Recognize that your home could be cleaner. This is where we step in. Check out these helpful hints for getting and keeping your house clean.

Clean the Exhaust Fan

If the grille on your bathroom exhaust fan has become clogged with dust, try a trick that is both faster and more effective than vacuuming. To clean a bathroom fan, follow these steps: Turn on the fan and use “canned air” to blow out the dust.

The dust will be blown outside by the fan. This also works on your central heating/cooling system’s return air grilles. Run the system so that the dust is carried to the filter by the return airflow.

Canned air can be found in home improvement and hardware stores, usually in the electrical supplies section. Caution: The cans do not only contain air, but also chemical propellants. Allow children to play with them (cleaning tricks).

Beat and Shake Area Rugs

Large area rugs should be vacuumed at least once a week. However, take them outside three or four times a year for a more thorough cleaning and dusting. Or call Keep It Clean Carpets and Tile for a deep clean.

Drape them over a fence or a clothesline, then beat them with a broom or tennis racket. A good thrashing removes far more dust than a vacuum. Every week, take smaller rugs outside for a vigorous shake.

Do Air Cleaners Reduce Dusting?

Large and small particles are removed from the air in a single room by an effective air cleaner. It can relieve allergy or asthma symptoms as well as reduce smoke and cooking odors within that space.

But don’t expect it to take over your dusting duties. Because air cleaners are designed to filter a small area, only a small percentage of the dust in your home will ever reach the unit.

For air cleaners to have a significant impact on overall dust levels, one unit would be required in each room. Purchase an air cleaner from Amazon. While you’re debating the worth of an air cleaner, clean your air conditioner; it’s simpler than you think (cleaning tricks).

Dust with Your Dryer

Blankets, pillows, slipcovers, drapes, and other textiles not only trap but also generate household dust as they shed and degrade. Curtains and drapes, in particular, accumulate dust because they absorb moisture and dirt from the outside environment and serve as a landing pad for dust from ceiling fans and air vents.

Buying machine-washable items and laundering them twice a year is the best way to clean dust (OK, at least once). Non-machine-washable textiles can be dried in the dryer for 20 minutes on the air-fluff setting (no heat) with a damp towel.

Pet hair will be attracted to the damp towel, and the tumbling movement and airflow will remove the smaller particles for you (cleaning tricks).

Rotate Bedding Weekly

Your comfortable bed is a major dust collector. Every time you roll over, the bedding collects skin flakes, sheds its own fibers, and emits a puff of dust. Wash sheets and pillowcases once a week to reduce fallout. Items that aren’t machine washable don’t need weekly trips to the dry cleaners—just take blankets and bedspreads outside and shake them.

Pillows can be brushed to remove dust, but for a thorough cleaning, wash or dry-clean them. When you change bedding, don’t whip up a dust storm. Roll up the old sheets gently and spread the new ones out; even clean bedding sheds fibers.

Washing your bedding on a weekly basis can also help you identify pests such as bed bugs.

Clean the Air While You Clean the House

Your vacuum’s agitator brush and exhaust whip up dust that eventually settles on the surfaces you’ve just cleaned. Switch your thermostat to ‘fan on’ to filter out some of that dust before it settles.

Even when the system isn’t heating or cooling, this activates the blower inside your furnace and filters the air. After cleaning, turn on the blower for about 15 minutes to remove dust from the air. But don’t forget to return it to ‘auto.’

Most blowers are not intended to run continuously.

Buff Off Heavy Grime

If you have glass shower doors in your bathroom and don’t keep them clean, soap scum can build up and become nearly impossible to remove.

Bring out the heavy equipment to clean your bathroom better. Purchase some polishing compound from a home improvement or auto parts store and use an auto buffer to remove the offending scum.

If you don’t already have a buffer, you can get one for as little as $20 or borrow one from a friend who is a gearhead. To avoid clogging the bathroom, remove the doors and store them in the garage. Discover why brass polish is the most effective method for cleaning glass scratches.

A Quick Cleaning Cures Skipping Discs

If a CD or DVD skips or refuses to play in a machine that plays other discs flawlessly, cleaning the disc may be the solution. There are disc cleaning kits available, but all you really need is a soft, lint-free rag, lukewarm water, and a few drops of dish detergent.

If the disc still acts up after cleaning, look for scratches. Repair kits for CDs and DVDs are available in electronics stores. Make the best homemade hand wash by combining dish detergent and one really tasty ingredient. This is one of the best cleaning tricks.

Duster for the Vertically Challenged

Dusting ceiling fans and other high, out-of-reach objects is a real chore unless you play in the NBA. Wrap a clean painting roller in a dryer sheet and secure the ends with rubber bands. Attach an extension handle to the roller and dust away for the fastest way to clean house.

Tile and Grout Cleaning with Bleach Pen

Try using a bleach pen on tile walls to transform grungy grout into great grout. This method is time-consuming, but the result is crisp, clean grout lines. Draw bleach across the grout lines with the pen. You can target the grout with the pen without getting bleach all over the tile. Wait 10 minutes before rinsing.

For extremely mildewed grout, a second application may be required, and it may be helpful to gently scrub the bleach into the grout with a toothbrush before allowing it to work for 10 minutes. Keep the fan running in the bathroom and avoid skin contact.

This technique works best with light or white grout. Test a small area first if you have colored grout. It could fade. Remember feel free to call Keep It Clean Carpets and Tile.

Green Cleaning Tips and Tricks

Maggie Orth, a professional housecleaner, enjoys making her own cleaning products. Here’s her recipe for an all-purpose cleaning solution, which she adapted from a recipe in Karen Logan’s book Clean House, Clean Planet (available from amazon.com).

1 cup distilled vinegar, 3 tablespoons borax, 1 gallon hot water, and 1/2 cup soap (Maggie uses Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds) in a 5-quart bucket Maggie adds 10 to 15 drops of tea tree, lavender, or lemon oil for fragrance. Pour some of the mixture into a spray bottle after mixing the ingredients. Keep the remainder in a gallon jug. The raw ingredients will cost between $25 and $30, but you’ll have enough for years!

Clean tile, countertops, and painted woodwork with this mixture. It’s an excellent all-purpose cleaner, but it’s not ideal for cleaning glass. Maggie cleans the glass with club soda.

Scuff Mark Eraser

Using a clean, dry tennis ball, remove shoe scuff marks from vinyl flooring. A gentle rub and heel marks have been ‘erased.’ More clever cleaning tips like this one can be found by clicking here.

Remove Tough Grime With Less Scrubbing

A Magic Eraser sponge (or other brands) will quickly remove built-up soap scum on the shower walls, ground-in dirt on the floor tile, or dried toothpaste on the vanity top. Simply dampen it and apply it to the offending mess. In most cases, the mess will simply wash away.

These sponges are particularly useful for removing ground-in dirt from porous floor tile and cleaning those nagging nonslip strips at the bottom of your tub.

Magic Eraser sponges clean bathroom showers effectively and are widely available in supermarkets, hardware stores, and other places where cleaning supplies are sold. They wear out quickly, unlike regular sponges, so stock up.

Capture Dust – Don’t Just Spread It Around

Some dust is picked up by feather dusters and dry rags, but the majority of it settles elsewhere. Damp rags or disposable cloths with an electrostatic charge that attracts and holds dust (such as Swiffer or Grab-it) work much better.

Cloths with oils or waxes that attract dust also work well, but can leave residue on furniture. Because the exhaust stream from a vacuum creates a dust storm, use it only on surfaces that are difficult to dust with a cloth, such as rough surfaces and intricate woodwork.

Swiffer Cloths are available on Amazon. Have you ever tried to come up with a way to clean a chandelier? Consider one simple solution.

Remember, Clean Home = Healthier Living.

Always call Keep It Clean Carpets and Tile for more information.