Cleaning Off The Dining Room Table

This post is what NOT to do! I was ironing on my dining room table and realized I had left horrible heat marks for my efforts on the veneer finish. I was so mad at myself!

 I googled all sorts of remedies and tried everything from placing a hot iron on the heat marks over a cloth using steam, to not using steam, applying baking soda, baking powder, vinegar, oil, mayonnaise, I tried all sorts of remedies and nothing worked, in fact it actually got worse. 
But then several months later I randomly googled "heat marks on veneer wood" and I came across a solution. The trick was to use a hair dryer directly on the heat marks. It did take some time and I had to keep at it for several days but it actually disappeared over time, even after applying direct heat. 

This is it slowly fading away.

I used a Dyson hair dryer but you could use any hair dryer that puts off good heat. I had it on the hottest setting possible and sometimes applied direct contact to the wood but eventually it would over heat so you might want to keep it a little farther away from the surface. I would spend about 30 seconds per section and move slowly...

This is actually very easy that even a small child could fix my mess!

Final results! Isn't that amazing?

And just so you know, Hubbard's Maid Service does periodically offer "light house cleaning", which includes ironing but at this point you probably want one of our maids to do the ironing, not me!!!!

Christmas in Savannah, GA

Christmas in Savannah is beautiful! It is the perfect place to be for a sub-tropical Christmas holiday. Our cleaners are especially busy during this time helping people get prepared for parties and celebrations. Here are some photos that capture what Christmas time is like in the south and in our lovely city of Savannah.

 

Cleaning furniture with household items found under the sink

This is an old chest from the Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic line from Target. It's still cute & in great shape but had crusty old tape residue on the front faces of the drawers that needed to be removed.

As one can see it had a lot of sticky residue on the wood veneer and it was going to need a cleaning agent that could dissolve the remains of the tape without damaging the wood.

I started first with the top drawer and the cleaning results were dramatic compared to the bottom drawers that had not been addressed.

 

What I used were simple items that can be found in any home and I used items specifically that are found under the kitchen sink to remove the tape residue from the chest. For this project I utilized dish soap and vinegar.





 

Then I mixed together about a half cup of vinegar and a tablespoon of dish soap.

This simple solution was powerful enough with just a little bit of pressure from my finger tips applied to a cleaning cloth that had been saturated in the dish soap/vinegar to gently rub off the tape without damaging any of the surface of the chest. This is the results below.

 

 

 

Summer in Savannah

Not sure how you address children out of school during the summer time work week in Savannah but this is our conference room at Hubbard's Maid Service in June.

Handy Hairspray

I've got beautiful sheets that were purchased from Kohl's. I don't think they are the highest thread count but they've become quite soft by alternating washing in fabric softener and then vinegar. The other day I saw an old ink stain on the fitted sheet. I applied hairspray and it came to the surface and rinsed off! I've heard you can do the same thing with hand sanitizer. The two products have the same ingredient, alcohol, so probably you could use vodka to remove ink stains as well!

The other great thing about hairspray that I've noticed is that you can use it as a setting spray for make-up if your in a pinch. Wouldn't recommend doing it all the time as it might cause irritation for sensitive or acne prone skin but I've used it like that before and it worked, keeping my make-up from melting through out the day and here in Savannah, Georgia, that can be an issue!

Hydrogen Peroxide

Most people prefer a natural alternative to regular cleaning products. Hydrogen peroxide is a great sanitizer that doesn't have a strong scent and is safe for the environment. Hydrogen peroxide is a great way to sanitize your dishwasher, simply add a capful or 2 to your regular dish washer detergent and run it through the cycle.

And speaking of sanitizing in the kitchen, wiping hydrogen peroxide on your countertops, especially wooden ones, helps keep bacteria at bay and provides a fresh scent to the area.

A little Paris in Savannah, Georgia.

Shannon Williams is Hubbard's Maid Services senior training manager. She is a phenomenal employee and is the first point of contact for all incoming team members. She trains incoming technicians in our Perfect Maintenance Cleaning system & approves them in a week long training session before they are eligible to be admitted to full time status. She also helps out in the office on Fridays as a customer service representative fielding incoming calls and giving quotes for cleaning jobs. Shannon has been employed with Hubbard's three years and we are so happy to have her with us and to show our appreciation we took Shannon out to lunch at delicious Café M in downtown historic Savannah which is also the number 3 restaurant on Trip Advisor for Savannah, Georgia.