Most of us spend a lot of time making sure that our home looks beautiful – surfaces dust- and grime-free, stainless steel sparkling, whiteware and bathroom surfaces gleaming and pristine white. And so we should. But we should not neglect pleasing our senses other than sight when cleaning and tidying up our house.
Modern households are full of a range of unpleasant smells. While the average household no longer reeks of animal manure and the like, as was the case in days gone by, our noses can be assaulted by a range of modern stenches. While there isn’t much we can do about the neighbour’s coal smoke or the fumes from a busy road nearby, we can do something about the other smells in the house.
Common sources of unpleasant smells in the house include cigarette fumes, coal smoke, cooking smells, dogs and chemical smells (and, as you all have guessed, smells from the toilet). The first step in making your home attractive to the nose as well as to the eye is eliminating these olfactory offenders. Quit smoking – you know it’s horrifically bad for you. Change from burning coal to a using wood as fuel for the fire – wood smoke is a less unpleasant smell (some people even like it in small amounts) and the ash absorbs unpleasant smells, besides the fact that burning wood encourages the growing of managed woodlots, which is better in the larger scale of things regarding carbon emissions and greenhouse gases.
As far as possible, try to eliminate strong-smelling chemicals. The worst offenders here are home cleaners, especially those based on chlorine or ammonia, which emit toxic fumes (the fumes are especially toxic if chlorine and ammonia are combined – never do this). Old fashioned cleaning products such as baking soda, vinegar, soap and basic detergent give off fewer fumes. What’s more, baking soda is something of an odour-eater and absorbs strong smells, especially inside the refrigerator. Disinfectant is a mid-range offender. While it doesn’t smell unpleasant, too much around the house is reminiscent of hospitals and other medical establishments and doesn’t make for a nice homely atmosphere, so use disinfectant only where necessary.
You probably don’t want to eliminate your beloved dog, and it is impossible to give up cooking or using the toilet if you want to stay alive and healthy. Also, even if you don’t smoke, you may own a house or furniture that was previously owned by a smoker and still contains traces of the smoke (this writer owns a second hand sofa once owned by a smoker. Three years on, you can still detect tobacco in it if it gets warm). In this case, you have to take positive action to prevent unpleasant smells.
Fresh air is the first way to eliminate all these smells. Opening windows and using an extractor fan in the kitchen or in the bathroom eliminates the majority of stale or damp odours, besides helping damp areas dry out. Most cooking smells are quite pleasant when fresh (think how delicious roast mutton smells) but if they linger, the smell turns stale. Keep fresh air flowing through the house while cooking and afterwards to let the vapours disperse. Fresh air also works wonders in toilets.
Most people use an air freshener in the toilet. If, for some reason, you do not use one (for example, if you’re sensitive to the chemicals in air freshener), then lighting and burning a single match after using the toilet covers and absorbs any stink.
To eliminate doggy smells in the house, wash your dog regularly. If possible, make sure your dog does not sleep on the furniture and, if possible, sleeps outside. Regular vacuuming will help eliminate most of the doggy odour that comes with shed hairs and skin particles.
But you also want to make sure your house has a positively pleasant smell to it rather than bland, scentless neutrality. You can choose from many ways of putting a positively pleasant smell into the house. Traditional methods such as potpourri and fresh flowers are lovely, as are using incense sticks, scented candles and aromatic oil burners. Aromatic oils can be used in other ways than just in a burner. Putting a few drops of aromatic oil on the filter or dust bag of a vacuum cleaner means that as you vacuum, the fragrance is released through the house. A little aromatic oil can also be used to make your own scented drawer liners from plain kitchen towels or even photocopier paper. Dab a little on a cold light bulb: when the light is switched on, the glass will heat up and release the scent. However, when it comes to aromatic oils, the rule “you get what you pay for” applies. Natural aromatherapy oils are best of all, but very good quality synthetics are also an attractive choice. Cheap oils are usually cloying and rather nasty.
When scenting your home, don’t overdo it. Too much scent in the air is overbearing and can cause headaches. Keep house scents light for the best effect.
Already, I can hear those with an environmental conscience gasping. Acid? In cleaning? Mental pictures of acid rain and its catastrophic effects spring to mind, alongside visions of yet more industrial strength acid being tipped down drains to poison poor harmless fish and kill the vegetation in our long-suffering waterways.
Relax! Yes, acid does get used for industrial cleaning (it’s used for cleaning metals, as it corrodes away the outer layer of whatever it is, taking the dirt away and revealing a new, shiny layer below). And strong sulphuric acid down the drains will harm the environment. But this isn’t what I’m talking about – after all, it’s not as if we see sulphuric acid sitting on the shelves among the commercial cleaning products in our local supermarket aisles here in Britain. (You can in South America, but that’s another story. It’s sold as a drain cleaner and super-strength disinfectant – eek!)
But milder acids can and should be used for cleaning around the home. Acid in general is a very natural substance, and many if not all living things produce acid. Even your stomach contains one of the most ferocious acids known – hydrochloric acid. And natural acids break down fairly easily and naturally, so we can use them with a clear conscience – and clear kitchens, complexions and bathrooms.
The best cleaning acid that we have available is vinegar. Ordinary white vinegar. The boffins call ordinary white wine vinegar a form of acetic acid and tell us that it has a pH of about 4, which makes it a medium-strength acid. Vinegar can be used for glass cleaning, window cleaning, cleaning vinyl surfaces, cleaning table tops, cleaning metal and much, much more. Increase the cleaning potential of vinegar even further if you mix it with other stuff – mix it with linseed oil for cleaning leather upholstery. As the acetic acid in vinegar breaks down mould spores, it’s great for tackling mildew. And because your skin is mildly acidic, using vinegar for cleaning won’t hurt your skin like other cleaning products – it will do your skin good, if anything.
It’s easier to say what you should not use vinegar for when cleaning. Don’t use vinegar for cleaning marble or pearls, or limestone, as the acid will attack these and wreck them.
The other commonly used cleaning acid is citric acid in the form of lemon juice. The real beauty of lemon juice as a cleaner is that, with the help of ultraviolet light, it acts as a bleach. Lemon juice dabbed onto white fabric and exposed to sunlight is great for removing mildew marks and rust stains (this method also works a real treat for putting highlights into blonde/brown hair, and was an old-fashioned method for bleaching freckles and age spots in the skin). Lemon juice is considerably stickier than vinegar, so it’s not all that good for cleaning glass and other things where you don’t want a residue left. But a lemon is great for cleaning the inside of a microwave – put the lemon in a bowl with a bit of water and put the microwave on high until the water all evaporates. Leave the mix of lemon and steam to attack the caked on grease and grime, then open the door and wipe everything out. Half a lemon left in the fridge is also supposed to be a good way to remove stale smells, but this seems like a waste of a perfectly good lemon – use baking soda instead.
MBA courses teach a lot of things that are very important to running a successful business. But perhaps because it is so obvious, they tend to by pass some of the very basic issues. Sadly, the basics are often overlooked and neglected and the results are unfortunate, to say the least.
Every company would like to have a nice looking office – both for the positive atmosphere it creates among the staff as well as the favourable impression it creates with potential clients. That’s why companies spend as much as they can afford to (and sometimes more) on the decor of their offices. Where many of them slip up is in the cleaning and maintenance of these offices. Yes, basic office cleaning, something business schools never bother to mention, can mean a lot in terms of business gained and lost.
An office that is tastefully decorated but is not kept clean shows that the company is not one that pays attention to detail. Or perhaps that it does not care about the long term results of its actions as evidenced by the money spent on decor and the lack of subsequent upkeep. Is that how you would like your office, and by association your company, to be perceived?
Office cleaning is a time consuming job and surprising though it may be to many, does require a great deal of specialized know how. If you can afford it the best option is to use the services of a professional cleaning company. Doing your own office cleaning means a constant compromise between using your time for cleaning and for more direct business activities. There’s also always the temptation to put off cleaning, and keep putting it off, because of other more pressing work.
The best way to go about having your office cleaning done professionally is to short list a few companies, take them through your office showing them the high traffic areas and those where dirt seems to accumulate, perhaps for reasons you can’t fathom! Ask them for a detailed quotation that includes the number of people on the job, their specializations, the time the cleaning operation will take, the cleaning materials that will be used and the frequency of cleaning that will be required to keep the office looking good.
While cost is always an important consideration, do not let that be your sole criterion for choosing an office cleaning service. Look for companies with good references, trained staff and give due consideration to companies who itemize the work they will do in the greatest detail. And finally look for a company that will come to clean your office at a time that will cause the least disruption in the business work flow.
Remember that how your office looks is almost as important as how well it functions, especially in major commercial centers like London.
Fires in offices are more common than most people realize, especially in London’s high density business area. Most of these fires are small and easily put out by the office staff. They are usually caused by one of the many pieces of electrical and electronic equipment modern offices are so full of. While the damage is usually limited to the equipment itself, collateral damage in the form of smoke marks on the walls is very common.
While this can be cleaned up by your office cleaning agency, you can usually do it yourself without waiting for their next scheduled visit.
Begin by properly ventilating the area to get rid of soot particles that may still be suspended in the air and also the burn smell. Before beginning, wear safety goggles and rubber gloves. This is important since you will be working with paint thinner.
Lay plastic sheeting (or a thick cloth if plastic is not readily available) to prevent drips during the cleaning process from staining the floor or carpet. Start working from the top of the burn mark – use a step ladder if necessary – and going from side to side, work your way down. If more than one wall is affected, finish one completely before going on to the next.
Start by using a Chemical Dry Cleaning Sponge to wipe the soot off the wall. These sponges are easily available and a hardware store will have them or will be able to direct you to where you can buy one. Do not wet the sponge – it is designed to work when dry. Simply wipe the soot away with the sponge. Once the sponge gets saturated with soot, rinse it out, allow it to dry completely and continue using it until all the soot is off the walls.
Once the sponge has removed as much as it can, wet a regular sponge or soft cloth with paint thinner or pure alcohol and gently rub the stain until it is gone. Do not use water based home cleaners for this as they will only spread the stain and make removing it even more difficult. Be careful when rubbing as the more you rub, the more paint or polish will be removed from the wall. This is inevitable but the less the paint is affected, the less painting you will have to do. Once the stain is gone, pat the area dry with paper towels or a dry cloth.
After our homes, our workplaces are the environment in which we spend the most amount of time – sometimes, it seems as if we spend most of our time in the office, full stop. So it’s just as important to minimize the amount of toxins you have in your office as it is in your home.
Unfortunately, there is not a lot you can do about the commercial cleaning products that the janitor or professional office cleaner is going to use when they nip around your cubicle or office space doing their job. This probably means various disinfectants and ammonia based products as well as damp dusters and vacuum cleaners.
Unless your office has rather progressive notions about living and working naturally and encourages the cleaner to use vinegar and baking soda to clean everything, trying to get your office cleaner to switch to natural cleaning products is going to be a waste of time. If you are serious about reducing toxins in your environment, you could have a quiet talk to the cleaner and offer to take care of your cubicle yourself using natural products. He or she will probably agree to this – it’s one less area they have to do. If you are very keen, you could try proposing switching to purchasing, for example, Enjo cleaning cloths for the cleaner as a cost cutting measure – the business won’t have to pay for all those chemicals used for cleaning… It’s worth a try, anyway!
The next best thing you can do to reduce the amount of toxins in your working environment is to put toxin absorbing plants in your cubicle or office. Spider plants and peace lilies are two varieties of plant that are particularly good at absorbing environmental pollutants (and they are thought to absorb some of the e-smog or electromagnetic frequencies put out by all that electrical office equipment). Other plants that remove environmental pollutants and look good include English ivy, weeping fig and areca palm.
Don’t use plastic cups or plastic bottles for your drinks at the office. Yes, it’s important to stay well hydrated and water is by far the best drink (meeting people at the water cooler also helps reduce stress levels), but you don’t have to use the plastic cups (or even paper cups) provided. Sometimes, toxins can leach from the plastic into the water you drink – to say nothing of hot drinks, as heat makes more toxins leach out. Take your own china mug and re-use it through the day (and take it home at night with you to wash, of course!).
You might not be able to stop other people using that ghastly chemical-laden air freshener in the office loo, but this doesn’t mean that you have to use it as well. Good ventilation in the lavatory will help remove any smells, or take a box of matches in with you and light one before you leave. The little flame from the match will burn the methane that creates the worst stink, so your co-workers will have nothing to complain about. An option that could be proposed as a cost-cutting measure is a stainless steel “Smell Killer”. Apparently, these little stainless steel disks neutralise or absorb odours somehow.
If you can bag a desk near a window, or if you have an office to yourself, make the most of fresh air and natural lighting instead of canned air and fluorescent air. You’ll feel better for it and will work better.
Talk to people face to face or leave sticky notes instead of using instant messengers, text messages and emails for intra-office communications. This will reduce the amount of electromagnetic radiation you and your co-workers are exposed to. And to save adding extra paper in the form of sticky notes to the waste stream, do your own recycling and use GOOS (good on one side) paper.
Don’t buy food from the office canteen. It is probably not the healthiest option, and you don’t have any control over the ingredients used. It’s better for your health – and a lot cheaper – to make your own sandwiches or pack leftovers from last night’s dinner and eat that for lunch instead. As a timesaver, make a large batch of sandwiches and freeze them in zip-lock bags (which you can wash out and re-use rather than throwing away). Then all you need to do is grab a frozen pack of sandwiches as you head out the door – it will have thawed out nicely by lunchtime.
While plastic is found everywhere, it is most common in offices where there are always a large number of plastic surfaces. The reason for this is because plastic is so strong and easy to maintain. However, that does not mean it doesn’t require cleaning. While this will be done by your office cleaning services, its best to clean up spills and stains while they are fresh just in case they affect the finish of the plastic.
To begin you need to mix a small amount of general household detergent in a bucket of water. The quantity depends on the area to be cleaned. Do not make the solution too strong. A gentle foam when agitated, is enough. If it is too strong, soap stains may remain after the cleaning. Dip a clean soft cloth in the solution and wipe the dirt off the plastic surfaces. If it is a large vertical area, start at the top and work your way down. If there is a danger of the liquid falling on a carpet, either remove it or cover it with a plastic sheet.
Dry off any residual dampness with a clean cloth or paper towels. Now spray the cleaned surface with a general purpose household cleaner and immediately wipe with a sponge. Rub hard on any stubborn stains. If you are using a double surfaced sponge, do not use the rough side – it may scratch the plastic finish. Buff with a soft paper towel to bring back the shine to the plastic.
If the plastic has a glossy finish and you notice that there are stains or streaks from the water or the soap after you have finished the cleaning, spray the area with a mild glass cleaner and wipe away the marks.
If the plastic surface is textured, a slightly different approach will have to be taken. Dampen the plastic with the water and detergent solution. Use a nylon brush in a circular motion to scrub away at the dirt and grime. Again, do not rub so hard that the surface gets damaged. After the scrubbing wipe the surface with a paper towel and then rinse it off with a cloth and plain water. Dry with a soft cloth and then buff with a paper towel to bring back the shine.
For stubborn stains, try rubbing gently with alcohol or vinegar. Or you could apply a paste of baking soda and water to the stain (do not rub Ð it will act as an abrasive and damage the finish). Wipe the surface with a damp cloth.
Brick provides a lovely accent to any home or office. Like any interior surface, brick work needs to be cleaned regularly to look its best the rough finish of the brick and the cement grouting makes it easy for dust and dirt to adhere to the surface. While regular dusting is essential, sooner or later stains will develop which will need a little special attention to remove them. There are various ways of cleaning bricks and what follows are to of the least aggressive methods. If they do not work for you, rather than experiment with more extreme methods yourself and perhaps do more harm than good, it is preferable to get the help of a home cleaning agency.
Method 1:
Take a cake of dish soap (the grease and oil removing kind) and cut in half (the size will depend on the brick area to be cleaned). Place it in a bowl and add an equal quantity of ordinary table salt. Using just a little water mix the soap and salt into a thick paste. Using a clean rag spread the paste evenly over the brick surface. The thickness of the paste on the brick is not important as long as the entire surface is covered evenly.
Using a hard scrub brush, rub the paste into the brickwork and allow it to remain there for about 10 minutes before rinsing off with a clean cloth dipped in warm water. You should see a noticeable difference in the finish of the bricks.
But if this does not yield the results you want, you can try-
Method 2:
In a clean bucket mix warm (not hot) water and boric acid in the proportion of one tablespoon of the acid to one gallon of water. Put on rubber gloves and goggles you are going to be scrubbing and some of the mixture could spray back into your eyes. Take a hard scrub brush, dip it in the solution and vigorously scrub the brick surface. Allow the solution to rest on the bricks for a minute or two and then rinse it away with a rag dipped in warm water.
If this still does not give you the results you want, contact a professional office cleaning agency to do the job. Using strong chemicals on your own can be dangerous not only to you but may damage floors, walls and furniture. Do not try more aggressive cleaning methods unless you are sure of what you are doing.
Many people prefer the convenience and comfort of working from home. Whether you’re self-employed or working for a company via a “telecommute”, you’ll need a decent home office to work from. Yes, the stereotype of someone who works from home does it all on a laptop on the kitchen table (and possibly only half dressed), but to really work efficiently, you need to have a proper workspace set up.
This workspace doesn’t need to be a whole room. Sometimes, a corner of a lounge is all that is really necessary, as long as you have room for a work desk and maybe a filing cabinet or a set of drawers or so. However, never set up your home office in your bedroom. Experts say that this will not help you get a good night’s sleep, as bedrooms should be reserved for sleeping and relaxing (and making love). It’s certainly rather depressing to have your work staring you in the face first thing in the morning and last thing at night, no matter how much you like your work.
Your first consideration is good lighting. You have to make sure that you have enough light to see paperwork (or your handiwork, if your work from home involves art or craft) without straining your eyes. Natural sunlight is best – it’s cheap, easy on the eyes and cheers you up (being stuck in a sunless office on a beautiful sunny day is frustrating – but this writer has been known to print out hard copy of work to be done and head outdoors with it on days like that). If you work on a computer, it’s best if the sunlight comes over your shoulder not straight into your eyes, as direct full-frontal sunlight makes it hard to see the screen – all you’ll see is yourself reflected in the screen.
What else do you need? Warmth is another consideration – no matter how romantic the idea of being a novelist penning brilliant work while shivering in an attic is, the reality of working while cold is ghastly – chilled fingers get clumsy. If you’re so hard up that you can’t afford at least a small heater, you had better reconsider your work – perhaps this work-from-home job can be a secondary job rather than your main one. That being said, as you are by yourself, you don’t have to maintain a “corporate image” in your clothes, so you can keep warm if needed with thick, warm clothes.
A computer is a must these days for working from home. Even if you don’t use the internet and email for work purposes, a good spreadsheet program makes “doing the books” a breeze.
You will also need a reasonable desk to work on, plus space to store files or other projects. You don’t need a proper filing cabinet (unless you want one). A cupboard filled with manila folders and arch files works well. Having shelves for books and stationery is also handy, although stationery is more easily corralled inside a drawer or cupboard (and keeping your sticky tape, staplers and pens hidden where the kids can’t raid them without asking has a bonus).
Make sure your home office is nice to be in. You will spend much of your day in there, after all. Working from home means you have more latitude to get personal. Don’t forget senses other than the eyes – you can turn the stereo up and sing with it if you want to, and you can have an aromatherapy burner with your favourite essential oil, and nobody will complain.
Beware of letting coffee cups and plates pile up in your office. Yes, you will want to nibble and sip while you work (but watch out for your computer keyboard) but don’t overdo it. It’s best to leave the office for lunch; otherwise, you’ll spend the whole day in one little room, which isn’t good for your mind.
Oh yes – just because you don’t have the boss looking over your shoulder doesn’t mean that you can spend your time surfing the net or playing computer games. Self-discipline is needed!
Walls 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.
