Sunday, October 15, 2006

Do Ahead Cleaning Tips for the Holidays

Cleaning Tips for the Holiday Season
Make a Holiday Cleaning List
Make a promise to keep a piece of paper handy and jot down what you normally do during the holiday seasons, baking shopping, decorating etc. It will help you keep organized. As you write down the things you normally do it becomes easy to see where perhaps you could cut back and be a bit less harried this holiday season.
We actually stopped decorating a tree several years ago. Instead I take soot and peanut butter balls, press sunflower and other wild bird seed into them and head for the woods. Climbing a ladder, we string our tree with goodies for our squirrel and winged friends. No I'm not saying give up your decorated tree. I'm just saying that there isn't a child – no matter your age - who doesn't enjoy a romp in the woods that smells of freshly fallen leaves. A mug of hot cocoa from the thermos warms the hands as you wait for the winged ones to squawk their thank you.
Now let's get a jump start on cleaning for the holidays.
You need fast ways to get those chores done. Start cleaning in the bathroom, the most time consuming. Our Erase It for Bathrooms http://www.goclean.com/erase-it.htm makes short work removing rust, hard water and iron from toilets. The Erase It http://www.goclean.com/erase-it-all.htm for tile grout removes those hard water deposits, soap scum and mildew.
When my new products arrive in a few days, our CleanEz will quickly remove hard water spots on glass shower doors and the TerraPlus will knock soap residue off the shower walls in minutes. Then coat both your toilet, shower walls and doors with Advantage http://www.goclean.com/advantage.htm and cleaning this holiday season will be a breeze.  
Advantage coats surfaces so soap residue and water sheets down the walls and doors of your shower. It also make surfaces slick so residue doesn't stick in a toilet. You will appreciate the true value of this after company leaves and you have house cleaning the next day. You can also use a product like Gel Gloss in the showers and toilets although it will probably take two to three coats.
Next in the bathroom, pour a cup of distilled white vinegar in the toilet twice a month to prevent the pinkish residue as well as hard water from forming.
Clean your chandeliers
This is the ideal time to clean the chandeliers since they are also so very time consuming. For chandeliers with baubles spray those with a cleaner found at lighting stores. It dries without leaving residue. Move furniture and put down plastic then old terry towels. Spray the baubles and just let them drip dry.  After they have dried wipe the arms with jewelry cleaner and that job is done for another six months.
Cleaning Mini Blind
Usually mini blinds cleaned now will stay pretty much dust free through the holidays – exceptions noted. Take an old but clean all white cotton tee shirt or one of our lint free towels, http://www.goclean.com/towels.htm and dampen lightly with a bit of vinegar and water. Turn the slats facing down toward you. Wipe over the slats starting from the top and work your way to the bottom. Now reverse the slats, pull the shades out and walk around behind them and repeat from the back.
The weather has gotten cooler and snowing in some areas so be sure to clean your chimney and your air ducts. I do not like getting emails asking how to get rid of smoke damage from fires. There isn't a winter that goes by that I don't get at least two or three such emails and they break my heart because these kinds of fires are preventable as are ones started with candles – next issue.
Spray around the exterior of your home for mold or mildew that might have started growing. Mold and mildew finds its way into your home where it can cause serious allergy problems especially during the winter. It is also very difficult to clear your home of mold and mildew. So it's far easier to seal any cracks in the foundation and kill that mold before it gets inside.
This article may only be reprinted giving full credit to Mary Findley and her website at http://www.goclean.com. Copyright @2006 All rights reserved worldwide.