A group of our carpet cleaners completed the NCCA training and certification yesterday. We love spending money on quality training.
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If you are considering using natural products to clean your home (and the rest), you are going to need more than just the basic cleaning substances, which are, of course, baking soda and vinegar as the staples alongside some other odds and ends. You will also need some actual “hardware” to do the cleaning. Natural cleaning products, seeing as they have multiple uses, don’t come in ready-to-use packages that make things easy for the cleaner. And you still have to find something to apply the elbow grease – a necessary ingredient in any natural cleaning product.
You will also need:
* Spray dispenser bottles. Many natural cleaning products (vinegar and vodka, to name a couple) need to be sprayed onto whatever they’re cleaning. You can buy these from a garden shop (where they’re called plant misters) or from a chemist. Or if you have some commercial cleaning products that came in a spray dispenser bottle, get rid of the contents of the bottle, give the bottle a really good clean and rinse to get rid of the residue, and re-use the bottle for your new natural cleaners.
* Screw-top jars. Some polishes and cleaning pastes you can make yourself need to be kept in airtight jars. These are very simple to acquire. Don’t throw out the empty jam jar or peanut butter jar. Again, give it a good rinse out and use it. It pays to remove the old label as well (or stick a new label over the top) so you know what’s inside and how to use it.
* Soft, lint-free cloths. No matter what you use for cleaning, you will need one of these. In fact, you’ll need several of them. Old sheets and towels can be cut up for soft all-purpose cleaning cloths, but these aren’t always lint free. Old cotton T-shirts are better.
* A soft bristled brush. Sometimes, you need to loosen the dirt without scratching anything. The best sort of brush to use in this case is a toothbrush. A toothbrush is also convenient for tricky jobs, as it is narrow and has a long handle, allowing awkward places to be reached. But don’t be silly and go out and buy a new toothbrush just for cleaning purposes. Buy a new toothbrush, by all means, but use the new one for your teeth. The old one gets used for cleaning.
* Microfibre cloths. These are the natural cleaner’s best friend, as the only “cleaning product” they need is water – and they don’t even use very much of that. Enjo is the best known brand of microfiber cloth and they have a huge range of microfibre products that range from humble cleaning cloths through to specialised mops and brushes.
* A razor blade and/or your fingernails. Sometimes, you need to pick or scrape a stubborn bit of dirt or grime off. Hand-care gurus say that you should never use your nails as tools. Common sense and millennia of human wisdom says you should – it’s what your fingernails are for, after all. They’re not just there to collect dirt and to apply polish to. And you probably pick at little bits of grime on the window, the table top, etc. with your nails instinctively, anyway.
Another window cleaning survey – another contract won… Do you manage a block of flats in London? We love’em. Tweet or DM us.
Christmas trees haven’t always been part of a traditional British Christmas – they were introduced into this country (and all the Commonwealth, in fact) by Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert. Christmas trees are a German custom – the pre-Albert British equivalent was the Yule log.
And anyone who wants a Christmas tree and also wants to live in a way that is easy on the planet and low in toxins has only one real choice when it comes to Christmas trees: a real one and never, ever a plastic one.
* Real trees come from sustainably managed plantations that act as carbon sinks as they grow, as well as doing other good things like providing a habitat for wildlife and preventing erosion. Plastic trees don’t.
* Real trees are a renewable resource.
* Real trees can be chipped and mulched as a means of disposal, so none of it should get into the waste stream. If you live in an area that permits it, the tree can also be burned on a log fire (once they’re dried out – probably next Christmas!), which is a renewable and fairly carbon-neutral form of heating. After all, not all the carbon in a tree is released into the atmosphere when it’s burned – what do you think ash and soot are? The needles should be added to the compost heap or used as a mulch. Strawberry plants are quite fond of a pine needle mulch.
* Real trees smell beautiful – and they’re releasing an antiseptic essential oil that will help you breathe more easily. And it’s that piney smell that brings back all those childhood memories.
Given all this, why do people bother with plastic trees? OK, some people are allergic to pines (poor things). And others want a picture-perfect tree, which real trees aren’t always, as nature does funny things (this writer used to grow Christmas trees for sale and once saw one tree that grew all the branches in the shape of a perfect sine curve – it wasn’t picture-perfect but it was so distinctive and unusual that it was snapped up by a buyer straight away).
*And some people hate the mess from all the needles. The wretched things seem to shed all over the place and turn up in all sorts of awkward places throughout the year. However, you can take steps to minimise the amount of needles shed on your carpet:
* Put the tree in water rather than a stand. Treat it like a giant cut flower. Cut about a centimetre off the end before putting it into water (like crushing the stems of roses before putting them into a vase) and add an aspirin or three into the bucket. Top up the water regularly.
* Stand the tree (and the bucket) over a sheet, which will catch all the needles. Some people like to buy a special Christmas-themed “tree skirt” or sheet for spreading under the tree (a good place to put presents on). But any nice-looking sheet will do the trick; however, don’t use your best Egyptian cottons, as any sap that gets onto the sheet will be a right pain in the backside to try getting out.
* Use a potted live tree instead. These tend to keep their needles better. Cypresses and thujas can grow nicely in pots. They may not be the traditional Norwegian Spruce you’re used to, but they have that conifer smell and shape.
Job done, client happy, cleaners happy – it’s all about satisfaction. This is the Anyclean way.
The first step in avoiding Granny Flat Syndrome is to understand what it is. In a nutshell, Granny Flat Syndrome occurs when someone – not necessarily a grandmother or grandfather – moves from a larger house into a smaller one. What usually happens is that the person tries to hang onto all the possessions that fitted very nicely into the big old house and crams them into the new small one. The end result is cluttered, with very little empty space in a room and every single flat surface covered with photo frames, vases and knick-knacks. And the room and the house seem even smaller than it really is.
The answer here is to declutter and think carefully about what is really important to you. What the answer isn’t is to build extra rooms, fill the garage or hire out extra storage space to put all the stuff in.
The good part of this sort of decluttering is that most of the items you get rid of are usually in good condition and can be given away to charity or sold online (or in a garage sale) rather than thrown away… or even recycled.
* Get rid of anything broken that you are unlikely to fix. The exception here is clothing that you love and is easily mended (e.g. dropped hem, split seam, missing button, dead elastic, etc.).
* Any ornament bought to decorate a space in the old home should go. You no longer have that space that needs decorating and brightening.
* If you’re moving house because you have had family members leave home, think carefully about how much bed linen, towels, saucepans and plates you really need.
* Old bank statements, receipts and similar documents only need to be kept for 10 years maximum. If you still have cheque book butts and receipts dating back to 1975, you won’t get in problems with the tax man if you recycle them (shred them first).
* The same goes for expired warranties on household appliances. Especially if you no longer own that appliance.
* Resist the temptation to keep absolutely everything related to special days in the past. You don’t need to keep every single old exercise book from your (or your children’s) school days. Pick a few keepsakes from the special times, and say goodbye to the rest. For example, keep your old wedding dress and your dried bouquet, but don’t keep the ornaments from the cake (unless you have the tradition of putting these ornaments on a cake each anniversary).
* Consider downsizing to be a chance to get rid of uncomfortable furniture that you don’t really like. Unless you’re downsizing because you’re feeling the financial pinch, you don’t really need to keep ratty sofas with frayed arms, kitchen chairs that fall to bits if you don’t sit on them or move them using that special knack you’ve developed over the years or the desk that has to be propped up with a brick.
Incidentally, you can help older relatives avoid Granny Flat Syndrome buy wise present selection at birthdays, Christmas and anniversaries. Choose presents that involve experiences (e.g. tickets to the theatre, a day renting out an exotic car, champagne breakfast in a hot air balloon) or which are consumables (perfume, home baking, flowers, stationery, candles). This will allow you to honour your family member without giving them the problem of finding a place to store whatever you’ve given them in space that is probably already limited.
Won a job for a big UK household name. Wise clients go for quality and total flexibility – not price. And Anyclean always delivers.
