soot and dirt created but after a short time this won’t work as efficiently. If you have no allergies you can change this less frequently and not notice anything but if you or your family do have allergies you should change this filter much more often than recommended: maybe every six months or less if you start having problems again.

We can tell you to dust and vacuum every day and have a regular regime for your house cleaning but that is not always possible and especially hard to get to surfaces may have to be done less often. In that case though you should try this tip for your house cleaning to stop dust ever settling: use either alcohol, mixed 50:50 with water, or diluted fabric conditioner on glass surfaces to actually repel rather than attract dust: the alcohol option can even be used on your TV screen and can get off any dirty marks in the process.

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Cleaning your home every day takes only 19 minutes

Posted on April 12, 2012 by owner

Can house cleaning really be done in 19 minutes? If you have children you will know they can make it messy again in much less time so why not?

Professional house cleaners and hotel maids use similar systems to this to get cleaning done quickly but importantly with the most important things never missed. If your home hasn’t been cleaned for sometime then house cleaning will take longer than 19 minutes unfortunately, what the following guide will help you do is to keep a house clean in 19 minutes when you do it every day. Overall though 19 minutes house cleaning every day will mean you spend far less time than if you leave most of your home to be cleaned once a week or even less often. For a start dirt and mess that can be wiped away easily if it has been there for less than 24 hours will become stubborn and ingrained if left for longer and may even stain.

No where is this point on wiping the case more clear than with sinks and baths; limescale deposits, grease and soap scum, sometimes when wiping down everyday you won’t even notice you are wiping these up but they will quickly build up if left leaving sparkling sinks and baths looking a dulled mess.

The kitchen is a room that should take you only 4 and a half minutes to clean per day if you follow the following check list: wipe down the sink and draining board straight after doing dishes, keeping it constantly clean with about 30 seconds work. Wipe down counters and your stove as soon as you have cooked, it will take a minute for each including rinsing the cloth as food won’t have dried on. Then sweep or vacuum your kitchen floor taking two minutes and preventing the need to mop by stopping dirt getting trodden into the floor.

The kitchen is the most time consuming part of house cleaning normally followed by your bathroom, that though need only take 2 minutes. When you wash your hands wash the sink too, use a wipe or even just a sheet of toilet tissue to remove any dirt that has come off of your hands. There’s then no reason why you can’t also wipe over some other items. Wiping your bath, toilet rim, shower screen and mirror will take around a minute. You may also want to use a mist spray and a squeegee on your shower screen and mirror to remove any deposits from water or other mess such as toothpaste specks.

The other rooms on your house cleaning list are then a doddle, make a bed in about two minutes, usually less, fold or hang any clothes that have been left out, or put them in the laundry in a further four minutes. Then go through each room dusting, simply dust on to the floor as next you will need to vacuum. While dusting though straighten out any items such as ornaments, magazines, coasters etc as you go. Lastly on your house cleaning list is vacuuming, if you think vacuuming is time consuming try doing it every day with no built up balls of fluff or trodden in dirt for a pleasant surprise.

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10 Tips To Make Spring Home Cleaning Easy And Quick

Posted on March 28, 2012 by owner

Plan and set goals, and include breaks

Plan what you want to get done in detail but be sensible with the goals you set. Also remember that some jobs don’t need doing every year, lofts and sheds for example may need a clear out every two or three years; other rooms may be in need of a de-clutter every year, especially if you have children.

When you schedule home cleaning tasks allow adequate time and allow time for breaks,

Spring cleaning can be back breaking work and resting before aches and pains become a problem will mean you actually get much more done.

Plan what you need and then head to the shops

Think carefully about every home cleaning task and plan what you will need. Remember cleaning products such as sprays, polish and creams but also supplies including clothes, brushes and gloves. Once you have a list head to the shops and try and get everything in one go to save time; if you need a lot it may be worth going to a specialist store with more choice and better prices.

Choose a day when you will remain undisturbed

If you can plan to do your cleaning on days when you will remain undisturbed. If you have children wait until they are at school or if they are younger get someone such as a grandparent to look after them. Having time to yourself to do home cleaning at your own pace can actually be quite relaxing if you rarely get time to yourself.

Work from the top down

In each room start at the top and work down; though you may also want to start at the top of your house a d work down, often leaving your kitchen to last. In each room though during your home cleaning starting at the top means that all cobwebs, dust and dirt that falls will eventually get down to the carpet where it can then be vacuumed up.

Tidy items away first

Tidy away any items not in their places before starting, if things are in the wrong rooms or out of place put them away.

Don’t be afraid to throw items away

Don’t be afraid to throw items away, if in doubt put it aside and then go through everything later. Once something has been taken out and put to be thrown you are less likely to want to put it back into your newly clean and tidy room: unless you really do want it.

Move items out of the way first

In each room where objects will get in your way such as rugs, furniture and ornaments clear them away first rather than as you go to give your self a clean run with your home cleaning.

Entertain yourself as you go

Home cleaning can get boring but keep some form of entertainment with you: it could be an MP3 player with a great playlist loaded on to it or perhaps a laptop with a favorite DVD in which you can take with you around the house.

Avoid using more chemicals than you need to

Using lots of chemical based cleaning products, they can leave you feeling unwell and make eyes and skin sting after prolonged use: choose products with natural ingredients if possible and avoid bleach especially.

In future keep on top of things with a weekly schedule

Once finished you will want to keep your home looking tidy; create a schedule to keep it tidy and try and get other members of your household to do their part as well.

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