Sponges and other Cleaning Tips

Cleaning Tip #1
If you microwave a sponge for 1 minute, then you will kill all the germs that make sponges smell bad. A/k/a Sterilization.

This I got from a website called www.mousecleaning.com. Since I started cleaning homes professionally I have greater interest in doing it efficiently. If you know anyone who wants to hire me, please let me know. xoxo
Tips For Eliminating House Cleaning StressThere is nothing like unexpected company to send you into a mad frenzy of house cleaning, and a resolution to do a better job of keeping your home in order. It is, of course, not easy to keep on top of housework when you have young (any) children, when you work outside the home and spend time on hobbies and sports, when the people you live with are unrepentant slobs, or when you are an unrepentant slob yourself. But never mind how it all happened, if company is coming and your house looks like the "after" picture in a disaster photo shoot, you need to make some quick decisions about what must be done before the guests arrive.
Make Yourself Look Good (your guests will never know)
1. Make a checklist of tasks that need to be done by deadline, and enlist everyone in the household to help. Assign tasks and offer rewards if there is a lack of enthusiasm for this house cleaning effort.
2. Turn off the TV and turn on some loud music with a good rock beat to put you all in the mood.
3. Start with the rooms that guests see first – kitchen, living room, and main bathroom – and move on from there.
4. Get rid of clutter:
* Remove dirty dishes from all rooms and wash or hide them in the dishwasher.
* Pick up clothes dropped on floors and draped over furniture and hang them up, put them in the clothes hamper, or, in an emergency-last-ditch effort, bundle them up and hide them on the floor of a closet.
* Pick up toys and sports and hobby items and put them where they belong or, if guests are already knocking on the door, see floor-of-the-closet suggestion above.
* Straighten furniture, cushions, pictures, and lampshades, and align books, magazines, and knickknacks.
* Throw out dead flowers and put half-dead plants out of sight.
* Clean toilet bowls, sinks, and bathtubs, and hide bathroom junk in cupboards and cabinets.
* Make the beds.
5. When everything is neat and tidy, get busy with vacuum cleaners and vacuum attachments. Vacuum the floors and carpets and dust everything in sight. If there isn’t time for that, grab that easy-to-use cordless vacuum cleaner and pick up the spills and the biggest bits of stuff dropped on the carpet and floors.
6. Until you run out of time, wash floors, spots on walls, and anything else that needs it and is visible.
How to Keep This Nightmare From Happening Again
1. Make a chart of daily chores, as well as those that need to be done weekly and monthly, and put every family member in charge of some items on each list. Even young children can be helpful. Check off chores when they are completed. Offer rewards – it works better than punishments for chores left undone. Don’t forget to reward yourself.
2. Invest in a good vacuum with suitable attachments, and have pails, mops, wash cloths, scrubbing brushes, and good (preferably child-and-health-safe) cleaning products stored in a handy place, and have a tool kit to carry what is needed from room to room.
3. If you prefer cooking or gardening or playing with your children to house cleaning, hire a maid service if you can afford the price, or treat yourself to the service now and then.
4. Make it your business to keep the family on top of ongoing daily tasks:
* Put dishes in the dishwasher and see that it is turned on before you go to bed. If dishes are washed by hand, see that they are done every evening.
* Have a place to stack newspapers and magazines and get rid of the excess every week.
* Regularly donate unused household items and clothing to charity.
* Use small baskets to hold the junk emptied out of pockets – including keys and change – and one for mail, as well.
Clean regularly rather than let chores pile up until the work becomes overwhelming. You, too, can enjoy unexpected guests when they arrive instead of the alternate: drooping from house cleaning exhaustion in a bleary-eyed, zombie-like state. Get with it!

HOW TO CLEAN A COMPUTER

Your computer can be cleaned by a hard surface cleaner, in concentrated solution in warm water. It will not be cleaned well by alcohol cleaners.
The casing: using a cloth well wrung out in your chosen solution, wipe over the casing any any externalparts of the computer, the cabling, the base of the keyboard. Rinse the cloth out and remove the soil - which will be considerable. Do not use any excess water and do not try to push water into the vents in the casings.
Do not use any excess water on the keyboard keys - you will be able to clean these by using little bits of damp cloth pushed around the keys by cocktail sticks or toothpicks
The following actions need to be taken every six months
Now you need to open the case. Take a vacuum cleaner and its crevice tool and being extremely careful how you do it, remove all the dust out of the case and the fans. Do not get the vacuum cleaner motor anywhere near your computer components, and earth yourself by touching any metal object which is known to be earthed - pipework, radiators, etc.
Ensure that the vents around the casing are vacuumed and also vacuum the keyboard - you would be surprised how much dust and rubbish collects in the keyboard. . By keeping dust out of the inside of the case and around the fans, you will prevent your computer from overheating and therefore damaging the components. Think of the costs involved. It is never a sensible move to just push the dust out by blowing it out. This dust sits in the air and gets recycled - back into your machine.

CLEANING YOUR MOUSE

You can clean inside the mouse by removing the ball, and removing the dust, fluff stray food, dog and human hairs, etc. from around the rollers This has to be scraped out - do not get the mouse wet.

CLEANING FURNITURE

Wooden furniture can be cleaned with
Detergent solution or
Soap solution or
Washing -up liquid solution or
Vinegar solution
Rinse off and leave to dry. Raw wood then should be dressed with a mixture of beeswax and oil or turpentine (which is an oil derived from pine trees). Wax will not clean if your furniture is heavily soiled, unless it is antique wood in which case your furniture should be kept waxed as a preventative measure, to avoid drying and subsequent warping. Teak or linseed oils are the usual wood dressing oils. If your wood furniture is laminated or varnished, as most modern furniture is, then it will not need dressing at all. Avoid the spray polish anywhere around your home - it does not clean, but merely attracts and seals in even more soiling. Life goes on well enough without it. So throw it out.
If your furniture is antique and valuable, then french polishing is an answer to a poor finish. This is a mixture of shellac in methylated spirit and it leaves a beautiful glossy finish, which is easily maintained by a polish with a dry cloth after a gentle quick wash if needed.

FABRICS

Fabrics are tricky -curtains can be washed but we hold no hope out at all for chairs which attract children, cats, dogs and large amounts of food and grease and worse. You may be able to steam the chair fabric but isn't prevention rather better than cure? Throw a cover over the chair - you can throw that in the washing machine. Spot treatment on most fabrics will show as spots when dry and the whole begins to look very unsightly -clean in some places and not in others. Always consider the end result when cleaning or attempting to clean.
For a more comprehensive guide to stain removal check out stain removal guide.

MATTRESS CLEANING

We have used a wand - type carpet cleaner and a carpet cleaning solution on a mattress quite successfully. It then should be dried properly and thoroughly. A mattress needs a very good vacuum cleaning and should be turned regularly Should you have any bedwetters around, turn the mattress over immediately after the accident onto a towel or two and leave until dry. Can you tell this is the voice of experience here? Protect the mattress with a rubber sheet for preference.

HOW TO AVOID THE DUSTING COMPLETELY

Is it necessary, and can it be avoided? But of course it can be avoided! What a waste of time. Dust is human hair and skin wrapped around grease from humans and particulates from the atmosphere. You dust, you put it back into the atmosphere and half an hour later, it is back again. With a new lot to keep it company. Real dust is what we find on a construction site -plaster, cement, particulate, concrete, wood -the list is endless. That has to be removed, but not in ways you would think. It takes the same length of time to wash a surface as it does to dust, and the effect lasts for a week. Think it over when you next pick up your feather duster, and go and have a cup of tea instead. Then throw out your feather duster or use it on the spiders hiding in the lampshades.

BOOKSHELVES

We have thousands of books in our house, and we read them. They get dusty; we get the vacuum cleaner out all along the edges and the tops of the books. You can't wash books. If your house is very damp, then your books are going to attract mold and mildew. To prevent loss of books, which is tantamount to a national calamity (in our house at least) use a dehumidifier.

RIDGE CLEANING

Keep the fridge clean and washed out with detergent, rinse well and deodorise after washing with bicarbonate of soda in the final rinsing water, if needed. Pay particular attention to the rubber seals on the doors.
When you are cleaning out the insides of the fridge, don't forget to clean that patch of floor the fridge is usually standing on, and also the external casings of the fridge. Not just the door.
Keep stored food in containers, and keep these containers clean - inside and out. Do not store cooked food in contact with raw food. This is where most cross-contamination occurs.
Keep the fridge at the manufacturers recommended storage temperature

MOPPING

Download our guide to a perfect mopping technique
Change your water very regularly
Rinse the floor after cleaning
Wash your mop in detergent solution, after use
Keep your mop as dry as you can.
All that black water over the floor, a smelly mop, all the puffing and panting that goes with throwing a heavy mop around, and those are the cleaning companies we have come across. Heaven only knows what the householders are like. And you complain that the floor looks dirty five minutes after?
Use a light cotton mop, so it is easy for you to handle, keep it clean and washed after use, and halve your mopping time by keeping the floor as dry as you can, by wringing it out properly. push your mop, don't drag it.
Just in case you are tempted by flat mops or mops made of any other material other than cotton, these can be expensive, are very heavy to use, and do not produce such a good effect. A cheap cotton mop is as good as anything else on the market.

TOILET AND BATHROOM CLEANING

HOW TO CLEAN CERAMIC TILES AND GROUT

Throw out the cistern blocks and the artificial perfumes, you will not need them.
Wash down the whole of the toilet, including behind the seat, with a proper hard surface detergent in solution and then rinse it off. Then wipe dry with a half damp cloth, now leave it to dry. Wash the bowl by pouring a splash of the neat detergent in the water, and scrubbing with the toilet brush. Now flush the toilet.

DESCALING A TOILET

You will need to descale a toilet about once a month -urine and hard water is a good combination to make scale - that's the staining around the lip of your bowl and this is the stuff that your bleach treatments and anything else you are using is not removing Acid is the only scale remover which is going to work in areas of hard water. Use phosphoric acid or citric acid for preference. Vinegar and anything else you might have read about will not work. So go and buy a proper descaler from a janitorial supplier and keep it to clean the grout and the taps and the shower head as well. Also use this to clean your shower cubicle.
Once your toilet is descaled, all it requires is a daily wash, including a wash around the bowl, as previously shown.

DISINFECTING AND SANITISING -IS IT NECESSARY

No. Toilets do not smell if they are cleaned properly with detergent as we have indicated. Bacterial growth occurs when surface cleaning has not been carried out properly. Surface cleaning will remove almost everything which could cause you problems. Bleaching, and the use of disinfectants will not replace a good clean and descaling because it is the scale and the uncleaned surface soiling which attracts bacteria. So you can try to think you are cleaning when you put a bit of bleach in the
bowl, but in fact you are not. Can't beat a good clean. Get those hands wet.

NOTE WELL: never mix an acid descaler with bleach. Keep them very far apart. We have however seen toilets awash with neat bleach, and others with almost neat coal tar disinfectant, but still dirty, and we mean dirty! Bleach removes scale colour but not the scale, and coal tar disinfectant can be poisonous in heavy quantities. The difference from a cleaned toilet to an uncleaned toilet is easy to see. So before you get sanitisers on the brain, clean the area properly first.
TILE GROUT you can clean grout with the same phosphoric acid descaler you used on your toilet. You may need to leave it on the grout for a time to work, like for example overnight, if you have heavy scale build - up and mold stains. Rinse well and leave to dry. Most grout is dirty, because you haven't rinsed your last lot of detergent out from the tile, and you have used dirty washing water.
Grout should be left to dry, but needs to be dried quickly. Flooring grout can be dried by a mop or with a pass with a wet/dry vacuum cleaner

MOLDS AND MILDEWS - FACTS AND TREATMENT

The difference between molds and mildews - Molds are the source of all your problems indoors and out, mildews are a similar organism but are not the cause of the black growths due to damp conditions. Mildew is a growth affecting plant growth, it is the white powdery dust found on your garden plants after a hot humid summer. Therefore do not get the two mixed up, this article only refers to the mold which grows under the following conditions, inside your building:
Warmth
Humidity over about 50%
A good source of food
Food can be damp wood, materials, painted surfaces, particleboard, any areas where there is damp foodstuffs left lying around, or dirt in areas generally with poor ventilation Molds seem to thrive best on cellulose materials (straw, hay, wood carpet, and they love most of all the paper covering on gypsum based plaster boards, which is why your bathroom looks even worse than it would if it were of just brick construction).
Wetting and water ingress on an untreated basis will grow a good colony of molds in a very short time so get those fixed and leave the area to be dried as soon as possible. Ventilate all areas throughout your home as a matter of course. Molds grow in unventilated areas. Where you have air conditioning and a sealed building, the HVAC system filters must be continually checked and changed. Are yours, when you complain about the air quality in your building? Keep your systems dry and cleaned out.
We have spent many hours cleaning duct covers and it is onlythrough poor maintenance that these are left in the condition that they are. If you have blocked filters, then molds will grow on the dust. Then they get sucked in through the system and straight into the air that you breathe. Open windows if you can.

MOLD REMEDIATION:

Clean more often, more thoroughly.
Change filters to HEPA - type
Keep the area as dry as possible.
Fix water leaks
Ventilate as much as possible
Heavy infestation is seen as brown or black patches on the affected area. You may not be able to smell mold infestation so do not assume that in a very wet area you will not have mold growth.
Once the area is dried out, the following can be used to remove mold:
Propionic acid as a constituent of a proprietary mold remover. This is the most effective mold remover and is perfectly safe for use.
Bleach and hypochlorite is not really effective at all, and is not safe to use in large concentrations, nor with any other chemical
Borax and borates can be effective -borax is already in regular use as a wood fungicide, but will not remove the staining from molds - phosphoric acid can do this in preference to bleach. Heavy stainingcan be covered by painting but only when the area is dried thoroughly.

MOLD PREVENTION

Mold causes 'farmers lung' but you should never get this disease from your house, nor will you need your house pulled down! Your mold infestation will never be that great unless you have a building which is severely damaged by damp. It can happen. Help yourself, though by using a dehumidifier if you do have to live in damp conditions, and always use one after water damage through flooding.
Cleaning surfaces properly is probably the most effective way of surface mold prevention.

AFTER CARPET CLEANING AND FLOODING

Your carpets will harbour mold if they are not dried properly after cleaning. So open all the windows and ventilate the room properly while drying. A good carpet cleaning system will dry the carpets up to 90% dry and the carpet should be completely dry within 1 - 2 hours. Vacuum cleaning with clean filters will finish the cleaning process when the carpet is dry. Then you could use a dehumidifier, if you think there is a high level of humidity remaining. It can happen, even in the driest areas. Flooding, followed by carpet restoration in which we wash the wet carpet, naturally means the whole area has to be dried quickly, and this is done by a dehumidifier. Never put a rubber - backed mat onto a drying carpet - mold will quickly develop underneath it, and then penetrate the whole carpet.

POOR INDOOR AIR QUALITY

If you have unexplained symptoms of breathing problems and general low levels of unwellness then first thoroughly clean your house, change the filters to your ducting and air conditioning unit and vacuum the carpets well with cleaned filters. Open the windows and let fresh air in to the house. Often this is all that is needed.
Many factors can contribute to poor air quality - toxic fumes from carpets, furniture, some solvents, artificial deodorisers, spray polish so do not assume that mold infestation is present unless you can see that you have long standing water staining in the same area, or you have had recent flooding.
Your house will feel damp and may have a background smell.

HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR CELLAR OR BASEMENT

If you have a cellar, then check that - these are favourite places for mold infestation since they are frequently damp or flooded. The cellar will need treatment - do not expect to treat the rest of the house and leave the cellar! You will find fabrics paper and cardboard stored in cellars always to contain patches of molds, so consider leaving a cellar empty.

STAINLESS STEEL AND OTHER METAL CLEANING

CAST IRON PANS

Cast iron pans are the best cooking pans out there, but most people are put off by the rust which appears after washing. Cast iron, which never wears out, should be dried over heat after washing and then dressed while still hot, with oil you use for cooking with. If they go rusty after this, you have dressed them when cold. Keep the oiled pan as warm as you can for as long as you can. Result-no rust. you do not need to wash the pan before use, but you must always dress it after use.

HOW TO CLEAN STAINLESS STEEL

In response to the real need to keep this clean without doing any damage to it - here is how you clean stainless steel.
Stainless steel is not stainless and it can be easily damaged especially when new, by acids, bleach and metal scouring pads - we know of an entire, brand new commercial kitchen which was ruined by metal scouring pads and bleach.
You clean stainless steel by leaving it to soak to remove the grease and the burnt bits in a degreaser - 2% caustic soda for preference which does not damage the steel.. You wash this off. You wash it again in a hard surface cleaner solution and this is rinsed off enough times so that the steel is clean and grease - free. Now dry the steel using paper or a clean cloth. It dries to a dull, sometimes smeared finish.
Dress the dry steel with oil - baby oil can be used, but if you can get it use food grade mineral oil. It shines and looks good.
There is only one scouring pad to use on steel and that is specific to stainless steel. Everything else scratches it, and any use of metal scouring pads or steel wool will result in a scratched surface with rust stains developing on the damaged areas.
Stainless steel can be steam cleaned, but you will still need to use a detergent soak to loosen the grease before steam cleaning.
Restore stainless steel with a very dilute solution of phosphoric acid detergent, rinse well and dry.

ALUMINIUM

A soft metal, but it cleans easily, so you can and no doubt do, use scouring pads on it. What you cannot use on it is a caustic detergent. It reacts with it and you will find that your nice aluminium turns black and pitted. So soak your greasy pans in detergent solution, rinse well and dry quickly. Aluminium which is left to dry tends to leave water marks. Restore aluminium either with a specialist aluminium cleaner (the use of which is not recommended for general use) or use a very dilute solution of phosphoric acid detergent and a metal scouring pad.

COPPER, BRASS, BRONZE

Clean by salt and lemon juice as a paste. Rinse it off, dry, and then polish the metal by rubbing with newspaper.

SILVER AND PEWTER

Clean with lemon juice and salt.
For heavily tarnished metals, use proprietary wadding specific for the metal. The salt and lemon juice treatment maintains an already clean appearance. The alternative cleaner for copper, brass and bronze is the phosphoric acid detergent, but be aware that acids will sometimes damage an old plated surface, so if your cleaned surface shows pitting and looks irregular in appearance then the plate itself is worn. Copper, brass and bronze are not damaged by fine grade steel wool, but care should be taken if using this.

CHROMIUM AND NICKEL

Clean with a neutral detergent, rinse well and then buffed with a soft lint-free cloth until dry. These metals are usually, but not always, found as plated and any wear in the plating will show up quickly.
After washing, the base metal will start to rust if not dried quickly. Acid restoration is not always that effective on these metals.

WINDOW CLEANING

Get professional with this one and buy the proper equipment - the squeegee especially. You will not clean windows properly without much hard work, otherwise. You wash windows with washing-up liquid solution, and squeegee the window dry. Then you wash the frame and sill and dry with a wrung - out cloth. Work on the upstairs windows before you clean downstairs. Drips and all that.

STAINS ON GLASS

Are there, because of a broken gutter or other source of dripping water over the glass. Now you have a problem. Hard water stains will remove with a wash with your acid toilet cleaner or kettle descaler (phosphoric acid for preference) but you have to be very quick with this treatment, so as not to leave the acid on the glass. If the staining is old, then this will be embedded in the glass and you won’t be able to clean it. We've done our bit on glass, several centuries old, and believe me, acid etched glass, dating from 14 century cannot be repaired. All those winds, all that sulphur...........
Try to keep running water off glass, and also a continuous source of heat, such as extractor fans. Vinegar cleans glass quite well, but only if it is not too dirty. It will not clean grease and oil off glass. Neither will ammonia which is the world's worse cleaning solution.
To polish glass when dried, rub it with an old newspaper - the silicones in the printing ink will put a very slight protective layer over the glass. We, a professional cleaning business, use this to clean ornate, engraved and antique glass and the difficult glass of a building site. It looks lovely afterwards.

BLIND CLEANING

For those of washable fabric:
Take the blind down and put it into the bath tub which will have a solution of water and your good hard surface detergent, in it.
Now leave the blind to soak for a while - overnight would help. Rinse the blind with ashower head of water. This pressure will remove the dirt off the blind without you needing to scrub.
Drain off the blind and replace in the window. If you do not think your blinds will accept this treatment, then leave them and treat as wooden blinds.
NOTE WELL: give the windows a clean while your blinds are in soak Venetian type and other metal or plastic blinds can be treated the same way but must be well dried before re-hanging. Wooden blinds should not be soaked, but can be washed with your hard surface detergent in solution, and then rinsed, by wiping over the slats with a cloth.

JEWELLERY CLEANING

Most jewellery is fragile so be careful with it. If it won't clean with washing up liquid solution, then don't bother. Just wearing jewellery puts a shine on it. Pearls and opals are more delicate than anything else - pearls are best left alone and rejoice in the patina they acquire from your skin. Opals are a water - based stone, and should not be attempted to be cleaned - ever. Many other types of semi - precious stones will react with any cleaning solutions. Acids will almost certainly damage any stone so beware of using lemon juice or vinegar, and heavy alkalis likewise. So take advice from a jeweller if you are at all worried.

ULTRASONIC CLEANING

This is the way to clean those small delicate components, but do not use it for your jewellery. For blinds and chandeliers, ultrasonic cleaning is superb. Its action is by sound waves passing through a detergent solution (which is specially formulated for this process) and this causes bubbles throughout the solution.
This is the cleaning action - called cavitation - and it is vigorous. So very delicate articles and surfaces can be easily damaged and that is why your jewellery may be damaged.