House Cleaning Tips

House Cleaning Tip # 1: Don’t make yourself or your family members slaves to your house.

You and your family are the best judges of how often you need to clean your house. The size of your home, the number and ages of family members, whether any of you have environmental allergies, your tolerance for disorder, and many other factors will influence how often you choose to clean. You don’t have to clean everything every day, every week, or even every month. You only need to clean each room and each article as often as is necessary to maintain the kind of environment you want. We found that it was helpful for our entire family to sit down together and discuss this issue.
If you use our house cleaning checklist software, Let’s Clean Up!, you won’t lose track of your cleaning schedule no matter how complicated it is. Let’s Clean Up! is very flexible. It allows you to schedule your cleaning however it works best for you, and it doesn't force you to stick to a rigid schedule. If you decide to skip a scheduled chore, it will just reschedule the chore on your next cleaning day.

House Cleaning Tip # 2: Establish a regular cleaning schedule.

It’s easier to keep your house clean if you prevent things from getting really dusty or dirty. When you wait a long time between cleaning sessions, it makes the work much harder. Keep cleaning supplies on hand and readily available. Our house cleaning checklist software, Let’s Clean Up!, makes it simple to maintain your cleaning schedule.

House Cleaning Tip # 3: Reduce clutter!

Do you like to display mementos, figurines, or knickknacks around your house? They can beautify and personalize your home, but they also add to your cleaning burden. The more you reduce clutter, the easier it is to keep dust under control.

House Cleaning Tip # 4: Control dust.

Regular dusting and vacuuming are the keys to controlling dust in your home.

House Cleaning Tip # 1: Don’t make yourself or your family members slaves to your house.

You and your family are the best judges of how often you need to clean your house. The size of your home, the number and ages of family members, whether any of you have environmental allergies, your tolerance for disorder, and many other factors will influence how often you choose to clean. You don’t have to clean everything every day, every week, or even every month. You only need to clean each room and each article as often as is necessary to maintain the kind of environment you want. We found that it was helpful for our entire family to sit down together and discuss this issue.
House Cleaning Tips for a better lifeHouse Cleaning Hints for your home
If you use our house cleaning checklist software, Let’s Clean Up!, you won’t lose track of your cleaning schedule no matter how complicated it is. Let’s Clean Up! is very flexible. It allows you to schedule your cleaning however it works best for you, and it doesn't force you to stick to a rigid schedule. If you decide to skip a scheduled chore, it will just reschedule the chore on your next cleaning day.

House Cleaning Tip # 2: Establish a regular cleaning schedule.

It’s easier to keep your house clean if you prevent things from getting really dusty or dirty. When you wait a long time between cleaning sessions, it makes the work much harder. Keep cleaning supplies on hand and readily available. Our house cleaning checklist software, Let’s Clean Up!, makes it simple to maintain your cleaning schedule.

House Cleaning Tip # 3: Reduce clutter!

Do you like to display mementos, figurines, or knickknacks around your house? They can beautify and personalize your home, but they also add to your cleaning burden. The more you reduce clutter, the easier it is to keep dust under control.

House Cleaning Tip # 4: Control dust.

Regular dusting and vacuuming are the keys to controlling dust in your home. Tip #3: Cleaning and dusting your house helps keep you healthy.Most people who are allergic to dust are actually allergic to dust mite excrement (yuck!). Dust mites are microscopic bugs that eat the skin flakes found in dust. If you provide dust mites with plenty of food by allowing dust to build up in your home, then they will reproduce quickly. The increased dust mite population in turn produces more and more allergens (and more and more dust mites). It’s an endless cycle. Periodic dust removal does away with not only the "dust", but it reduces the reproducing population of dust mites. If you have allowed a lot of dust to accumulate, you will need to dust and vacuum more frequently at first. Use Let’s Clean Up! to keep to a regular schedule, and after a while you will notice that there’s less and less dust each time you clean. When this happens, you can adjust Let’s Clean Up! to reduce your dusting and vacuuming frequency. In our home, we dust and vacuum each room once each month and there’s very little dust accumulation between cleanings. Regular cleaning is the key!
To remove dust from a room, begin by dusting up high. This allows loose dust to fall onto lower surfaces, giving you a second chance to clean it up when you dust the lower surfaces. Do not stir up the dust or flick it into the air; wipe it off in long strokes if possible and keep it on your dust cloth. We like to use cloth diapers for dusting, and we shake them out frequently outside our house to avoid releasing the dust back into the air inside our home. Dust and remove everything from the top of each horizontal surface, and then dust the surface itself. This is easy to do if you keep clutter to a minimum. When you have wiped down all the horizontal surfaces in the room, finish by vacuuming the floor.

House Cleaning Tip # 5: Keep your bathrooms clean the easy way.

Cleaning your bathrooms the easy way.To determine how often you need to clean your bathroom sinks, showers, and tubs, observe how long it takes for soap to form a film on the surfaces. It’s much easier to clean these surfaces when the film is thin, so don’t wait until it gets thick. For our family, a two- to three-week cycle works just about right. Set the cycle in Let’s Clean Up!, and you won’t have to think about it again.
Keep cleaning from being a draining experience.
Soap scum and hair combine to plug your bathroom drains. If you use a liquid soap instead of bar soap, it will reduce the soap scum problem. Don’t allow hair to go down the drain when you clean your sinks or at other times in between, especially if you have long hair. It’s easy to gather the hair that accumulates in the sinks and on the counter each time you brush your hair, and you’ll find that your sinks will keep running freely almost indefinitely. You can sweep up the hair with your hand, or use a tissue if you’re squeamish. It’s well worth the effort, and your bathrooms will look nicer, too.Most people who are allergic to dust are actually allergic to dust mite excrement (yuck!). Dust mites are microscopic bugs that eat the skin flakes found in dust. If you provide dust mites with plenty of food by allowing dust to build up in your home, then they will reproduce quickly. The increased dust mite population in turn produces more and more allergens (and more and more dust mites). It’s an endless cycle. Periodic dust removal does away with not only the "dust", but it reduces the reproducing population of dust mites. If you have allowed a lot of dust to accumulate, you will need to dust and vacuum more frequently at first. Use Let’s Clean Up! to keep to a regular schedule, and after a while you will notice that there’s less and less dust each time you clean. When this happens, you can adjust Let’s Clean Up! to reduce your dusting and vacuuming frequency. In our home, we dust and vacuum each room once each month and there’s very little dust accumulation between cleanings. Regular cleaning is the key!
To remove dust from a room, begin by dusting up high. This allows loose dust to fall onto lower surfaces, giving you a second chance to clean it up when you dust the lower surfaces. Do not stir up the dust or flick it into the air; wipe it off in long strokes if possible and keep it on your dust cloth. We like to use cloth diapers for dusting, and we shake them out frequently outside our house to avoid releasing the dust back into the air inside our home. Dust and remove everything from the top of each horizontal surface, and then dust the surface itself. This is easy to do if you keep clutter to a minimum. When you have wiped down all the horizontal surfaces in the room, finish by vacuuming the floor.

House Cleaning Tip # 5: Keep your bathrooms clean the easy way.

To determine how often you need to clean your bathroom sinks, showers, and tubs, observe how long it takes for soap to form a film on the surfaces. It’s much easier to clean these surfaces when the film is thin, so don’t wait until it gets thick. For our family, a two- to three-week cycle works just about right. Set the cycle in Let’s Clean Up!, and you won’t have to think about it again.

Soap scum and hair combine to plug your bathroom drains. If you use a liquid soap instead of bar soap, it will reduce the soap scum problem. Don’t allow hair to go down the drain when you clean your sinks or at other times in between, especially if you have long hair. It’s easy to gather the hair that accumulates in the sinks and on the counter each time you brush your hair, and you’ll find that your sinks will keep running freely almost indefinitely. You can sweep up the hair with your hand, or use a tissue if you’re squeamish. It’s well worth the effort, and your bathrooms will look nicer, too.

An industry trainer and consultant, Jim Pemberton is president of Pemberton’s Cleaning & Restoration Supplies and West Penn Cleaning Company, McKeesport, PA

Your phone rings, you answer it, and the customer whose sofa you cleaned earlier in the day says: “I’d like you to come and look the sofa that you just cleaned for me, because ____________________________ (complete the sentence with any of the following:)

  • “it looks funny.”
  • “it turned brown.”
  • “the colors ran.”
  • “there are rings and circles near the edges.”
  • “it shrank.”

Your heart sinks and you contemplate changing your phone number and address immediately.
Hopefully, this has only happened to you in a nightmare and not in real life.
Should it occur, though, all is not lost.
Here are a few suggestions on how you might correct such cleaning related problems, if such an incident happens to you.

Browning

This condition occurs when cellulose fiber fabrics are over wet, dry slowly, and especially when cleaned with an alkaline cleaning agent.
Raw or Haitian cotton fabrics may have especially severe browning problems because of the amount of vegetable and foreign matter that is allowed to remain in the fabric.

Browning removal methods

  1. Rinse the fabric with an acidic fabric rinse agent and speed dry with air movers. Fabrics that have very mild browning, which will often look yellow, will often be corrected by this method.
  2. Re-clean the fabric with a formulated “Haitian cotton” shampoo or detergent. This method will work on more severely browned fabrics, and depending on the extent of the browning, may take a few treatments for complete browning removal. However, multiple cleanings may result in texture distortion and stiffening of the fabric from residues.
  3. Shampoo the fabric with a neutral or slightly acidic upholstery cleaning shampoo (not a Haitian cotton shampoo) boosted with a non-chlorine oxidizing booster. Follow with an acidic rinse and speed drying. This method works quickly and well, but may over whiten “natural colored cotton” fabrics.
Because of the need to try these methods multiple times, or in sequence, it’s best to perform this corrective procedure at your own location.
Absorbent powders used for spots that wick back are also useful for isolated areas that continue to brown during the drying process, as they absorb browning as readily as they absorb soils and spills that wick back.
Browning is not always 100 percent correctable, so it is best to avoid causing the problem, and never guarantee that you can fix a pre-existing browning problem.

Bleeding

In most cases, “if you’ve bled it, you’ve bought it!”
However, in small, localized areas of bleeding you might be able to correct bleeding enough to satisfy an understanding customer.

Bleeding correction

Hydrogen peroxide or chlorine bleach may be applied with the tip of a cotton swab and lightly blotted on the discolored area.
The concentration of either bleaching agent should be started weak and then increased as needed.
If chlorine bleach is required to remove the staining, you will also need to neutralize the bleach afterward.
Caution: Both bleaching agents may cause additional color damage, and may also weaken the fabric.
There are times when the bled area may be re-cleaned, and either packed with an absorbent powder to absorb the unstable dye, or subjected to high pressure air with an air compressor to force the dye back into the fabrics backing.
In cases of extensive color bleeding, these procedures are rarely practical.

Shrinkage

Shrinkage is not nearly the problem that it was a few decades ago, but it still occurs on occasion in the skirts of furniture, especially furniture made from rayon or rayon/cotton blends.

Shrinkage correction

Shrinkage in skirts is often corrected with the use of a hand steamer, such as is used by drapery installers to remove wrinkles.
Apply steam to the affected areas, and tug gently on the skirts until they return to shape.
Cushions may be steamed and then stretched back to shape by placing the cushion over a “saw horse” or similar structure and pushing and pulling on the material until it returns to its original shape.

Water marks

Water marks — also known as “rings” or “circling” — may be caused by residual materials from spills or soil that remains after improper spotting; such water marks will usually be removed by cleaning the fabric.
Water marks caused by sizing are quite another matter.
Sizing is used to create enough stiffness to fabric to give it body, or to prevent puckering during seaming.
This otherwise clear product will migrate and dry to a brown ring whenever areas of the fabric dry unevenly after spotting and cleaning.
Water marks are most often seen on platforms, or around welt cords (also known as piping).

Water mark correction

Water marks are difficult to correct.
The easiest correction procedure is to apply distilled water evenly to the affected surface.
Distilled water wets the fabric evenly and dissolved the sizing and other impurities in the fabric, which allows the fabric to dry evenly and, in many cases, the water marks disappear.
If the distilled water does not work, you can use the shampoo and oxidizing agent method of correcting browning outlined above.
Another option, especially for synthetic fibers, is to apply a strong acid treatment to the water mark.
Iron content in some water mark stains will respond to this.

An industry trainer and consultant, Jim Pemberton is president of Pemberton’s Cleaning & Restoration Supplies and West Penn Cleaning Company, McKeesport, PA. He has more than 30 years of experience in the cleaning and restoration industry. You are invited to visit the Pemberton website at www.ecleanadvisor.com, or e-mail Jim at Jimpem2@comcast.net.

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