Welcome back to the one and only Home Cleaners 4 You blog space! If you missed our last blog, drop whatever you are doing (except if it’s holding a phone to read this) and go back to read the masterpiece titled, how to choose a maid service company in Virginia. 

Once you’ve read that gem of a blog, you’ll be well on your way to choosing the right home cleaning company. If you read that blog and you live in Northern Virginia, you are in even more luck! You can get Northern Virginia’s top cleaning services at Home Cleaners 4 You! We offer top-quality cleaning services at an affordable price, we are family-owned and operated, licensed, bonded, and insured, and have over two decades of experience providing cleaning and maid service!

What’s more, we offer one-time, recurring, or custom home cleaning services as we attempt to match every budget and special request we can. 

All that being established, we can now move onto today’s blog topic — offering up some easy tips for keeping your home clean between professional housekeeping appointments! 

But wait, why would a professional home cleaning company provide tips for the very service that they are expertly trained to provide? Excellent question! You see, while we’d prefer that each of our customers turn into long-term clients, we understand that that isn’t possible for some. We do our best to provide cost-effective maid services, but we get that some folks will prefer intermittent, one-time home cleanings rather than recurring appointments (weekly, monthly, etc.) 

For those who might wait until they are hosting a dinner party to get their home professionally cleaned, we still want to offer up some advice to help your own cleaning habits become more efficient and effective! 

Now that you get that we truly have your best interest in mind, let’s get to the aforementioned providing of said cleaning tips! Some will be quick, some will be more involved, but we are confident you’ll find at least a handful that will help you out in a considerable way!

Clean Your Exhaust Fan

If your bathroom is excessively dusty, the culprit might be the bathroom exhaust fan itself. While most people try to clean the fan with a vacuum, the superior method of cleaning this way is to turn on the fan and blast the dust off with “canned” air. That is, use an air duster filled with compressed air to blow the dust outside. Then run your HVAC unit so that the dust will be carried out to the filter. Be aware, however, that canned air also contains chemical propellants, so it’s best to keep cans out of the reach of children. 

Don’t Ignore The Area Rugs

In the same vein, vacuuming area rugs isn’t enough to do the trick. It might suffice for a tide-me-over, quick clean between professional cleanings brought to you by yours truly at Home Cleaners 4 You, but even then there is any easy method you can employ that should prove much more effective. Plus, it’s cathartic! You get to take a baseball bat (or something like it), hang up that rug outside, and go to town on it! Maybe that doesn’t sound like fun to you, and if so, just find someone else to do it for you. We are sure you your search for a willing volunteer wont’ take too long! You’ll find that an impassioned beating of the rug will shake off much more dust and dirt than most vacuuming ever will. We’d recommend taking larger rugs outside three or four times every year, with smaller area rugs getting the business around once per month. 

Prioritize Biggest Touch Points

If you only have time for a quick clean, you have to pick your battles wisely, since you aren’t going to be able to clean the entire house from top to bottom like we would with our house cleaning services. That said, we recommend going after your door knobs, handles, faucets, and any other areas of the house that get touched fairly frequently. You know your house better than us, so we’ll leave it to you to decide where you’ll want to briefly disinfect!

Swap Out Rags

Using a single rag to clean all of your different surfaces is certainly one way to do it…but it’s not recommended. Strangely, we encounter this incorrect method of cleaning more often than you’d think. It’s less than ideal for several reasons. First, it can leave certain surfaces quite streaky. For instance, if you use the same rag on your windows and mirrors after washing your counter, it’s going to be quite streaky. Second, using a single rag can spread germs all over the place. Be sure to wash each cloth after every use, and don’t be afraid to use numerous rags while cleaning a single room! For example, use two or three separate cloths or sponges while cleaning your bathroom; one for your toilet, one for your counters and sinks, one for your mirror, and one for your shower or tub!

Don’t Use A Feather Duster, Ever

They might be hip (or hipsterish, we aren’t sure), but it’s time to throw away feather dusters once and for all. Why? It’s all fluff. Feather dusters don’t do anything besides spread the dust from one surface to another. So sure, it might make your wooden coffee table appear more attractive for a day or two, but it does nothing to remove the dust from the room you are cleaning. 

The fact is, indoor air is often more polluted than outdoor air — and this is exactly one of the reasons why! We will give you props for dusting, but just make sure you dust in the right way!

Use Your Dryer To Dust

Can you tell we get worked up about dust? Hey, give us a break here; we are passionate about what we do. In reference to the indoor air quality issue we raised above, one way you can reduce this problem in your own home is by using your dryer to do your dusting for you. Drapes, slipcovers, pillows, blankets, and rugs all trap more than their fair share of household dust. Not only do they trap and hold it, but they also create more of it by shedding and disintegrating over time. This is why we recommend buying machine-washable textiles and putting them through a wash-and-dry cycle at least twice per year. If you have non-washable items, throw them in your dryer with a damp towel for 20 minutes or so on the air-fluff setting. The damp towel will attract pet hair and dust!

We hope that you’ve enjoyed these tips! If you are interested in letting the professional home cleaners take all this on for you, just give us a call for cleaning services in Vienna, VA, and beyond!