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Cold Winter Weather Has You Indoors More Now! You'll have company. The kids will bring friends over. Family will come by weekly, or at least often. Maybe you'll have dinner or hobby parties to break the winter doldrums, boredom, or cabin fever. You'll want to be ready for company. And you'll want to take the kind of home-care actions that will easily bring things back to a happy feel-good-clean when they're gone.
Well, doing these four key housecleaning actions is how all that is done!
And since, like you, I'm a busy person too, I like to keep my home-care articles less talk and more "how-to". Just this quick disclaimer notice first:
The products shown here are recommended for best results by the author of this article, Paul D Ahearn, and are not necessarily the recommendations of HousekeepingChannel.com or any of its principals, assigns, or affiliates. This article is not a paid advertisement and the author receives no remuneration of any kind for making these recommendations. The recommendation of these products are solely a result of the author's hands-on experience with them in professional housecleaning circumstances. They are based solely upon the criteria of best results when compared professionally against their primary competitors by the author in a wide variety of real homes and actual conditions.
Now let's just get to it:
Determine the rooms you will most likely spend your time or entertain in, and quickly spiff them up with these four key housecleaning actions that will bring any home up to a "high standard of personal comfort" or "short notice entertaining standards" in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of effort.
These six cleaning items are all you will need:
- Swiffer® Duster
- Mr. Clean® Magic Eraser®
- Spray Cleaner
- One Damp and One Dry Cleaning Cloth
- Woolite® Oxy-Deep Power Shot®
- A Wide-stroke Microfiber Mop
Key Action 1: Swiffer® Dust Your Chosen Rooms
Put away the feather duster or static duster for this one. A Swiffer Duster (with extension handle):
- Is flatter: It gets into nooks, crannies, corners, over and under tight spaces, all without moving things around or picking them up like you would normally have to do.
- Holds onto dust particles, so you don't have to constantly take time to shake the particles off outside or onto the floor to be vacuumed later.
- Angles to get upper and lower surfaces, virtually anywhere and everywhere, with less effort and more speed.
- Here's the biggie: Cleans your floors. After you've dusted everything else, now using the same "used" duster pad, just keep right on going and dust all the awkward areas of your non-carpeted floors (another reason you need the extension handle). This will clean those areas better than a floor duster, even Swiffer's floor duster, and can cut your vacuuming time in half. Making your vacuuming as much as 50% easier and 50% quicker.
Key Action 2: Mr. Clean® Magic Eraser® Your Entire Kitchen and Bathroom
First, take all the clutter, the "stuff" you never use but leave sitting out, the "too-dirty-to-clean-quickly" knick knacks, and all the various other debris that gets in the way of cleaning, and put them into cabinets, drawers, or a box in the closet. Then, just...
Spray — Erase — Wipe ... EVERYTHING!
(As always, if it's dirty, clean it. If it isn't, don't.)
No this isn't the way you always clean your kitchen or bathroom if you want them clean and sparkling. But for comfortable upkeep and short notice entertaining, a Magic Eraser® will make quick, light work of the toughest dirt and grime; even on your stove if it's been kept up.
- Tip 1: You might want to sneak into the living room and get the smudges off the woodwork and walls, too.
- Tip 2: I personally recommend Red Juice® and/or Blue Juice® from TheCleanTeam.com. In my business, these are two of my star performers.
Key Action 3: Woolite® Oxy Deep Power Shot® the Spots and Soiled Areas of Your Carpet
(If you can't find Woolite® Oxy Deep Power Shot®, try "Spot Shot®" brand carpet spot cleaner.) For heavy traffic areas, use Woolite® Heavy Traffic.
Below are the quick and easy instructions:
Getting Out Those Carpet and Rug Spots... Quickly and Easily!
- Spray, and saturate, the spot
- Gently rub the cleaner into the spot with a carpet brush
- Leave it for about five minutes, longer if necessary.
- Sometimes you can spray a spot, leave it for several minutes, and the stain will completely oxygenate out, with no work at all. Then just blot up the cleaner with a dry cleaning cloth.
- Blot up or rub out the stain with a clean dry cleaning cloth (preferably white).
- Caution: Make sure you use a cloth that won't "run" colors into your carpet
Done!
One last cautionary note: Sometimes a carpet can be dirtier than it looks. If it is, cleaning up spots can reverse the situation. It can leave "clean spots" on a carpet you thought was already clean. Now you have to clean the rest of the area or even the whole carpet. If that's the case, and it's just a small area, or a "traffic path", use Woolite® Heavy Traffic.
Key Action 4: Microfiber Mop Your Hardwood and Hard-surface Floors.
Microfiber mopping is quicker and more effective than sponge or string mops. You just spray the floor with the recommended cleaner, and mop it with a damp broad-stroke (wide-stroke) microfiber mophead. You can gently Magic Eraser® scuffs and spots (don't scrub hard on polyurethaned wood floors) and they come right up.
- Tip: You can also find an effective mop at TheCleanTeam.com. They call it the "Sh-Mop". They'll also have some high quality floor cleaners there for you, too. TheCleanTeam.com is one of my primary resources for top quality supplies.
Ok, I left out vacuuming and the toilets. I guess that would make steps 5 and 6. Vacuuming (step 5) will be easier now that you've dusted the awkward areas with the Swiffer Duster, and removed the spots in your carpets with Power Shot. Toilets will be the subject of another article...
You know what the real beauty of all this is? Now that it's done, it only takes minutes a week to keep up.
DONE! All the visible areas of your house are dusted, wiped, scrubbed down, mopped, and vacuumed.
Swiffer®, Mr. Clean®, and Magic Eraser® are registered trademarks of Procter & Gamble Co.; Red Juice® and Blue Juice® are registered trademarks of Jeff Campbell and The Clean Team; Woolite® is a registered trademark of Reckitt Benckiser and licensed to Bissell Homecare.
(Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of The Housekeeping Channel, LLC.)
