Sadly, summer is about to end. Now that September is here, schools will soon be open and summer vacation will officially be over. We suppose that today is as good a day as any to offer up some suggestions for keeping your home clean all autumn long. After all, the start of fall is on the way!
Clean those oft-forgotten areas of the home.
How often do you move your furniture away from the wall so that you can vacuum behind it? Our desks, beds, night tables and dressers are often kept in place all year round. What that means is you have dust collecting in abundance. Do yourself a favour and start cleaning the areas of your home that rarely see a vacuum, broom or mop. On QuickAndDirtyTips.com, Bruce and Jeanne Lubin remind us that chandeliers are rarely ever cleaned.
They offer a very unique cleaning strategy. “First, make sure the light switch is off,” they instruct, “Next, lay a blanket or upside-down umbrella underneath the chandelier to catch any drips or falling pieces. Now mix 1/2 cup lemon juice with 1½ cups water in a jar. The crystals clean themselves—all you have to do is bring the jar up to each one and dip it in, then let it air-dry.”
Initiate a winter wipe down.
Yes, we know that autumn hasn’t even begun yet. But your fall cleaning routine needs to incorporate methods of ensuring that the forthcoming winter is one when your home offers you the purest air to breathe. Doing that requires what Olivia Heath calls a “winter wipe down”.
“To prevent winter bugs being passed via germ-ridden hands, ensure that all surfaces are properly cleaned with an anti-bacterial cleaning fluid…going further than focusing on kitchen and bathroom surfaces,” she recommends on HouseBeautiful.com, “For example, if a door is being regularly used it’s likely to pick up all sorts of germs that can easily pass through body contact. This is especially important if children are around.”
Toss orange peels in the fireplace.
We know this may sound like a weird suggestion. Admittedly, this is less of a cleaning technique and more of a way to maintain high indoor air quality during the colder months of the year. Do you enjoy using your fireplace when it’s cold outside? Burning firewood actually emits several toxic compounds into the air. As the Lubins reveal, orange peels are much healthier alternatives to firewood.
“The best thing to use as kindling in your fireplace isn’t newspaper (or printed out emails from your ex),” they write, “It’s orange peels! Orange (and lemon) peels smell delicious when they burn, and they contain oils that not only make them burn longer, but help ignite the wood around them. Finally, they produce less creosote than paper, which will help keep your chimney clean.”
Can Enviro-Works Inc. help you keep your home clean this autumn?
We proudly offer a number of laboratory services to help ensure that your home is free of pollutants. They include VOC Testing which employs the EPA TO-17 using GC-MS method for the determination of VOCs. Our services also include detection of Mould In Air as well as through sampling bulk materials, using tapelifts and swabbing, also known as the Bulk/Tapelift/Swab methods.
For more information, please don’t hesitate to call us at 780-457-4652 or email us at info@enviro-works.com.