TweetAmong the many ways of covering a floor in a house, carpets are by far one of the most popular, as well as the most sensuous. There’s nothing like sinking your toes into a soft, deep rug or carpet. But what do you need to know before deciding where to put carpet in your home and what sort to choose?
First of all, you need to decide whether you want carpets. Carpets do offer many advantages. They add a lot of warmth to the house (especially to the feet). They also make the house much more family-friendly: children can lie down to play much more comfortably on carpet than on boards, and toddlers learning to walk will find carpet a much softer landing during the inevitable tumbles that are part of learning to walk.
Carpets reduce the amount of dust in the air (and landing on surfaces that need dusting), as the fibres trap dust inside them (yes, you will need to vacuum the carpets, but this writer finds this easier than dusting). They’re also safter – you don’t have the risk of slips and falls that lower friction surfaces tend to have. On the disadvantage side, carpets are harder to clean: spills are harder to clean up, mud can’t just be mopped off, and soft, squishy stuff can get trodden into the fibres. There are carpet cleaning professionals though who can steam clean your carpet and make it healthier.
However, you shouldn’t go and carpet the whole house. Generally speaking, wet areas of the house, such as kitchens, bathrooms, laundries and toilets, should not be carpeted. Carpet is a lot harder to dry off when a spill happens, and it will start to deteriorate and/or smell bad. In the kitchen, what gets spilt is often something that stains (e.g. coffee), so your carpet will be ruined very quickly. And you don’t really want me to describe in detail what happens to carpet in toilets, do you (ewww!)? It can also pay to have a carpet-free area near doorways so people can remove muddy shoes and stand dripping umbrellas in somewhere that is easier to clean up. If you absolutely have to have carpet in these areas (e.g. in front of the toilet on a cold morning), then choose a loose fitting one that is easy to pick up, shake out and wash – synthetic fibres or an old-fashioned rag rug will do.
Take care when choosing your carpets. Consider the fibres – synthetics are cheaper but can feel a bit nasty; natural fibres are less durable but give a much nicer “feel”. A blend of natural and synthetic is best. Thick shagpile is very cushy, but is harder to vacuum (and things have a tendency to get caught in the longer pile – high heels can be tricky to wear) – again, a shag rug is probably better than wall-to-wall shagpile.
Consider the colours, too. While white carpets may be raved about by some interior decorators, they are best avoided by real people with real lives – it gets filthy very quickly! The same goes for any solid light-coloured carpet, e.g. beige, tan or grey – they will show every bit of dirt and grime. However, solid dark colours (black, navy, deep red) also look untidy very quickly – every bit of light-coloured dirt (hairs, fluff, miniscule bits of paper) will show up. The best colour choice for a carpet is something with a flecked pattern – although the exact colour is up to you!
To make your carpets last longer and to keep them in good condition for longer, get into the habit of removing your outdoor shoes when you come in – maybe even keep a pair of “indoor shoes” or slippers by entrances and exits if you don’t fancy walking around in bare feet. This is the custom in many homes (particularly Asian homes) and you can really see the difference!
TweetWalls tend to absorb smells. The process is so gradual that regular occupants of the area will not even notice it but visitors will. It’s always worthwhile to get a friendly outsider to tell you if your walls smell. This is a common problem in offices because of the large number of people and the limited ventilation which allows cigarette and other odours to linger in the air and get absorbed by the paint on the walls. While regular wall cleaning is something you can talk about with your office cleaners, a sudden visit by a client may necessitate quick action to deodourize the walls.
Remember that the smell a wall absorbs has nothing to do with how clean it is. These are two separate issues. Before you begin to work on the odour, you need to first clean the walls with a brush or cloth. Proceed with the following steps only after the wall is free of surface dirt.
* Spread out a plastic sheet to protect the floor or carpet where you are working from damage due to spills or dripping.
* Fill a bucket with warm water and add very little liquid cleaner to it just enough to create a few bubbles when the mixture is agitated. If excess cleaner or detergent is mixed into the water, a soapy residue will be left on the walls.
* Dampen a sponge or a soft cloth and start wiping the wall.
* Start at the top of the wall, using a step ladder if necessary, and moving from side to side, work your way down to the floor level.
* If there are stubborn stains that do not come off, leave them for the time being and go back to them after this process is finished and try using a spray on cleaner.
* Use paper towels or a clean thick cloth to absorb any excess moisture that may be left on the walls.
* Open all the windows and let the walls dry completely.
This should take care of odour emanating from the walls. But before declaring the job over, you need to clean the air filters of the ventilation and heating / cooling system to prevent the odours trapped there from reentering the room and being absorbed by the walls all over again.
If after you complete the deodourizing of the walls, you still find a smell in the room, then its time to look at the upholstery, furniture and carpet cleaning done too.
TweetMost new parents become all too aware of their baby’s health and how vulnerable a little immune system is. The automatic reaction from most people is to try sterilising and boiling everything in sight in case a germ dares to attack their offspring. Children’s toys are cleaned thoroughly by dry cleaning. Surfaces are doused in vast amounts of cleaning product to ensure that every germ lingering in the kitchen is dead. High chairs are swabbed with more products. And to deal with the inevitable pong from nappies, out come the air fresheners.
And if a new parent hasn’t hired one before, the arrival of a new baby often is a good excuse to hire a professional house cleaner. The need to protect babies from germs combined with the exhaustion of caring for a new baby is often the motivation.
But just wait a minute. If you get too obsessed with germs, you could actually be doing more harm than good. Most of those commercial cleaning products are poisonous – that’s why they kill germs. And once your baby gets mobile, he or she will put their hands on everything and put everything in their mouths, which means they’re getting this stuff into their systems. And let’s not even start on the hazards of having those cleaning products in the house – they all have to be stored out of reach in a high cupboard rather than being kept under the kitchen sink – the most common place to store cleaning chemicals.
If these chemicals get into their systems, it can cause developmental damage to the organs and various other systems. And even if small children don’t ingest the product you’ve used for cleaning the floor or cleaning the bathroom, an over-clean house can also be a problem, as it can lead to auto-immune problems. If a developing immune system doesn’t get a few bacteria to practice on, then it starts reacting to non-threats, leading to asthma and eczema and similar problems.
So what does a concerned parent to do in order to keep their home safe for their new baby?
* Use natural cleaning products. They are less toxic than commercial cleaning products. Older children can use these products or even make them without any hassles.
* If you have to use a commercial cleaning product, then rinse after using them. Store it up high where smalls can’t get it.
* Don’t bother drycleaning soft toys. Drycleaning fluids are really nasty, and your little one will breathe them all in. If you have to clean a soft toy, do it by hand or just pop the toy in the machine – most modern soft toys can handle a trip through the tub.
* If you need to clean your carpets, book a steam cleaning or hire a professional carpet cleaner that uses chemical carpet shampoos. Regular vacuuming of carpets and sweeping of hard floors will get rid of the worst of the grub that might cause a problem for your child.
* Strengthen your child’s immune system. This is best done by a healthy diet. Breastfeeding is great for this and also means less cleaning work – no sterilising, measuring or scooping to be done, and breasts can’t be dropped onto the floor by accident mid-feed.
* Don’t panic. A happy, healthy child is reasonably resilient. As my sister-in-law said, you spend the first few months sterilising and boiling everything in sight, then as soon as they’re mobile, they’re in the garden eating slugs and coming to no harm.
But you can still hire that professional cleaner – busy new parents need all the help they can get.
TweetCarpet cleaning can be something of a nemesis. If you’re renting, you can bet your bottom dollar that you’re going to have to clean that carpet – possibly by hiring a professional cleaner or by getting in one of those steam cleaning machines – when you do the final tidy up before moving house. And if you’re not renting, well, you probably want to keep your carpets in good nick because the house is YOURS and you can’t blame anyone else for grotty threadbare carpets. Anyway, carpets can be a pain to clean, no matter where you live, mostly because they continually have feet marching all over them and those soft, fluffy fibres trap dirt.
You could, of course, do without a carpet and leave some areas in your house with polished wooden boards warmed up by the occasional mat. However, you will find that this allows more dust to fly around the place and you will need to wield the duster that little bit more often.
Tips for cleaning carpets and keeping them clean:
* Provide decent doormats that actually scrape bits of stray mud off at both your front and back doors and stop a lot of the dirt getting inside in the first place.
* Encourage children (and other family members) to have “outdoor shoes” that never come inside. Have a place for folk to change into and out of these shoes near the door, and allow for plenty of space to store Wellington boots, rugby boots, gardening clogs, etc.
* Take a tip from Asian culture and remove all shoes at the door. This is becoming more and more common. Going barefoot on carpet is a sensual delight, and if it’s chilly, wear thick socks or a good pair of slippers to keep your toes from freezing.
* Vacuum frequently – weekly is the bare minimum.
* Treat all spills, stains and smears as soon as possible after they occur to stop the dirt “setting” into the fibres of your carpet. In many cases, you don’t need a fancy carpet cleaning products – flooding the spot with fresh water (but make sure that the stain doesn’t spread everywhere, which it will if you use too much) followed by blotting with a thick towel.
* Really nasty patches of dirt can be cleaned using natural cleaning methods. The very best is… warm soapy water. Don’t use hot water – you may have a bit of protein-based material in the ick that you’re trying to clean, and hot water will set this stain in. Use a medium-stiff scrubbing brush (harder than a toothbrush but softer than what you’d use for scrubbing a tile floor – if you have a brush you use for scrubbing clothes, use that). Make the soapy water foam – this lifts the dirt up and away.
* While soapy water is good for cleaning carpets, don’t use too much and get the carpet absolutely flooded. Too much water will take ages to dry, and while the water’s down there, it will attract more dirt and make a happy home for mildew. The best way to apply the warm soapy water (or any other carpet-cleaning product, home made or otherwise) is to dab a scrubbing brush into a bowl or bucket of the liquid, then letting the excess drip off before scrubbing the surface of the patch to be cleaned.
* It’s best to hire a cleaning machine from a professional company for cleaning large areas of carpet. These days, you’d be mad if you tried cleaning a whole room of wall-to-wall carpet by hand with a scrubbing brush. Honestly, you have better ways of spending your time!
* Some experts recommend using a broom to sweep over the area of carpet to be cleaned to lift the pile of the carpet and allow the trapped dirt out. You can get a similar effect by using your scrubbing brush dry on the spot before applying the warm soapy water. But use the broom for a once-over if you are cleaning the whole carpet with a steam cleaning machine.
TweetCleaning carpets is one thing. We can all see that they get grubby very quickly and need frequent vacuuming and the rest. Thanks to gravity, spills, dead skin, pencil shavings and other bits and pieces end up on the floor. And we clean it up. But what about the wall? Have you ever really looked at the walls? Have you seen how grubby they are?
Cleaning down the walls and the wallpaper has something of a 1950s housewife touch about it – the sort of thing that only fanatical cleaners do. However, it’s a lot easier to wash a wall down than to change the wallpaper. And it’s certainly cheaper. You might not want to clean the wall every day or even every week, but it’s certainly something that ought to be done – maybe in the annual spring cleaning bash (or else save it until you are flush enough with cash to hire a professional cleaner to do the dirty work you’ve been avoiding).
Wallpaper these days is, thankfully, easier to clean and tends to have a finish that stops it falling to pieces if the slightest bit of damp gets onto it like old wallpapers did. If you have an older wallpaper of this kind that’s looking grubby, don’t bother cleaning the wallpaper. Just replace it or else live with the grub (shudder). And painted walls are even easier to clean.
Tips for cleaning walls:
* Remove cobwebs by wrapping a clean duster around a broom and sweeping this around where the cobwebs are (probably up in a high corner). You can do the same to cobwebs on the ceiling. Once the cloth gets all covered in bits of web, dead spiders and flies’ legs, remove it from the broom and replace it with a clean one. Don’t just use the broom – the dust inevitably trapped in the bristles will get all over the wall and make things worse. Cobwebs within easy reach can simply be removed with a duster (the cloth sort, not the feather sort). The presence of cobwebs in your home is a good thing – it shows that your house is free enough from toxins and other nasties that other species want to live in it.
* General grime can be wiped off with a solution of dilute vinegar and warm water. It’s best to do the whole wall in one sweep (maybe leave this job until the test cricket is playing on the radio to keep your mind occupied, because cleaning walls down is very boring, especially if the wallpaper is white). You’ll need a whole bucket of the solution and several rags, which you will change periodically. A soft toothbrush can also help with really stubborn bits. This works with wallpaper and with painted walls.
* Stone walls can be scrubbed down with warm soapy water.
* Vodka or some other strong spirit can be used to remove permanent marker after some wretched toddler has scrawled on the wall. You will need plenty of it and a lot of patience. Felt tip pen is easier – these are usually water-based so sponging the mark with plenty of water should clean it off– and pencil is the easiest of all to remove… just use a rubber (eraser for our transatlantic friends). Crayon can be removed by gently rubbing the scribble with toothpaste or a paste of baking soda. Sponge off any residue with a damp cloth.
TweetSome of these recipes for natural carpet cleaning products will require a bit of hunting around for obscure ingredients – try your local chemist or even ask a high school chemistry teacher where you can get them from.
Stain-removing carpet soap
* 4 oz Fuller’s earth
* 1 oz turpentine (preferably the plant-sourced variety; mineral turps will do instead but this does give off foul-smelling fumes and isn’t as natural. This ingredient is added as a solvent, so if you can’t get hold of natural plant turpentine, then you could try substituting strong alcohol, which is another natural solvent often used in cleaning products)
* 8 oz potash (aka potassium carbonate)
* ordinary soft soap, grated
Melt the soap in a double boiler or microwave set on low until it becomes gooey. Stir in the other ingredients and blend well. Store in an airtight jar. One variation on this recipe is to use soap gel instead of and make a carpet shampoo. A second variation is to add about 10–20 drops of essential oil of your choice to the ingredients.
Home-made dry cleaning carpet shampoo
This is good for using on carpets with natural fibres that have a tendency to run colour – handmade rugs from exotic places tend to fit this description.
Mix Fuller’s earth and water to make a paste. Apply this paste to the spot on the carpet you want cleaned and allow it to dry in place before vacuuming off.
Carpet fragrance
Commercially produced carpet scents of the shake-on-and-vacuum-off are among some of the worst offenders for sources of household toxins – even worse than window cleaning products, as people (especially people under the age of five) often get close to the carpets and breathe them in. This recipe will have your carpets smelling nice and fresh – both by eliminating foul odours and by putting a fresh scent into your house – but without the hazardous toxins.
* 1 cup of baking soda
* 20 drops essential oil (suggested oils: lavender, lemon, neroli, grapefruit, petitgrain or cinnamon)
Blend together well and store in a screw-top jar in a dark cupboard for a week to allow the essential oils to permeate the baking soda. Sprinkle the powder as generously or as sparingly as you like over your carpets and leave it to sit for about five minutes or more to absorb any unpleasant odours. Then vacuum the powder up. As an added bonus, the scent will get blown out the back of your vacuum cleaner as you continue cleaning the whole house.
Fleas-be-gone
While regular vacuuming is your best ally against preventing fleas from infesting your pets and your furniture, sometimes you need a bit of extra help. This spray will chase the fleas away thanks to the pennyroyal. After all, the Latin name for pennyroyal is Mentha pulgefugium, which means “mint that makes fleas run away”.
* 20 drops essential oil of pennyroyal
* ½ pint vinegar
* ½ pint water
Shake the ingredients together in a spray-top bottle and squirt lightly over any carpets or pet bedding you suspect to be infested. If you can’t get essential oil of pennyroyal, boil the water and vinegar together and add a large bunch of fresh pennyroyal to the mixture and allow it to steep, covered, until cool. Strain and bottle, then use as normal.
TweetCarpet shampoo
Use this for cleaning rugs and carpets. This can be used for spot cleaning fixed carpets or for cleaning a whole loose rug. Before you start cleaning the rug or carpet, brush the fibres up with a stiff brush, which also loosens the dirt.
6 cups warm water
1 ½ cups soap gel (make this by melting soap scraps in boiling water then leaving to cool)
10 drops essential oil of your choice – lavender, lemon and peppermint are nice and refreshing
Mix together, then apply to the carpet with a wet sponge. Scrub the spot thoroughly, making a lather, and then rinse with a fresh clean rag or sponge. Allow the carpet to dry before vacuuming.
Fabric softener
Use this in the final rinse of any washing machine cycle, or add to the final rinse when washing by hand. This helps make towels, woollens and sheets (plus any other clothes) soft and fluffy, as well as smelling great.
2 pints of vinegar
20 drops of essential oil – lavender is a traditional oil for use in the laundry as well as having disinfectant and moth-repelling properties.
Kitchen floor cleaner
A bucket of hot water
1 cup of liquid soap or home-made soap gel
20 drops of essential oil – optional but makes the job more fun, as well as leaving a pleasant scent that lingers.
Swirl the ingredients together in the bucket with the mop until bubbles form on top. Then mop the floor as normal. This cleans lino and other hard floors just as well as ammonia based cleaning products but without the need to handle everything with rubber gloves plus avoiding foul fumes.
Leather upholstery cleaner
You can use this recipe for cleaning leather sofas and also for cleaning car interiors, if you have leather-trimmed seats.
½ cup olive or some other rich vegetable oil (e.g. peanut, avocado or walnut oil)
¼ cup herbal tea – make your own by steeping about three or four teaspoons of fresh herbs in boiling water, or else use an ordinary bit of herbal tea. Only use ordinary tea if you have dark coloured leather upholstery or it will stain.
¼ cup vinegar
Shake all ingredients together in a spray bottle (strain the herbal tea first, of course, especially if you have made your own herbal blend). Spray onto the leather upholstery and buff over the leather with a soft cloth.
Dishwashing liquid
This formula is best used for washing dishes by hand. If you live in a hard water area, the items may get a little soap scum on them. If this is the case, then have a handy rinsing bowl filled with warm water to which you add about a cup of vinegar. Dip the dishes into the vinegar rinse to remove soapy residues.
1 pint liquid castile soap or soap gel
20 drops essential oil, preferably a citrus based oil, as citrus oils cut through grease.
Shake together and squirt into warm running water. Hint: if you wash dishes in a bowl, save the soapy water and throw it over your roses to help deter aphids.
TweetAll rugs and carpets require specific care in order to keep their appearance and lengthen their lifespan. There is minor but important differences in caring for machine made and handmade rugs, if done properly you can add considerable life to your rug…
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