Category Archives: Cleaning Tips

Everybody Loves a Cuddly Pet

We all love our furry (and feathered) friends. There’s no denying that they bring a lot of happiness and comfort into our lives and our homes. This writer is one of many who believe that a house isn’t a home unless it’s got at least one animal member of the family (I have, at various times in my life, owned several cats, a dog, mice, guinea pigs, goats, chickens, parakeets and sheep. Right now, our black cat is curled up on my daughter’s bed – a bit of a no-no, as you’ll read later on).

However, there is one thing that pets aren’t so good at and this is cleaning up after themselves. What’s more, animals also bring a lot more mess into the home, even if this is just in the form of pet hair or feathers. This means that pet owners often have to do a lot more cleaning than people without pets (although we would probably all agree that it’s worth it!). On the other hand, some pets are great for cleaning up crumbs and other spilt food from carpets and floors – I have heard of one person who trained pet rats to clean the kitchen bench, but this certainly isn’t for everyone!

However, we want to keep our homes fit for human and animal habitation, rather than letting our homes become unhealthy and ridden with unwanted animal inhabitants such as fleas, cockroaches and feral mice and rats. This means that we are going to have to arrange for a bit of extra cleaning work to be done around our homes.

Hints For Keeping Your Home Clean With Pets

Dedicated Pet Beds

Give your pet its own bed rather than letting it sleep on yours. As I am always telling my daughter, allowing an animal to sleep on your bed means that your bedding will soon become covered with animal hair and will start smelling of that animal. It also makes it more likely that any parasites your pet has picked up (fleas, worms) will spread to you. It’s also easier to wash pet bedding than to wash all of your own blankets, duvets, pillows, etc.

Designated Loo Areas Indoors (But Preferrably Outdoors)

Ideally, your cat or dog should be able to defecate/urinate outside. If, however, you need to use a litter tray, don’t keep this in the kitchen or anywhere that you’re likely to put your foot in it. The laundry and the garage are ideal. It’s best to have a kitty litter tray on a hard surface that is easier to clean and disinfect if/when your pet misses the tray.

Organised Feeding

Feeding should also be done outside if possible. If it isn’t possible, keep the feeding bowl on a hard surface rather than on a carpet, and put newspaper down to make cleaning up easier, especially if you have a pet who likes to haul bits out of their bowl and onto the floor.

Plan the Cleaning of Pet Living Areas

For guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, mice and rats, sawdust makes a great covering for the floor of the cage, as it absorbs urine and poop, and is easy to sweep up and remove (there’s a reason why sawdust used to be sprinkled on the floors of bars and butcher’s shops). What’s more, it’s compostable. If you can’t get hold of sawdust for regular cleaning, use newspapers and shredded paperwork, although this is less absorbent and means that you will have to wipe down the bottom of the cage during its regular clean-out. Metal or plastic cage bottoms are easier in this regard.

Brush Hairy Friends to Prevent Prevent Vacuuming Problems

Regular grooming of your cat or dog means that more pet hair will go in the brush and less will get into your carpet and upholstery. Some dogs (and a very few cats) don’t mind being vacuumed but only do this if your pet enjoys or at least tolerates it and use low suction.

You can get hold of special mitts for cleaning cat hair (and dog hair) off furniture. If you can’t find one of these in your local pet supplies store, then use a circle of wide sticky tape to scrape the hair off sofas and cushions (good old duct tape to the rescue again).

Keep a Good London Domestic Cleaning Company on Speed Dial

If you live in the UK capital like me, you need to know how to get hold of a good professional domestic cleaning company in London. Even the best-behaved pets have accidents here and there from time to time. What’s more, pets just don’t get it about wiping paws when they come into the house. Over time, a feline or canine (or combined) pong will build up in your carpets unless you clean them regularly. This should be done annually at least, and possibly more often if your pet is still being housetrained. Deep house cleaning the way a professional cleaner does it, removes any kind of pet odours and will also help to keep fleas and worms under control. Getting the upholstery cleaned professionally is also a smart idea.

Secure Rubbish Bins

If you’re fed up with the dog raiding the rubbish bin for food scraps and getting rubbish everywhere, simply don’t put food rubbish in there! In the first place, we should be composting food rubbish rather than sending it to the landfill. In the second place, a lot of food scraps that aren’t so good in the compost will be enjoyed by your dog, such as meat, dairy and carbohydrates – even some vegetables! Every pet owner (not just dog owners) should have a “pet scraps bowl” where food scraps your pet can eat can be collected. This saves you a bit on your pet food bills and also provides some variety in your pet’s diet as well as cutting down on the amount of waste we produce. Dogs, chickens, pot-bellied pigs and rats eat nearly anything (but keep things containing chocolate and onions to a minimum for dogs); cats eat meat scraps (e.g. fat trimmed off meat) plus a small amount of dairy; birds and mice eat grain-based products and legumes, plus some fruit and vegetables; and guinea pigs and rabbits enjoy things like apple cores, carrot tops, watermelon rinds, pumpkin seeds, celery leaves, strawberry hulls and the half-eaten orange that came back from school in your children’s lunchbox.

Protect Furniture to Enable Easy Cleaning

If your pet is particularly fond of one particular piece of furniture, put a throw or slipcover on it (the furniture, silly!) to make the cleaning easier. It’s much easier to pop a throw or a cover in the washing machine (make sure you buy one that is machine washable) compared to getting your upholstery cleaned every couple of months.

Cleaning Pet Mess

It happens with even the nicest and best-housetrained pets. Somebody leaves the cat or dog shut in the house with no access to the litter tray. Or the cat tries to use the litter tray but misses. Now, what are you going to do? How are you going to deal with the mess?

Time is of the Essence

It’s important to get onto the mess left by a pet having an accident as soon as possible. If you don’t then the poo or wee can be absorbed right into whatever’s on your floor, causing stains and lingering smells. Even if you can’t smell any residue, your pet’s more sensitive nose can, and the smell will send a signal that says “It’s OK to do your business here.” And then the crime gets repeated.

Do Not Vacuum The Mess

Pet poo is definitely one of the things you shouldn’t vacuum! What you should not do is attempt to vacuum up the mess, even if you have a wet and dry vacuum cleaner. This is because the mess will plaster itself all over the inside of your vacuum cleaner and every time that you use the vacuum after that, it will smell of cat pee or dog poop. Not the nicest scent to have in your house! Instead, get a paper towel or piece of loo paper and remove all the solids you can. You may like to wear rubber gloves while doing this to prevent any poop from getting on your hands.

If the mess made is a little puddle, then blot up as much liquid as you can. An old towel or bath mat (not your best ones, of course) is ideal for this. If you don’t want to use a towel, then use a lot of paper towels or a newspaper. These will have to go into the bin, unlike the towel, which can be washed after a good soak in disinfectant and then used as normal again.

Disinfect the Whole Affected Area

After you have disposed of the mess (down the toilet is best), it’s time to get out the disinfectant to kill the germs that were in the animal excrement. Don’t use chlorine bleach – this may damage the colour of your carpet. However, you can use chlorine bleach on hard floors (tiles, vinyl, lino) but be careful not to walk on it or get it on your clothes. Dilute your disinfectant in cold water (not hot – that might set a stain permanently), splash it on the area and scrub well.

After you have scrubbed the spot, blot up as much of the liquid as you can, again using an old towel (not the same one as you used last time), paper towel or newspaper. This will speed up the time taken for the patch to dry.

After the area has dried, you may wish to sprinkle baking soda on the area to remove any lingering smells. Leave the baking soda in place for a couple of hours – maybe while you are at work or overnight. Then vacuum up. It won’t make your vacuum cleaner stink the way that vacuuming up straight poop or pee will.

If your pet has a particularly bad habit of making a mess on the carpets, the best solution would be to (a) confine your pet to hard surfaces or outside if possible and (b) call in a carpet cleaner.

Aah, the sacrifices we make in the name of our loved ones. Love is a powerful thing, don’t you think?

It All Starts with Good Intentions

Nearly everybody dreams of getting rid of all the clutter in the home – or at least organising it all! Even the world’s worst hoarders probably have some deep down plan to arrange or manage all the bits and pieces that fill their homes (garages and attics and back yards etc.). In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have any clutter in our homes at all. However, even if we try to be very strict about following William Morris’s dictum of having nothing in our homes that we do not “know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”, we can still end up with clutter in our homes. All those things we believe to be beautiful, such as children’s finger paintings with “I love you, Mummy” on them, can really get in the way.

Having Space for Everything is Vital

Even household odds and ends that we use regularly tend to become cluttered if they don’t have a proper home for them to go in. Sometimes, the only difference between clutter and order is just a case of having a place for everything and everything in its place. Getting everything in its place is simply a matter of self-discipline and good habits; having a place for everything can be another matter entirely. If you can’t think where you’re going to put whatever you keep tripping over, you can never get it properly organised.

Don’t Have the Space? Don’t Buy it!

Most homes today are smaller than they used to be, and we can’t (or at least shouldn’t) devote entire rooms to bric-a-brac or storage. This means that we have to be cunning about the space we do have available. Of course, being ruthless and getting rid of the stuff we don’t use or need is essential, but clever storage is also vital for a well-run home.

So how about you try a few of these clever ideas?

Smart Storage Solutions

1. The average single bed takes up 1.73 square metres of floor space. A queen-sized bed takes up 3.09 square metres. This is quite a lot of storage space! Some beds come with storage drawers for blankets and the like built into them (they are a right pain in the neck to move when you’re shifting house or rearranging the furniture, but that’s another story). If your bed doesn’t have built-in drawers, use cardboard boxes or other containers to store blankets, personal memorabilia like old love letters, sports equipment and the like. If you’re really pressed for space in older children’s rooms, consider loft beds. These are like bunk beds without the bottom bunk. Sleeping in a high bed has the cool factor and a lot of extra storage space becomes vacant underneath.
2. Having a rack on the wall where you can hang kitchen implements isn’t just something to show off your impressive range of knives. The wall is a great place to hang frequently used items that just won’t fit inside drawers (e.g. rolling pins). The same goes for dried herbs, dried chilli peppers and strings of onions: this “traditional farmhouse” touch had a very practical origin that needs to be re-adopted.
3. Take a tip from Tolkien’s Hobbit: “lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats”. Don’t just keep these beside the front door for the use of visitors; have them in every room. And you can hang more than just coats and hats on hooks. If you have children, have some lower down hooks for schoolbags where children can reach.
4. The old workshop trick of gluing or nailing screw-top glass jar lids, then screwing on the matching jars filled with little bits and pieces isn’t just for workshops. Try it in the pantry for storing pasta, raisins and spices, or in the home office for storing paper clips, flash drives and other small bits of stationery.
5. Sick of piles of plastic shopping bags in your cupboards and pantries? Either do without them and stick with reusable shopping bags (good luck with that – some shops just hand them out before you can tell them not to bother), or use an old tissue box to store them in. It’s amazing how many of them you can fit in there!
6. Corral children’s school books (or your own home office files) in a dish rack. You’ve got all those handy slots to put letters and other files in, while the cutlery compartment makes a great place to put pens and flash drives.
7. Old pizza boxes (regular size pizza, not mini pizza) can store hundreds of sheets of A4 paper, stack easily on top of each other and take up less space than ringbinders. Make sure they’re clean so you don’t get your insurance policy documents smeared with tomato sauce and/or smelling of pepperoni.
8. Pegboards are another storage solution that deserves to come in from the workshop and into the home. You don’t have to do the traditional silhouette thing to show what goes where (although this could be good in a children’s room) and pegboards can be painted in any colour that suits your décor. They work well in laundries, bedrooms and kitchens.
9. Just because a particular organising tool has been designed for a particular room doesn’t mean that you have to use it like that. You can use office stationery in the kitchen and/or bedroom, kitchen storage tools in the office or bathroom, etc. Similarly, shoe organisers aren’t just for shoes, and bookshelves aren’t just for books.
10. If you’re a bit of a handyperson, install shelves around the walls. This gives a living room something of an old-fashioned touch and is very practical. The traditional use for shelves like these is books and ornaments, but there’s no reason why you can’t store other items there (your DVD collection? pot plants? serving dishes?).

One final word of warning, though: if you’re trying to eliminate clutter from your home, don’t hang on to potential storage containers (pizza boxes, glass jars, etc.) just in case you need them to store something in one of these days. This just leads to worse clutter!

Yes, Mum, I was listening. I listened to you when you told me to go and clean my room. Yes, I did resent it a bit when I was growing up, but now that I’ve got a home of my own, I appreciate the things that you taught me.

I appreciate them so much that I’d like to share them with others. After all, not everybody learned the right way to clean things from their mothers – ask any professional cleaner. In some cases, these domestic cleaners get called in to do household chores for clients who just don’t know how to clean their homes in some cases.

So thanks, Mum! Here’s the best of what you told me…well, this is what I remember :).

Mum’s Home Cleaning Tips

1. Don’t put it down; put it away. This one was also phrased as “avoid double handling”. In other words, when you’ve finished using something, put it away where it belongs straight away. Don’t just dump it down on the nearest flat surface or the floor – that’s how clutter accumulates.
2. Cold water removes blood stains. It also removes egg stains and other protein stains. Never use hot water or the heat will set the stain.
3. A good soak works wonders for really dirty laundry. In preference, use enzyme washing powder and warm water – unless there’s a bloodstain involved. Overnight soaking removes a lot of dirt, meaning that you don’t have to use the heavy-duty load on the washing machine. Obviously, you have to remove the soaking water before the proper wash.
4. Go through and sort out your stuff regularly to avoid clutter accumulating. We moved house a lot, so we had to do this every time. However, even when we weren’t shifting, an annual clean-out of accumulated “treasures” was ordered.
5. Use your compost bin. Sort your compost if you have pets, as pets might like to eat some of the food you throw away.
6. Daily vacuuming is quicker than a massive weekly session, especially in high-traffic areas.
7. If you’ve managed to burn food onto the bottom of a saucepan, run it under cold water and soak it straight away. For really stubborn burnt-on gunk, sprinkle a teaspoon of dishwasher powder in the soaking water and leave the pan overnight.
8. Cleaning is a form of aerobics and it’s good for you.
9. Once you’ve done all the jobs on your to-do list, don’t do any more.
10. Minimise ornaments. You’ll only have to dust them and there’s a risk of them breaking if you have a rambunctious family.
11. Wipe down the kitchen bench and the dining room table before you vacuum the floor. Otherwise, you’ll be vacuuming twice.
12. When making a single bed, stop sheets from becoming untucked on one side by securing them to the mattress with a blanket pin. You can fix the blankets there at the same time. This saves time on making beds, especially for younger kids.

My Mum was a very forward thinking woman in her days. She was so keen on using natural ingredients when cleaning our home, she would not allow anything commercial made through the door. I have had issues with this sometimes (well, you can’t get vinegar to clean absolutely everything, I’ll tell you that) but the long term health benefits are undisputed. Mum despised poisonous supermarket products designed to clean well while having (almost) a disregards for any health risks.

So, using natural cleaning substances has been deeply ingrained my DNA since very young age. In this line of thoughts, here is a great tip (also courtesy of Mum) about using vinegar as a discaler.

13. Every kettle gets limescale. There is no way round it. The trick here is to use vinegar regularly to clean the limescale and prevent the long-term build-up. Empty the kettle of any remaining water. Fill up 3/4 with vinegar (white vinegar works best, but any other type of vinegar will also do the job) and boil it. Let it cool down and bring to the boil again. Repeat this at least three times. Then throw away the vinegar, fill with water and boil 3 times again (changing the water before each boil in order to remove any traces of vinegar taste). Job done.

I hope you enjoyed these lovely cleaning tips (so dear to me, as they remind me of my Mum). Use them but be careful in the knowledge that whatever worked for me and my Mum, may not work in the same way for you.

Stay safe! Ta-ta.

Earth Day

Each year on April 22 we celebrate Earth Day. This is the biggest non-religious holiday in the world celebrated by half a billion people.

What an awesome idea!

I believe this will raise a lot of awareness inhttps://www.earthday.org/ many people who have not thought about environmental issues before. The fact of the matter is our planet is slowly dying. We need to act now or our kids and grandkids will be paying the price of our irresponsibilty later. If everone does their little bit of conscious decisions and applies that into everyday life, things will start falling into place. Fear and uncertainly will become a thing of the past. Our planet’s future will be greener and safer. Fingers crossed. Go on Earth Day!

We need to apply a few small things in practice to invite the green idea to our homes. Decorating our homes in “green” is a hot new trend, and here we are not talking about colour at all. The good thing is that following some of the tips can satisfy us from the desire to protect nature, but it can reduce our monthly bills.

Collect Your Domestic Rubbish Separately

A classical way of making our home “green” is the separate waste collection. Every one of us has seen differently coloured waste containers. Not all waste is appropriate for recycling, and you need to know exactly which objects are suitable for separate collection: paper waste, plastics, metal and glass. Also, don’t forget that throwing waste in the toilet is one of the most dangerous decisions for the environment. Everything thrown in the drain, the sink or the bathroom can eventually turn out in rivers and seas. If you pay attention to these not so complicated things, be sure that the first step towards your “green home” is taken.

Save Water

If you want your home to be “greener”, you must treat natural resources with respect. There aren’t almost any places in which water is insufficient in our country, but despite all, we need to take care and not waste it in vain. Choose a shower with low consumption of water. Close the tap every time you don’t need the water stream.

Whenever you brush your teeth, wash your face or take a shower, don’t leave the faucet open, run the water to clean and then stop it when you are busy with other activities. When you do the dishes and treat them with detergent, prevent the water and start it again to wash them. When you cook, and you need to wash your hands frequently, use a small dish with water instead of leaving the tap running. When you take a ten-minute shower, use less than 1/3 of water instead of the amount of water needed for a bath.

These are just two of the main steps you need to take to start living a little bit more healthily and make your home “greener”, but they are a good start.

I would like to present to you some elegant cleaning solutions, which I have gathered throughout my working career and now sharing them here. Very often in life the things concerning our health and happiness are simple and easy to do. Please read the list of cleaning tips for “a happy house” and well-maintained household. 

A lot of times we prefer to postpone our cleaning chores. The more we delay the harder we have to work afterwards, for to work we have sooner or later. I don’t believe the mess will sort itself out :). OK, that’s fine but howto ensure a quick and efficient cleaning and tidyin job?

Coke (Coka-Cola) is an interesting cleaning solution. It would be really very potent agent. Its acidity will help you to loosen up stains slowly on dirty surfaces, for example in the kitchen. I know it may sound a bit strange but sometimes weird substances can help with cleaning quite well. Real life hands-on information is vital when you want to clean your home without conventional supermarket cleaning products.

Here is another one. If you have a problem with clogged bathroom traps, mix baking powder, vinegar and boiled water and watch this potion eat away the clogging culprit. Easy.

Faucets can be easily washed using homemade cleaning products, avoiding harmful chemical liquids from the supermarket. Try cleaning it with lemon peels, mandarin or grapefruit. The cleaning result would be wonderful, the smell in your house would be tempting, fresh and inviting. 

Try and share with your friends.

Watch this space as the next post will contain a ton more information.

Over and out for now.

Your Michelle.