Category Archives for "cleaning tips"

0 The Art of Cleaning Stains – Part 1

I have always admired how the most difficult and unpleasant things to do have been transformed into art. “The art of war”, “Martial arts”, etc. Well, it only seems fair that cleaning stains, which falls in the category of unpleasant things to do, should be considered an art form. It combines physical techniques – you cannot just wipe a stain off – some stains require wiping from the outside towards the center, while other have to be soaked into detergent first and so on. It also requires certain knowledge – it’s is, after all, chemistry. You use acids and solvents to defeat the stains. Just like martial arts, you have to react quickly and decisively, especially to a red wine stain. And with this being said, I want to declare myself your cleaning sensei and give you guidance in the art of stain removal.

1. Cleaning dye stains on wool fabrics. When cleaning those, start by rubbing the stains with detergent or with soap. Soak the fabric in boiling water for a couple of seconds. If necessary, rub the stains with detergent again and dip them in the boiling water. Repeat until the stains are completely gone. In order to remove the soap from the fabric, soak it in the hot water. Then, wrap the wet part in a cotton towel to dry it. The rest of the spills of the dye can be cleaned with a wet sponge and dried with hot air (e.g. with the hairdryer).

2. Cleaning dye stains on white cotton fabrics. Take a glazed pot and pour 32 ounces of water in it. Add a little bit of baking soda and grinded soap or detergent to the water. Heat the mixture until the soap dissolves completely. Squash the stained area and soak it several times in the boiling liquid for a few seconds until the stain is cleaned. If this procedure leaves marks from the dye, soak the cloth in hot water and bleach it.

3. Cleaning nitrocellulose glue stains. Cleaning stains from any fabric, except silk, can be done using amyl acetate. Put the stained area of the fabric over a cleaning pad and use the amyl acetate to rub it off. The treated area is then cleaned with a tampon, soaked in gasoline. The lining of the stain can be cleaned with a sponge and, after drying the fabric with a clean towel, sprinkle chalk over it. Nitrocellulose glues form hard stains with a glazed surface which are strongly attached to the fabric.

4. Cleaning rubber glues stains. These glues form a sticky stain which attaches to the surface of most fabrics. They can be cleaned using a tampon, soaked in gasoline. When done, sprinkle chalk over the wet area.

0 Bathroom Cleaning Tips and Ideas – Part Three

Bathroom is the place of paradox of every home. On the one hand, it is the place where you take care of your personal hygiene – you shower, bathe, brush teeth, shave, wash hands, etc. On the other hand, the bathroom is the place where most bacteria are likely to appear, as well as mould and other potentially harmful things. That’s why it is important to take care of the hygiene of the bathroom just like you do for your own, or maybe even better. So, here are a few tips and ideas on how to do just that.

1. Bacteria on the bathroom tiles. Deposits on the tiles or in the fugues can amass a big amount of bacteria and the humidity in the bathroom is a perfect condition for their growth, as well as for mould, which can also spread harmful germs. Use a squeegee or a clean sponge and a disinfectant to clean the tiles. Spray and wipe them.

2. When cleaning mould from the bathroom tiles, use a mixture of equal parts of water and bleach. Apply with a spraying bottle and leave it on for at least thirty minutes. Then, you can either wipe off with a sponge or brush it off with a hard brush.

3. Cleaning the shower curtain. The shower curtain can amass a lot of bacteria, because it holds humidity and accumulates mould. You can put it in the washing machine, along with a few bigger towels, add detergent and bleach (enough for a medium wash) and set the machine on a medium high temperature cycle. The friction between the shower curtain and the towels will increase the temperature of the water as well. The bleach will remove the mould and the towels will act as brushes and will scrape off the stains. The detergent will do the rest. After washing the shower curtain, hang it the bathroom and turn on the ventilation to get the humidity away. The steam and high temperature the next them you take a shower will get the wrinkles off the shower curtain.

4. Cleaning the toilet dish. This is definitely one of the things you want to get over with as quickly as possible. That’s why you need to use strong sanitizing products which will kill the bacteria at once. Put on a pair of rubber gloves on, apply bleach on the inside and on the edges of the toilet dish, let it stay for ten minutes and brush it off. Rinse with hot water. Never combine bleach with ammonia-based products or other bathroom cleaners, as this might cause a chemical reaction that will exhaust poisonous gases.

5. Never clean the sink or the bathtub with bleach.

0 Bathroom Cleaning Tips and Ideas – Part Two

Bathroom is the place of paradox of every home. On the one hand, it is the place where you take care of your personal hygiene – you shower, bathe, brush teeth, shave, wash hands, etc. On the other hand, the bathroom is the place where most bacteria are likely to appear, as well as mould and other potentially harmful things. That’s why it is important to take care of the hygiene of the bathroom just like you do for your own, or maybe even better. So, here are a few tips and ideas on how to do just that.

1. The bathroom sink has the potential to have even more bacteria than the shower. How should you clean it? First, take a piece of soft paper and remove everything in and around the drain. Then, use hot water and a rough sponge to scrub off the deposits of toothpaste, foam, make-up, etc. Then, apply the cleaning product and leave it on for fifteen to twenty minutes. Repeat the sponge procedure, rinse the sink with hot water, including the sponge, and dry everything with a towel.

2. When cleaning the bathroom, do not forget to wash and dry the soap dish, the toothbrush cup and all places where water can stay longer.

3. Pillows, stuffed with plush and feathers have to be washed by hand. Soak them in warm water with detergent in it and when they are completely wet, squeeze them gently. Remove the dirty water and carefully apply pressure on the pillows to get all the dirty water out of them. Wrap them in dry towels and put them in the washing machine on a program for delicate fabrics to avoid tearing them.

4. When cleaning the bathroom, do not forget about the drain stopper. Soak it in a pot of vinegar for a couple of hours to kill any bacteria there might be.

5. The newer models of bathtubs are made of porcelain, which requires special attention when cleaning them. Use liquid cleaners which do not have abrasive particles, acids or alkali in them, otherwise you might damage the surface.

6. When cleaning the tub in the bathroom, start by spraying the whole tub with a cleaning spray or powder, including the edges and the outside of it. Wait for fifteen minutes and wipe off with a rough towel. In order to remove the yellow spots, use a mixture of salt and turpentine. Make sure you have a pair of rubber gloves on. Rinse good and do not forget to clean the drain as well.

7. Before you get in the shower, run the hot water for at least of couple of minutes.

0 Bathroom Cleaning Tips and Ideas – Part One

Bathroom is the place of paradox of every home. On the one hand, it is the place where you take care of your personal hygiene – you shower, bathe, brush teeth, shave, wash hands, etc. On the other hand, the bathroom is the place where most bacteria are likely to appear, as well as mould and other potentially harmful things. That’s why it is important to take care of the hygiene of the bathroom just like you do for your own, or maybe even better. So, here are a few tips and ideas on how to do make bathroom cleaning easier.

1. The bathroom needs to be cleaned at least once a week (even more if your family is bigger). Bacteria could be anywhere – not just the sewer. They can be around the toilet dish, the bathroom sink or the tub, on the shower curtain and between the tiles, even in the toilet paper and the shower handset. Quite often bacteria are the reason for the bad smell in the room, which will not go away with a few air fresheners. So, instead of hiding the dirty face of your bathroom, deal with it – clean it regularly and to perfection.

2. Get the bacteria out of your shower. The morning shower in a combination with a cup of strong coffee guarantees you a strong start of the day. But did you know that the shower provides perfect conditions for bacteria to grow? These bacteria will fall down on you the second you run the water and will get in the air. This way you will inhale them even after the water has stopped. The shower bacteria are almost 100 times more than the bacteria in the water. Good news is that people with strong immune system are less likely to be affected. However, if you are sick, pregnant or too old you might be at some risk. The symptoms of problems caused by shower bacteria can vary from coughing to tiredness.

3. In order to reduce the number of bacteria in your bathroom, change the plastic shower handset with a metal one. It might be a good idea to soak the shower head in a bucket of water and vinegar for a few hours or even overnight. Scrub the holes of it with a toothbrush or with a needle. Run a strong stream of hot water regularly to get rid of the dirtiness and always dry the shower after using it. In case you cannot move your shower head around, put hot vinegar in a plastic bag and tie it on the head of the shower. Leave it on for a few hours, and then run the hot water and dry.

0 Home Cleaning Advices – Part 3

Having order at home means not making a mess. Answer the question: “How can I have some free time after I come home from work, when in the morning I threw a couple of shirts on the floor as I was looking for something to wear and finally settled for what was in the back of the dresser?” If it is not just you, but your husband and your family as a whole and you do that each morning, when you come home you will find at least a dozen of things that should not be where they are. Now add a few glasses and plates from breakfast, dirty socks and bed, which have not been made. There you go! Half an hour of your free, after-work time at home is gone, spent for fixing the above. Therefore, instead of ruining your time at home, put some effort in teaching yourself and your family some self-control. How about everybody started putting their belongings in their rightful places?

Clean the carpets. Regular carpet cleaning will provide you with the unique opportunity to preserve the colours of these interior design items, which are usually related to the warmth and the cosiness of your home. The best way to wash your carpets is, of course, during the warm months of the year. However, you sometimes have to do that when the weather outside is colder. The carpet cleaning itself is not an easy task, especially if you are living in the big city. During the first months after purchasing your new carpet, it is enough to just beat the carpet from the outside to get the dust off. You still have to face the problem of finding a place to do that. One of the options you are left with is to vacuum your carpet as often as you can, which will significantly reduce the level of the dirtiness and you will have to wash it less. If we are talking about washing the carpets at the office, the situation changes a lot. This is due to the fact that there are a lot of people on the carpet daily, which brings in more dirtiness. This would suggest a necessity of a professional company stepping in, which would bring in experts, professional cleaning products and the equipment required to deal with this challenge. An alternative way to clean your carpet at home is to use a mixture of vinegar and water. This way it will preserve its characteristics longer. Even though a lot of people prefer washing their carpets at home, on the spot, a once in a while visit to a professional cleaning company is something that you should not denude your carpet from.

0 Easter Cleaning

As soon as you start thinking about your spring cleaning, you should prepare yourself for the Easter celebrations. Here are the main points for every housewife.

You need to clean the windows, the drawers in every room, the wardrobes, the books on the bookshelves, the shoe drawer, vacuum the carpets, wash the door mats and the curtains, clean the blinds, put the winter clothes away for the season. Check if the medicines in the medicine cabinet have not expired. To the same for your spices. Clean the fridge, the oven, the microwave and the washing machine. Last, but not least, decorate your home according to the season – spring theme and Easter decoration.

Make sure you get yourself in the right mood for doing the spring and Easter cleaning so that you do not do it with a frown on. Put on comfortable clothes, play energetic music and do not clean for the whole day – leave yourself a couple of hours to go outside for a walk.

Don’t be afraid to ask somebody for help. Try not to get too exhausted. Start with the cleaning earlier and clean a little bit each day so that you don’t have to do it all in a day. A good idea is to work with a neighbor or a friend who can help you at some point – when you have company cleaning is more fun and easier. You can do some work and socialize at the same time. Don’t forget to return the favour!

Also, plan for helping your mother or grandmother with the spring cleaning, even if they haven’t asked you for assistance.

You don’t want to be exhausted and moody when the celebrations come, therefore you need to organize your cleaning. There is no point in cleaning the floor with a sponge if you will be dusting afterwards. If you want to both clean and sanitize everything you clean, you need to be thorough. You need to move in one of two directions. You can go either from top to bottom or right to left/left to right. For example, it’s better to start with the ceiling and the upper parts of the walls and then go down to the windows and walls, finishing with the floor.

Clean the things you haven’t thought of before. This includes the mattress, the phone, the dustbin, the shower curtain, the dishwasher and the fireplace. You can clean all that with nothing more than hot water and a rag.

Clean and sanitize the toilet dish, the kitchen floor and the cutting board. It might seem strange, but the cutting board, according to recent studies, can host more than 200 times the bacteria than the toilet dish. You can clean it by spraying it with vinegar and leave it overnight.

0 How To Clean Up Your House Quickly

If it is time for you to clean up your home thoroughly and you don’t know what to start with, it is good to follow several useful rules.

First, you need to plan your work in advance so that there won’t be any free time. It is better that you fulfil everything at once than to take pointless breaks and get more tired by the continuous cleaning.

Let’s take the living room. Put all cluttered things in a basket, for example, and then start with the furniture and the floor. The direction of cleaning in any room should be from the top downwards. Remove the cobwebs from the walls, dust the furniture, stretch the pillows on the couch and dust them as well. Dust the shelves and the cupboards and if necessary, wash the curtains. After that, vacuum clean the floor and then clean it with a wet mop. Go back to the basket with the objects and begin arranging them in their places one by one. When the curtains are washed, you can hang them straight on the ledge and they will dry on their own.

Let’s proceed with the kitchen. Arrange the dirty glasses, plates and cutlery in the dish-washer and turn it on. Put inside the fridge and the cupboards everything that needs to be put away. Beat out the table cover and wipe the counter. Throw the garbage out and vacuum clean the kitchen. Then clean the stove and the sink until they shine.

And we can finish with the bathroom. First, you should wash the sink and clean the mirror with an appropriate detergent. Then clean the toilet with the help of a long brush or mop. Disinfect the whole room after you have taken care of the tiles. You can use a vacuum cleaner or a microfiber towel to collect all hairs and tiny waste. Change the used towels with new ones and air the bathroom.

This may sound like a lot of work but in fact it isn’t. All you need to do is make a plan or a schedule and use every free time and opportunity to fulfil it. Follow your plan strictly and you will see how effective this is. You won’t waste any time because you will know exactly what to do, when to do it and how. Let this quick everyday cleaning become a kind of a habit or a ritual for you and you will notice its positive results.

0 How to Clean The Iron

Almost every housewife has seen stains on their iron. In most cases, these are deposits that cover the plate of the iron. These are caused by the very process of ironing and are nothing more than mill-cakes from the clothes. The process of their formation is a continuous one so they do not appear after one or two ironings. With time, however, the deposits grow and every housewife has to face the question of how to clean them exactly. There certainly are quite a lot of products for that type of cleaning which you can easily purchase in the supermarket. I, however, would like to introduce to you those methods to clean the iron which are easy and practical and can be easily performed in your everyday life.

Some people use baking soda. It is probably the best solution for cleaning. Baking soda can get rid of pretty much any type of deposits. You need to put some of it on an old newspaper and scrub the surface of the iron, with the iron being turned off, of course.

The limestone can be removed using acid like vinegar for instance. But if you pour it in the iron’s tank, the limestone will dissolve and occlude the tubes. This could damage your iron. That’s why you should use only distilled water for your iron.

Another method is using dishwashing liquid to clean your iron. Soak a cotton rag into a lot of dishwashing liquid and put the iron on it for at least twelve hours. This is usually effective against the deposit. Do not forget to iron a worthless piece of clothing first to make sure there is no leftover dishwashing liquid, before ironing your clothes.

Vinegar is one of the best weapons against deposits. Heat up the iron first and then go over a rag, soaked in vinegar. That will make the iron shiny again without having to go through the supermarket looking for the specific cleaning products.

It is very important that you take care of your iron. It is as important as your washing machine for your clothes. If you let it get too much of deposits or stains on the ironing surface you might put your clothes at risk. Imagine you have to iron a white shirt for a business meeting and you are almost running late. Well, you would not want to burn it or stain it with your crappy iron, do you? Although you cannot prevent the eventual staining of getting deposits on the surface, you can try to postpone it as much as possible by taking good care of it. Always use distilled water for your iron to make it last longer and serve you better.

0 How To Deep Clean And Get Rid of Bad Smells

There are many aerosols and other chemical-based products you can get at the store that will provide you with a strong and quite lovely smell. These, however, fail to effectively remove bad smells – they just add the good smell on top of the other. Usually, they do not last as long as the stink source and in a couple of hours or less you are back to the set off point, with less money of course. The solution to this problem, as usual, is quite simple and unexpected. What you really need to do in order to deep clean is to use good old baking soda. It is one of the revolutionary discoveries of humanity, although we do not credit it as such. Besides from cooking, you can use it for cleaning, washing and, of course, smell removal. Here are a few ways of using baking soda to deal with bad odours.

1. Bad smell in the fridge? No problem.

But a little bit of baking soda in an open box and leave it in the fridge overnight. It will neutralize the bad smells in your fridge.

2. No-smell cutting board.

Sprinkle baking soda over the cutting board, rub good using kitchen paper and rinse thoroughly. For better results, you might clean the cutting board with vinegar afterwards.

3. Get rid of the bad smell in the dustbin.

Put some baking soda on the bottom of the dustbin. This will prevent appearance of bad smells.

4. Sewer smell in the bathroom?

Quite often, especially in the summer time, there is a distinctive stink coming from the sewer in the bathroom or the sink. What you can do about it is put half a cup of baking soda down the sewer and run a thin stream of warm water.

5. Remove bad smells from the carpet.

Put baking soda over the carpet and let it stay overnight. This will absorb the bad smell. In the morning all you have to do is vacuum clean in order to remove the baking soda along with the odours.

6. Freshen the dresser.

Put a few little pouches of baking soda in the drawers. This will maintain the fresh smell in there.

7. Get rid of the smell in your car.

If your car smells like the last thing you ate, or spilled a drink on the floor, if you have had an animal in the car and you can tell it just from being in the car or whatever it is that makes your car smell bad, sprinkle around the car with baking soda. Wait for fifteen minutes and vacuum good.

8. Refresh the towels and the sheets.

Adding half a cup of baking soda to the rinsing water when washing the sheets or towels will refresh them. You can do the same with water which you have soaked a bunch of lavender in.

0 How To Clean The Cigarette Smell at Home

Since it is banned by law to smoke in public areas, the home for a smoker is the only safe place they can relax and light a cigarette. But how to deal with the inevitable smell that comes with the smoking?

Of course, the only truly working way is to simply quit smoking. However, if you do not wish to take such drastic measures, here are a few tricks to help you defeat and clean the tobacco smell at home.

You probably already know about using candles. The flame of the candle absorbs the smoke. If you are expecting smoking guests, and you do not want to be a bad host and make them go out to smoke, lighting candles is a good way to prevent the smell. It will also help creating a cosy atmosphere.

Another thing you can do is to put a few small cups of vinegar around the room you or your guests will be smoking in. If you do not like the smell of vinegar too much, you can substitute it with charcoal.

If you have a cat as a pet, you can be sure that its toilet will be your helper towards defeating the cigarette smell. Put a little bit of it in the ashtrays and it will absorb the bad odour.

If you are reading this post too late and you have carpets or furniture that have the cigarette smoke stuck to them and you cannot wash them, you can sprinkle them with baking soda and leave it on overnight. Vacuum in the morning and the smell should be gone.

For a pleasant aroma at your home, despite of the numerous smoking acts that occur daily, soak a few cotton tampons with vanilla extract and place them in different places around the smoking room. Vanilla naturally absorbs bad smells and leaves a pleasant aroma.

If you have warm weather outside it is always a good option to simply open a window. The breeze that will come will disperse the cigarette smoke and you will get some fresh air in the room – something that it always good to do even if you are not smoking in the room.

They are kind of rare to find but you can buy special ash tray fresheners. This is some sort of aromatic dust which you put in your ash tray and it absorbs the smell of cigarette burns while at the same time, due to the high temperature of the burning cigarette, releases pleasant smell. It is a pretty cool thing to put it when you have guests but not tell them that you have done it. They will start asking you questions how come your ashtray smells like vanilla.