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4 Steps You Must Take to Prep for Professional House Cleaning

Before someone comes over to your home, you probably have a natural urge to clean. Sometimes that even extends to cleaning before your cleaning company arrives. After all, you don’t want them to be grossed out by your toilets, right?

While that instinct is understandable, your cleaning company is not going to be upset by the state of your toilets. They don’t want you to do maintenance cleaning before they arrive, but that doesn’t mean you’re completely off the hook.

There is a difference between maintenance cleaning and daily cleaning. When you hire someone to do your house cleaning, likely you want them to do all or most of the following maintenance type cleaning:

  • Bathrooms- including toilets, showers, sinks, mirrors, and floors
  • Kitchen- including wiping down counters and stainless surfaces, and cleaning out sinks
  • Bedrooms, living rooms, dining rooms, and offices- including dusting, vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, and furniture care.

 

House Cleaning Preparation Step 1: Put Away Important Documents

Many people have a spot on the counter, or on a table near the door, where they set the mail down on their way into their home. Before your house cleaning, it is important to make sure the mail and any other important documents are put away.

In your office, your desk should be clear of clutter and files put away so no damage can occur during the cleaning. This step is not only for your privacy, but so nothing gets thrown away or set in a place it shouldn’t be when the cleaning company is working in that area of your home.

House Cleaning Preparation Step 2: Pick Up Clothes and Put in Laundry Baskets

While it might not be possible for you to have all of your laundry done during your house cleaning, your house cleaning could potentially include having laundry folded. Clothes that are not clean should be put into the laundry baskets or laundry room before your house cleaning team arrives. They can then focus on the maintenance cleaning in the bedrooms. Picking up the clothes will prevent any clean clothes draped on chairs or clothes meant for the dry cleaners from being accidentally put into dirty baskets.

House Cleaning Preparation Step 3: Picking Up Toys

All parents have tales of their constant battle to keep the playroom or kids’ rooms picked up. There is a neverending effort to keep anywhere in a house completely picked up when you have young children with toys. Preparing for your house cleaning team is a great time to have the kids help pick up before the carpets are vacuumed so no toys are lost!

A preemptive pickup will stop toys from being put somewhere they don’t belong, not to mention preventing the ensuing hunt for the specific toy your child must have and the headache that will follow.

House Cleaning Preparation Step 4: General Declutter

Most house cleaning companies will spend one minute per room on general tidying up, so it is best if it’s done by the homeowner before the house cleaning. Dishes should be collected from all rooms in the house and put in the dishwasher. Anything on countertops should be put away. Electronics should be picked up and put in a safe place. Books that do not belong on coffee tables need to be returned to their proper spaces. Towels should be picked up off the bathroom floor.

If general declutter happens before your house cleaning, your house cleaning team can focus directly on the maintenance cleaning they are there to do.

For the most professional cleaning team in the Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, California area, give CleanSpace a call today. We will come to your home, offering you a free estimate for your house cleaning. As a bonus, starting on your second visit you can pick one service from the “Free Task” column each time you have a house cleaning. Items include:

  • Hand wipe baseboards
  • Clean the inside of the refrigerator
  • Sweep patio or porch
  • Clean inside the oven
  • Hand wipe outside furniture
  • Hand wipe door facings and frames
  • Hand wipe all wood trim and window sills
  • Hand wipe kitchen cabinets
  • Hand wipe bathroom cabinets
  • Vacuum one room of upholstered furniture
  • Hand wipe ceiling fans and light fixtures
  • Vacuum all blinds
  • Vacuum along carpet edges with a crevice tool
  • Laundry folding available, priced by the pound.

CleanSpace is so sure you will be thrilled by your house cleaning, we guarantee you’ll be satisfied! Contact us today!

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Top 3 Healthy Living Tips For Your Home and Family

Healthy Living Tips For Your Home

Many people take the beginning of a new year as an opportunity to re-commit themselves and their families to healthy living. One place to start is within your home. There are a surprising (and alarming) number of potentially dangerous chemicals in everyday household products.

Even the most innocuous items, such as remote controls, drinking cups, and scented soaps and lotions, contain sometimes harmful chemicals like Bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates, formaldehyde, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs).

Here are a few tips to ensure that your home is a safe and healthy place for you and your family.

Healthy Living Tip #1: Assess Your Cleaning Products

You might feel like you need heavy-duty household cleaners to do your routine cleaning, but many of these products contain hazardous chemicals. But most of these harmful chemicals aren’t necessary to get your home clean.

Even though we like our home to “smell clean”, many of the additives used to get that fresh smell can be harmful to your health. Your cleaning products may include chemicals like phthalates, which are used to maintain fragrance in household products— they’re not enhancing the cleaning properties of the products in any way!

Consider the ever-popular antibacterial dishwashing detergents and hand soaps; these contain a chemical that could lead to breeding dangerous drug-resistant bacteria. Other cleaning products such as window, kitchen, and multipurpose cleaners contain 2-butoxyethanol that can cause a variety of ailments, ranging from sore throats to liver and kidney damage.

So what do you do? You need a clean house, for healthy living as well as for aesthetic purposes. Fortunately, you can purchase cleaning products that are Green Seal certified, meaning that they’re safer for the environment and your family. CleanSpace uses biodegradable, non-toxic products to ensure that your home is a safe and healthy place to be for you and your family.

Healthy Living Tip #2: Check Your Sponges and Mops

If you’ve been using the same sponge for all of your cleaning projects— or worse, using paper towels or disposable wipes— it’s time to reconsider your cleaning tools. Rather than reaching for your old sponge or disposable products, consider swapping them out for sturdy microfiber cloths.

Microfiber is sturdy, absorbent, and soft. These cloths can be used to scrub stubborn stains but they can also be used for gentle cleaning tasks, too. Better yet, they’ll perform their tasks without scratching surfaces or leaving behind fibers, making them suitable for just about any kind of cleaning you might need. They’re inexpensive, so you can buy several of them in different colors to coordinate your cleaning— blue for the mirrors and glass, green for countertops, yellow for showers, tubs, and bathroom counters, red for toilets, etc.

If you’re not using a washable microfiber mop, you’re not just spending more money than necessary, you’re also impacting the environment. Instead, purchase a mop that can be washed in water and reused. You’ll know that you’re cleaning your floors without spreading bacteria around.

Healthy Living Tip #3: Reduce Dust

Dust isn’t just unattractive, it can be harmful to your family’s health. Consisting of a combination of organic materials (such as dried skin cells, pet dander, and pollen) and inorganic materials (paint particles, heavy metals, and even toxic particles from flame retardants and cigarette smoke), dust can exacerbate asthma and allergies as well as inflame skin conditions like eczema or atopic dermatitis.

How do you reduce the dust in your home? There are a few ways to banish dust:

  • Avoid using vacuum cleaners with cloth bags. Instead, use a vacuum cleaner that contains the soil has a HEPA filter
  • Mop tile and hardwood flooring with a damp mop regularly
  • Frequently change your home’s air and furnace filters
  • Don’t allow dust to accumulate on your home’s surfaces
  • Avoid using feather dusters because most of the dust becomes airborne. Instead use microfiber cloths that contain the dust

CleanSpace relies on the Aspria Backpack Vacuum system complete with a HEPA filter to ensure that 99.7% of the particles in your home are picked up when we vacuum. This revolutionary vacuum picks up particles as small as .3 microns, so you know that you and your family will be breathing cleaner air.

If you’re ready to incorporate healthy living into your home this year, partner with CleanSpace. We’ll ensure that you and your family enjoy the benefits of a clean, sanitary, and healthy home thanks to our carefully screened team of insured professionals.

Contact us today to get a free house cleaning estimate!