Makeup, when applied to the person in the right places, usually looks fantastic and will make your day. Makeup, applied to carpets, clothes, the inside of bags and pillowcases, does not look so attractive and is likely to make you swear. Once you’ve stopped cursing the mess, what are you going to do about it? Because, like all stains, makeup stains are more easily cleaned off if you get onto it quickly rather than leaving it to set and become permanent.
Lipstick: Found on collars, pillowcases and (worst case scenario) smudged into carpets and wallpaper by a small inquisitive child. To clean lipstick off easy stuff (pillows and collars), dab the stain with a bit of meths or some other strong alcohol to dissolve the pigments and the worst of it. If a stain still lingers, then dab with a bit of glycerine to get the grease marks out. Then wash as normal. To get lipstick stains out of carpet, scrape as much as you can out with tissues, loo paper, rags, etc. Try not to spread the stain. Soak the area with meths or strong alcohol (again) and blot up. Then scrub like heck with a medium-stiff brush and warm soapy water. Keep going until the stain disappears (it will, eventually – keep at it). Blot dry. To remove lipstick stains from wallpaper, once again start by wiping off excess with a tissue or a paper towel, etc. Use a paste of baking soda and water applied with a toothbrush to remove it, or even use toothpaste.
Powder (also includes powder blusher and powder eyeshadow): This has a tendency to go everywhere like dust. Fortunately, because it is dry, it is easy to clean up. Just use the vacuum cleaner or even a damp duster to pick up stray bits.
Liquid foundation, concealer, cream blushers and cream eyeshadows: These are mostly oil-based stains, so glycerine is one of your best natural house cleaners for removing this stain. Dab it on and leave the glycerine to soak for an hour or so before washing as normal. If the stain has got onto something that isn’t easy to pop in the washing machine (e.g. the carpet), scrub with warm soapy water. Washing soda added to the water will help attack the oils and will make the job easier.
Nail polish: The Big Daddy of stains to clean up. Act quickly, especially if you have a quick-drying formula. Wiping up is your first step, which you should follow by applying whatever nail polish remover you prefer to use. However, be careful. While using nail polish remover is a fine way to get nail polish stains off sheets and most natural fibres (and most hard floor surfaces), the chemicals in nail polish remover is likely to play merry hell with certain artificial fabrics (especially acetate-type fabrics) and the “finishing” on wood. You can consider yourself lucky if you can escape without damaging the wood a little and leaving a white mark. It’s tricky, but you can try freezing the nail polish with an ice cube before it sinks in, followed by picking it off very, very carefully. If you are reduced to using a little nail polish remover to get the spill off wood, apply a good wood polish to the spot after cleaning to restore the finish.
Eyeliners and lip pencils: Again, these are mostly grease and the stains will come off with either glycerine, scrubbing with warm soapy water or (in the case of wallpaper) baking soda.
Perfume: Unlikely to stain much if spilt if the perfume is clear and it’s fallen on fabric – just leave it and enjoy. If it’s fallen on wood, blot up immediately and apply wood polish once the area is dry to restore the finish. Slightly tinted perfume should be diluted with vinegar or strong alcohol (which perfume mostly is, incidentally) and blotted up. Be nice to yourself: don’t just blot a perfume spill up with a rag. Use a hanky or something nice and you can carry the scent around with you so the perfume isn’t wasted.
“You have builder’s back,” said the acupuncturist to my professional cleaner friend in his delightful Chinese accent. “Woman not supposed to have builder’s back.” Yes, indeed, my friend’s back is living proof that housework can be physically demanding and a terrifically good workout – and is anything but a sedentary job if you do it full time.
One of the things that my domestic cleaner friend puts her impressive lats and delts down to is moving heavy furniture to clean under them. Because while many people think that out of sight is out of mind, dust still builds up on carpets and can cause asthma if not dealt with promptly. And occasionally, worse things accumulate under the bed, especially if you have a cat that has been accidentally shut in the house with no litter box inside.
If the item of furniture is not too heavy, all you have to do is to make sure that anything stored under the bed or whatever is moved out of the way. Then you have to pull the single bed or sofa out from the wall before you set to and clean the carpet with a vacuum cleaner, or remove the cat mess in the usual way with the help of loo paper (to scoop up the solid mess), a scrubbing brush and warm soapy water (to remove any stuck on mess and to kill bacteria; soap is a mild disinfectant, after all, as well as the fundamental cleaning product) and baking soda (to remove the smell so the cat doesn’t get the idea that beneath the bed is a litter tray). Don’t bend your back over too much while trying to shove furniture around (unless you have what that acupuncturist calls “builder’s back”) but bend your knees. Enlist help if you need it.
However, sometimes it’s not as simple as that. Even my cleaning friend says that some beds are beyond her strength – bunk beds and massive oaken king-size beds being the two examples she groaned about. So how does the professional house cleaner deal with this?
To vacuum under a big bed, the first step is to make sure that all is clear. Big beds often have a lot of storage space beneath them (if you are in need of extra storage space, take note!) and this will need to be removed before you can vacuum the carpet. If you can’t quite reach under, then use a rake to pull the stuff out – but make sure you clean any mud and other debris off the rake, or you will make a worse mess than you started with. After everything is clear, you can vacuum under the bed by reaching in to the difficult corners with the extension tube on the vacuum cleaner (now you know why they were invented) pulled out to the maximum. You will probably need to get down on your knees and peer under the bed to do this properly.
To deal with cat crap under the bed, things are trickier still. You could crawl under the bed and deal with the mess while lying on your front, but most of us would rather not have our noses four inches away from animal faeces – and cat poop seems to smell worse than any other kind thanks to the high amount of protein they eat. It is probably easier to remove the mattress from the bed and approach matters from above. If you can’t do that with the type of bed you have AND you can’t crawl underneath, the only course of action is to call in some help for shifting the bed. Don’t put your back out.
If your bed is big and has drawers underneath, then you can probably get away with not vacuuming underneath it – the dust isn’t going to come up through a solid drawer, what’s in the drawer, a wooden base and a mattress very easily – until the time comes for the end of tenancy cleaning or you want to rearrange the room.
If you have started reading this in the belief that it is an article all about how to get your pot plants (meaning indoor house plants, not the sort of plants that grow illegal substances) looking nice and perky, you may be disappointed. You can’t really clean a houseplant, apart from giving the ones with big leaves the occasional dusting. Making sure that your houseplants are well cared for with the right amount of sunshine, nutrients and water will go a long way towards making them look their best. This article is, however, about making sure your carpets stay clean if you have pot plants standing on them.
Some houseplants just take up too much space if they’re on a table and just have to go on the floor. However, you then have a problem. You are going to put something on your carpet that involves mud and water. A friend of mine who is a professional house cleaner says she always gets a laugh out of one particular advertisement she once saw that involved a woman moving a pot plant on what looked like a beige carpet, but a white circle ended up being revealed where the pot had been. My friend laughed because (a) this proves her eternal point about white carpets: they’re impractical and hell to clean, and (b) what would really be underneath a pot plant is likely to be worse than the beige.
Well, pot plants can make a mess on your carpet if you stand the pot directly on the carpet. You should always stand any indoor plant, whether on the carpet or on a table, inside a little container thingummy to catch the water. However, these plastic things (a) can look hideous, (b) have a tendency to overflow, leaving you with spillage on your carpet. A much better alternative is to use the “pot in a pot” method: you have your plant growing in one of those plastic pots, but you put the plastic pot inside another that is slightly larger than it. You can still see the plant without any problems, but the plastic is hidden. And there is very little chance of the water spilling out onto your carpets. You can also have a nicer looking pot as the exterior one.
However, a word of warning: don’t make the outer pot a terracotta one. Terracotta is prone to mould if it gets damp for too long, and this will leave horrible green smears on your carpet (remove these with neat white vinegar). Use a nice porcelain or china one. An old fashioned chamber-pot can be put to a new use like this.
If you don’t like the pot on a pot method, then you can stand your pots – drip container and all – on a square of carpet or a mini-rug. This will be your sacrificial victim that will take the dirt instead of your carpet. And an individual carpet square will be easier to clean, if you want to, simply using warm soapy water and a scrubbing brush. Hang the square on the line to dry afterwards.
Most natural house cleaning doesn’t need recipes, per se. Usually, you can clean most things around the house with simple natural ingredients on their own. Baking soda, for example, is perfect for cleaning the bath or cleaning the inside of the refrigeration, while ordinary vinegar alone can clean glass and can kill mould. And there are very few things that can’t or shouldn’t be cleaned with warm soapy water.
However, sometimes you need a natural domestic cleaning product that’s a bit more complicated. And sometimes it’s fun and satisfying to make your own. Try these.
Pet shampoo:
Combine the following in a screw-top jar: 1 cup of water, 1 t soap gel, 1 T aloe vera gel, 1 t vegetable oil. Shake these together. Apply to a dog that has been doused with warm water. Work to a lather then rinse off. This makes enough to wash a small short-haired dog such as a fox terrier. Double the mixture for a larger dog or for a long-haired dog – or increase the amounts as needed for your dog: you will need masses for a St Bernard or Newfoundland (big and long haired).
Shake and vacuum flea powder:
Use this to treat carpets whether or not you have pets. As it’s gentle, you can use it as a flea powder on cats and dogs. Mix a cup of baking soda with 10 drops essential oil of pennyroyal. Shake over the carpet and let it sit undisturbed (shut the door, if necessary) before vacuuming. This also puts the crisp scent of pennyroyal through the house – lovely!
Aluminium saucepan polish:
If you have aluminium saucepans (some avoid them, as the aluminium can leach into your food if you cook something acidic in the pan), get them shining by putting ½ a litre of water in the pan and bringing it to the boil. Add in 1 t of vinegar and 1 cup cream of tartar. Let it boil and it will scour away the dull outer layer of aluminium from the pan.
General metal polish:
Combine equal parts of flour, salt and white vinegar to make a paste. This is good for most metals: copper, bronze, brass, pewter and stainless steel. To use it, apply it to the metal object (say a door-knocker) and leave it to do its work for an hour (put a notice below the knocker to warn any visitors or they will get an unpleasant surprise). Then rinse off with a soft cloth moistened in warm water.
Buff to a shine with another dry soft cloth.
Wood polish:
For once, this natural cleaning recipe for wood polish does NOT involve turpentine. Simply grate about 250g of beeswax finely then melt it in a double boiler and add a litre of either linseed oil or olive oil – or any vegetable oil, really! Stir for three minutes, then remove from the heat and add 2 t of essential oil of your choice. Store in an airtight container.
Sometimes, you just can’t be bothered doing any in-depth home cleaning, even though today is your day set aside for giving the house a good go-over. You could, of course, hire a professional cleaner to come in and do the dirty work for you once a week. Or you could do the bare minimum and cheat. It’s amazing how much better the whole house looks if you try these few simple tips.
But remember – these are cheats for when you’re pushed for time, too tired or facing a crisis. (They’re also good to bear in mind if you have visitors coming at short notice and you haven’t cleaned for a while). You will need to give the house a proper clean at some stage and keep doing it frequently. This is basic hygiene so you don’t continually come down with foul infections and bugs.
* An old piece of advice from old fashioned housekeepers is that the whole house looks better if the kitchen floor is clean. Five minutes of vacuuming in the kitchen and in the main living area gets rid of the worst dirt on the carpet. If you have a loose rug on top of the carpet or hard floor, don’t bother vacuuming underneath it this time (you will have to do this if you are cleaning house properly).
* Making the bed makes the bedroom look instantly tidier, even if the floor has odds and ends over it. Tuck the sheets in nicely, pull up the covers (a duvet or continental quilt makes things easier) and arrange the pillows straight and it lifts the whole tone of the room.
* To give the bathroom sink a quick go-over, grab any stray face flannels and hand towels. Use these dry to buff the taps (and to remove the worst toothpaste splatters from the mirror) and wipe up the worst of the soap scum. Then put out a fresh hand towel to replace the dirty one you just used.
* Use damp loo paper to wipe the worst off the toilet seat (get it damp in the basin, not the toilet – this is about cheating not about slovenliness). Those little blocks that you drop into the toilet tank which turn the water blue and wash as you flush may not be the best in the way of natural cleaners but they hide a multitude of sins.
* To get the inevitable odds and ends that children (and more mature people) drop around the house tidy and out of the way, grab an empty washing basket and shove any stray item into it. Stick this basket in an out-of-the way corner or in a bedroom to get it out of sight. Then sort out everything once the visitors have gone, you have more energy or the crisis is over.
* Borrow a cleaning tip from a ten-year-old if you have a lot of stuff not put away: shove the lot under the bed or in the cupboard to be sorted out later. Parents of ten-year-olds take note about where to check during a room inspection.
* Avoid major clean-ups in a rush by cleaning little and often. A little bit of mess of the type that builds up in a few days is forgivable. Major mess that has been left untouched for weeks or even months is always disgusting.
If you want to make changes bit by bit towards living more naturally and eliminating artificial chemical methods of doing things, sometimes, it’s good to consider the way you live on a room by room basis. This list of tips and hints looks at the heart of the home: the kitchen. This is the place where food is prepared, and sometimes the eating as well. It is one of the most important rooms to keep clean and tidy. This list of tips doesn’t just include ways to eliminate toxic substances as much as possible from your environment; it also gives some suggestions for living more sustainably… which has its own effect of improving not just your immediate environment but the environment as a whole.
* Keep a dish of baking soda in the fridge to absorb strong odours. Change this frequently – use the old baking soda to clean the fridge out while you’re at it. Avoid using chlorine based products or ammonia based products to clean out the fridge, as these leave fumes that taint the food you eat.
* If you have a microwave, avoid covering food with plastic wrap or heating things in plastic. Some of the substances in the plastics can leach into your food during the heating process. Instead of covering a dish or bowl with plastic wrap, cover it with a china plate or with a paper towel. The china plate is the most sustainable option, as it can be re-used again. Microwave food in china, glass, wood or paper bags.
* Microfibre cloths (e.g. Enjo cloths) work wonders in the kitchen, especially for degreasing splashbacks and other places that get grease spatters during cooking.
* Soap gel can be used for a general house cleaning and to clean the floor well enough, but it doesn’t do too good a job when it comes to washing dishes, especially in hard water areas. Detergent will have to be used here. Ecover is the best bet here for sustainable eco-friendly options. Wear rubber gloves if you have sensitive skin (hint: cut up old rubber gloves once they develop holes to make rubber bands. As they are rubber, they break down easily, so any bits of rubber glove you don’t want to turn into rubber bands can go into the compost heap).
* Keep large quantities of baking soda and vinegar in your pantry. Buy it in bulk. These two substances will clean most things, including the inside of your oven (use the baking soda for this, plus a lot of time).
* Don’t use plastic chopping boards – bits of food and bacteria become trapped in the little nicks and scratches in the board. Use wooden ones – they can stand having boiling water poured over them to sterilize them. Have separate boards for meat and for vegetables – or else cut up raw meat and fish on an ordinary china plate and then wash it thoroughly.
* Use a sunny kitchen windowsill to grow herbs – you can’t get anything fresher than straight from the plant to the salad bowl or sandwich. Some herbs also help repel flies, especially basil.
* Use a spring-loaded mousetrap instead of laying poison baits for vermin.
* Keeping food in airtight containers and keeping the bench clear will help deter vermin of all species.
* Bayleaves in dry goods helps to deter ants, silverfish and the like.
* Avoid using flyspray in your kitchen. Instead, use sticky fly paper (make this from strips of tough paper soaked in golden syrup and hung up strategically), flyswats or high-voltage lights that attract the little beasties and zap them.
* Organize your rubbish system. Don’t just have one bin that everything goes into. Separate your rubbish out as appropriate. The basic system has three parts: compostables, recyclables and real rubbish. Depending on your household, you can also add in other bins for burnables (paper and cardboard to be made into briquettes or used as firestarters) and scraps for pet food – the number of bins needed here and what goes in the pet food bins depends on how many pets you have and what type. You may need to move the rubbish (etc.) bins out of the kitchen and into other parts of your home if the system gets too bulky.
* Go through all your cupboards and your refrigerator and get rid of the junky foods with too much sugar, processed starch, trans fats and artificial flavourings – you know what they are.
Replace them with plenty of herbs, spices, fruit, vegetables, complex carbs and whole foods. These aren’t as time consuming and boring as you may think: what could be quicker than a microwaved baked potato, some scrambled eggs, wholegrain crackers or a salad?
If you love London, regardless of whether you live there or not, you will be pleased to have a look at my find today. I read a post (check it out here) that lists 15 popular London blogs.
You are presented with a large stream of information of all kinds – events, reviews, bargains etc. You can follow most of them on Twitter and stay informed all the time.
My personal opinion – excellent post!!! Enjoy!
Rispek
Baking soda is one of the staples of natural house cleaners. No home should be without at least one packet of baking soda. Even if you don’t use it for cleaning, baking soda is good for so many other things.
First of all, what is baking soda? Baking soda is the common name for sodium bicarbonate, although it can also be called bicarbonate of soda. Chemically speaking, the formula for baking soda is NaHCO3 and it appears as a white powder that is mildly alkaline. It is important to distinguish sodium bicarbonate from sodium carbonate: the latter is known as washing soda, which also has a range of uses ranging from being the foaming agent in toothpaste to cleaning up bones for display in museums or trophy cabinets. Washing soda is another commonly used natural cleaning product, as it is excellent for softening water, removing grease and oil from cloth, and for descaling appliance such as coffee machines. Baking soda is chemically related to washing soda, obviously, as it is a by-product of producing washing soda – which in itself is either a by-product of common table salt or is produced from soda ash obtained by burning certain types of seaweed.
The alkaline properties of baking soda make it an important addition to not just the cleaning cupboard but to the first aid kit. The venom in beestings is acidic, so baking soda neutralizes the acid and relieves the effects of the sting. The alkalinity also means that baking soda in water is a sure-fire method of settling an acid stomach. It may not taste brilliant but it works. If you find you are using baking soda to settle an upset acidic stomach too often, then it would be best to look for the root cause, however.
However, because it is only a mild alkali, it does not damage the skin – it is less alkaline than soap and much less alkaline than other cleaning products such as chlorine bleach. This makes it excellent for use as a cleaning product, as the skin can stand prolonged contact with the baking soda.
And baking soda is very good as a general home cleaner of nearly everything. As it is mildly abrasive and adds to the surfactant power of water (water’s ability to wet and float dirt away from where you don’t want the dirt to be), it is able to get things clean and sparkling but without scratching and scouring. It is readily soluble in water, which means it is easy to rinse away after it has done the job of cleaning. And if a little baking soda does dry on, the fun way to remove it is to spray a little vinegar onto it – it foams and fizzes as the baking soda reacts with the acid. Baking soda is suitable for cleaning whiteware such as refrigerators, ovens and microwaves, benchtops, basins and baths, toilets, and even your teeth. It is not so suitable for cleaning glass, however.
Baking soda is also used, obviously, in cooking. While most people these days use self-raising flour or baking powder, it is possible to make your own baking powder from baking soda, or just use baking soda with the right ingredients. When baking soda reacts with an acid, it releases lots of bubbles of carbon dioxide, which makes dough or batter rise and puff up. To make your own baking powder, mix one third of a teaspoon of baking soda with half a teaspoon of citric acid or tartaric acid per cup of flour. Or else just make your scones or cake with something acidic in the batter, such as yoghurt or even a teaspoon of vinegar. Don’t use too much baking soda – no more than one third of a teaspoon per cup – or else the resulting baking tastes a little metallic.
Baking soda also makes a fun and safe introduction to chemistry for children – even preschoolers. Children can safely react baking soda with acids such as vinegar or lemon juice without any risk (you don’t need special clothing or safety goggles to do this). Another fun science project with baking soda for children is to use the purple liquid left after boiling red cabbage as “litmus liquid” – baking soda turns the liquid bluish, while acids make it go pink/magenta. Hours (well, quarter of an hour for small children!) of fun.
Vinegar is a pungent, potent and acidic liquid that’s as good in your home cleaning cupboard as it is in your kitchen cupboard.
However, because it is a strong acid, you should not use it to clean certain things around your house, as the acid will attack the thing you’re trying to clean and ruin it.
It would be nice to come up with a general rule of thumb to tell exactly what substances are and aren’t vinegar friendly. There is one, but it really isn’t practical. As vinegar is an acid, it will react with anything alkaline. However, most things around your home are rather hard to give the litmus test to before cleaning.
You should never use vinegar to clean the following:
* Pearls. Legend has it that Cleopatra won a “most lavish and expensive meal” competition by dissolving one of her priceless pearl earrings in a cup of vinegar and drinking it. If this legend is true, she must have been a woman of infinite patience – it would have taken quite a bit of stirring and waiting to dissolve a whole pearl (Presumably she was a woman of great patience, as another story records how she had herself rolled up in a carpet which was delivered to Julius Caesar as a gift. When he unrolled it, there she was…) Sultry Egyptian queens aside, vinegar does indeed react with the calcium deposit that makes up the pearl, so keep the vinegar well away from these jewels. The same applies to shell and coral based jewellery.
* Marble. Marble is another calcium-based mineral that reacts with vinegar, so while you can clean most kitchen surfaces very well with vinegar (and it kills mould while you’re about it), don’t clean marble chopping boards or the like. Just use plain water on these. The same goes for sculptures made from limestone. Another story (from Egypt again) tells how the original Arab scientist who first explored the passages within the Great Pyramid of Giza got in through the limestone blocks: he and his team heated the limestone by lighting a fire, and then made them crack and react by pouring cold vinegar over the stones.
* Anything containing lead. This is particularly true if you’re using a cloth. The vinegar will react with the metal and get into the cloth. And then you’ll spread the lead everywhere. However, a blend of vinegar and salt makes a great metal polish, especially for brass and copper.
* Anything white, if you’re using malt vinegar, as the dark colour can stain whatever it is you’re trying to clean. To be on the safe side, use white vinegar.
* Silk. While vinegar can be added to your washing machine as a rinse aid, you should not add it if you’re washing silk. Not that you should be washing silk in the machine, anyway. Wash it by hand in the sink instead. You CAN use vinegar as a final rinse for woollies – it acts as a first-class fabric softener and gets blankets, etc. all nice and fluffy.
* As an eye rinse. However, dilute vinegar has a number of other cosmetic uses. Just keep it out of your eyes!
A recently awarded builders clean contract started today at at a large brand new NHS hospital.
Having passed the strict Health & Safety vetting process during the last weeks, Anyclean was able to deploy staff and plant earlier today. Everybody from the builders cleaning crew was site inducted and the cleaning commenced.
Our staff are CSCS, scissor lift, mobile tower and cherry picker certified but most of all – highly experienced in high level and difficult access cleaning. These were all good reasons why Anyclean was chosen by this large international construction company as the trusted partner to finish this £150 million NHS project.
More info to come. Stay tuned.
