House cleaning happiness. . .

I was looking for dinnerware that could be used everyday but was elegant enough for more formal dining. Price was also an issue. I didn't want to have a breakdown if a $50 plate dropped on the tile or cracked in the microwave. Lo & behold I found this beautiful fleur de lis dinnerware pattern from Walmart. It's by Better Homes & Gardens and it's called Country Crest. It's kind of a marriage of modern and shabby chic. It has clean lines with the French accent & nice substantial feel to the dinnerware. A 16 piece set is $39.97 and you get a lot of style for the money. Having a clean home is wonderful but having a clean home & a dining room table beautifully decorated is the holy grail of house cleaning happiness!

Cleaning A Dirty Brahmin

For those of you who don't know, I love Brahmin handbags. They are beautiful, made in America & for a mid-price designer bag I think you get your money's worth as you can use one everyday for 10 years and it will still look good after heavy usage. Recently I purchased a used one on Poshmark for $40.00, pretty good buy, I think.

Brahmin, outside clean

 

But as you can tell by the picture the inside was dirty and needed cleaning.

Brahmin, inside dirty, needs cleaning

I had Clorox color safe bleach that came with a small finger brush and I also used Walmart hand soap to use to clean the inside of the wristlet.

Cleaning tools

The finger brush is small but mighty & with minimal pressure you can scrub/clean away stains. Please keep that in mind if you purchase one and use on delicate fabric the flexible scrubbies on the brush can cause more damage than you think so applying minimal pressure when cleaning is key to avoid pilling. As you can see I dispensed soap directly onto the bristles.

Applying soap directly to the cleaning tool

And then I started scrubbing. The inside of the Brahmin was a rougher surface so I used more pressure when scrubbing than I normally would have with say a, swimsuit. Again don't let that small cleaning brush fool you, it can really cause some damage to fabric if rubbed too vigorously.

Cleaning away

Below is half of one side of the wristlet done. Notice all of the red marks have been cleaned away in one corner.

                                                               Half way done on one side


Here I am doing the other side of the inside of the wristlet. This side went much faster as I was more confident as to what I was doing. The whole scrubbing didn't take more than 15-20 minutes.

Cleaning other side

When I was done cleaning, I ran the fabric part of the purse under the sink, not letting the leather be exposed to the water and letting the fabric lining part get really wet.

Carefully letting water run on fabric part of wristlet, only

When it was good & soaked, I rang out the water and soap from the fabric lining as best I could.

Squeezing out moisture

Keeping the liner outside the wristlet, it was hung out to dry.

Hanging on towel rack

After drying for 7 hours the Brahmin is restored and looking as good as new.

                                                                          Completely clean.

Nicole Hubbard likes Howard

When it comes to furniture polish we ask that our Hubbard's maid service clients provide it. Why? Because everyone usually has a strong preference as to the type they liked used to clean on their furniture. Some people swear by Lemon Pledge, some people only use Method Wood for Good. There are many different products out there, some of them very good. Recently I tried out Howard's Feed-N-Wax on my 10 year old kitchen & bathroom cabinets and was impressed how they restored the shine back into the wood and cleaned it as well. Again, as in the last post, I purchased the product at my local Home Depot store.

 

On hands and knees scrubbing. . .

Normally you would want to talk about what your business does, Not what it doesn't do but this can be important for potential clients information. So at Hubbard's Maid Service, no, we do not get down on our hands and knees and scrub floors. For some that is an expectation but as a house cleaning business with employees that is a liability issue. We do require knees to the ground when cleaning baseboards and in standard size bathrooms its simply a matter of efficiency for one to get down near the floor and hand wipe it clean but other than that our cleaners don't normally get down on their hands and knees.
Our methods for cleaning homes & offices is that which maximizes efficiency and keeps costs down but sometimes one needs more, the need is for each and every grout line in a tile floor to be scrubbed. On a regular work day this is not something that our cleaners address but with special requests and added time to the cost agreed upon upfront we do have technicians who are skilled and willing to do this special type of cleaning on occasion. I would have really loved to have one of them scrub my grout on the day that I needed it but usually the owner of the company is last in line to be serviced so I was on my own. That being said I was impressed with the grout & tile cleaner by TileLab that I picked up at Home Depot. The results were impressive after a light scrubbing with a brush designed specially for grout. I took my time and sprayed the tile down and then proceeded scrubbing, about 20 seconds per grout line. I would then wipe off the cleaner after 20-30 minutes with a towel and it would already be lightened and several hours later it was lighter still. I found the results to last 6 months in high traffic areas like the kitchen.
Our company mops floors but sometimes you need a method that "restores" a tile floor. My suggestion then is to call a carpet cleaning company or a tile & grout cleaning company that can actually penetrate the tile & grout with sanitizing steam and then have it resealed. I've spoke with professionals who state you should have your grout resealed once a year. This is a great alternative for someone who feels their tile floors are looking dated or tired. You may not need to replace them, you just may need to have them steam cleaned. I've seen some tile floors restored by a carpet cleaning company and they looked brand new after the job was done which was much more affordable than having the whole floor replaced.
But if you want to do-it-yourself hands and knees, I suggest the grout and tile cleaner from Home Depot OR you can call our office and see if we have a cleaning technician available who is willing to do it for an additional cost.