Make Your Bed!

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. William H. McRaven

The bedroom. The place where we go to be relieved of the day’s stresses and renewed in our body and mind through sleep. The bedroom is your sanctuary and should be regarded as such and kept with the same amount of reverence as a church or temple. And what is the focal point of a temple? The altar. And what is the altar of your bedroom? The bed.

When cleaning a bedroom, the first thing a professional house cleaner does is make the bed. No matter how dirty or cluttered your bedroom is, a freshly made bed can make it look clean. (or at least hopeful)

To start the bed making process, use a fitted sheet that fits your mattress tightly. A loose fitted sheet tends to bunch up, leaves wrinkles, and comes undone with a restless sleeper.

Next comes the flat sheet. The instructions below will show you how to achieve those crisp hospital corners that will also help keep your sheets from bunching up and coming undone during the middle of the night.

Now that you’ve laid the foundation of your bed, you can throw on your comforter or bedspread and your pillows. And this is where as a professional house cleaner I’m going to get on my soapbox.

1. Beds with one side pushed against the wall – This makes bed making difficult and the more difficult it is to make your bed, the less likely you are to make your bed. I highly discourage this! I WANT to make your bed and make it look crisp and clean, but I don’t like crawling on people’s beds to tuck sheets down the wall because I feel as though I am treading on personal territory, plus it’s very difficult to achieve a great look while messing up your sheets as I try to scoot off the bed. If your bed is pushed against the wall, please consider rearranging your room so that your bed can be accessed on both sides.
2. Duvet Covers – Duvet covers are a great concept for not having to wash your comforter all the time, but…not only do they cost almost as much as a comforter, but they are a pain in the rear to get on to a comforter and they never lay as neatly as just a comforter.
3. Bed Skirts – Another great idea in theory, but when trying to make a crisp bed, they tend to get in the way, get all “whopper-jawed”, and UGH! Not to mention the amount of dust they collect. It’s my professional recommendation to avoid these.
4. Pillows – Pillow cases do a pretty good job of keeping your pillow clean, but after a while, your pillow does get dirty and starts to smell a little funky. You may not notice it because you’ve become “nose-blind” to it, but a professional house cleaner isn’t in your home that often and trust me, your pillow stinks. PLEASE WASH YOUR PILLOWS! But if your pillow cannot be washed, please buy a new one! PLEASE!
5. More Pillows – Home decor goes through trends and the latest trend seems to be pillows GALORE! Why??!! How many pillows do you actually sleep with? How many decorative pillows do you really need? All you’re going to do is toss them on the ground before you go to bed and you’re not going to want to pick all those pillows back up. Trust me! Do you know how much time I spend trying to figure out how to put 10+ throw pillows back onto a bed in a purposeful, artistic manner? A few pillows looks cozy, too many pillows looks messy. I recommend a maximum of 4 pillows for you and your significant other’s heads and 4 throw pillows. Personally, I don’t use throw pillows because if I’m not going to sleep with it, why have it? Guess that’s the pragmatist in me, plus I don’t like doing more work than I have to.

OK, I’m off of my soap box and back to the original point of this blog…making your bed. Once you have your fitted and flat sheets tightly secured and your comforter and pillows nicely arranged, making your bed in the morning should be as easy as taking your pillows off, pulling up your sheets and smoothing them out, pulling up your comforter and smoothing it out, and laying your pillows on top. 5-10 minutes tops! Then stand in your doorway and look how lovely a freshly made bed is. Think about how nice it will be to slip into those soft sheets and drift off into dreamland. Think about how that simple act made your room feel like the sanctuary it should be. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…isn’t that nice?

Now, GO MAKE YOUR BED!

Tips and Tricks: Best Time to Clean Your Bathroom

Did you know that there is a best time to clean your bathroom? YES! Professional house cleaners have been using this trick in their own homes for ages and by doing it at this exact time, you will save yourself hours of cleaning later! So when is the best time to clean your bathroom?

After you use it!

Stop with the moaning and groaning. You knew I was going to say that!

As a kid, my grandmother used to tell me “if you clean as you go, you won’t have a big clean later!” Of course my rebuttal to that was “but then you’re just cleaning all the time!” Boy how I wish I had taken her advice early on instead of waiting until I became a professional house cleaner to see the benefits of this simple and timely advice.  It would have saved  me many hours of cleaning and needless frustration.

But, sometimes you have to learn things the hard way and the hard way for me was cleaning other people’s bathrooms who let things go for weeks, months, years, and sometimes I suspect DECADES! Spending hours in a bathroom trying to remove years worth of lime scale, soap scum, hard water, and mold certainly opened my eyes to how much easier it would be to just keep up with a daily cleaning ritual of a few minutes instead of hours!

Below are the steps I’ve developed for a daily bathroom cleaning ritual that takes less then five minutes and can be used whenever you get your shower or bath. (Which I hope is daily)

• Before you get your shower, take some disinfecting wipes or a cleaning cloth with some cleaner and wipe off the surfaces of your toilet. Don’t forget to wipe down #6 which seems to collect pee from men. (I’ve yet to receive an answer as to how or why that happens) After that, squirt the inside of your toilet with some toilet cleaner or drop in an Efferdent tab or you can make your own toilet fizzies. Let that sit while you get your bath or shower. 
• After you’ve taken your shower and dried off, either use a squeegee to get the water off your glass and tiles, a daily shower cleaner (I like Method’s Daily Shower Cleaner), or take the towel you dried off with and dry all the surfaces of your shower or tub. (Come on! You used it on your CLEAN BODY! It’s not like it’s dirty and you were probably just going to put it into the laundry basket anyway!) By doing this, you will help prevent mold, soap scum, and hard water build up. By the way, soap scum is caused by the paraffin in bar soap. I’d suggest using a liquid soap to prevent this nemesis of house cleaners.
• Go back to your toilet, swish the inside with your toilet brush, and flush. Toilet done!
• After I get dressed, I brush my teeth and fix my hair which leaves toothpaste splatters and hair here and there all over my sink and counter. Keep some mirror cleaner and a cloth under your sink. After you’ve put away all your equipment and products (I keep a basket on my counter,) give your mirror, sink, fixtures, and the counter a squirt with the glass cleaner and wipe. (Honestly, I just use my hand towel since it’s right there and if done immediately, I really don’t need the cleaner)

That’s it! Seriously, that’s all there is to it and it takes less than 5 MINUTES! What’s 5 minutes when it saves you HOURS of cleaning on the weekends when you could be doing something fun. And it gives you the peace of mind knowing your bathroom is clean and guest ready every day!

 

When You’re Having a Bad Day, Scrub it Away!

Cleaning is therapy for me. I’m not ashamed of holding the duster or broom. Amisha Patel

We’ve all had those times when we start the day in a bad mood. Maybe you’ve had a fight with your significant other, or maybe you’re kids were dawdling, you’re stuck in traffic, and now you’re late for work. Maybe it’s just “that” time of the month and you don’t know why you’re feeling cranky.

It happens. We’ve all been told to leave our problems at the door when we get to work, but sometimes you can’t seem to shake that bad mood. You ruminate on the unkind things said, or the jerk that flipped you off and how you wanted to get out and give him a “what for” and it sets the tone for the rest of the day.

I used to have days like that, but not anymore. Why? Because now I scrub it away. Literally, I scrub it away!

I discovered this one day when my husband and I had an argument the night before that spilled into the morning. Things were so bad that I wondered if I would be married by the time I got home. I drove to work with a pit in my stomach and tears in my eyes. I “sucked it up” as best I could before walking into work. Thoughts of the argument filled my head and it was obvious to my coworkers that I was distressed. I briefly vented to them, but I’d have to somehow manage through being in the customer’s home without crying.

At the customer’s home, I put on my stone face and set about cleaning this particularly disgusting bathroom. I scrubbed at mold, I scrubbed at soap scum, I scrubbed at urine and who-knows-what.

How can people live like this? (Scrub, scrub, scrub) How can you get clean in a place this dirty? (Scrub, scrub, scrub?) How many grown-ass adults live here? Is NO ONE capable of wiping off a toilet seat? (Scrub, scrub, scrub) I’m DEFINITELY going to need a shower after this! (Scrub, scrub, scrub)

I scrubbed, I dusted, I picked up and made things presentable, I vacuumed, and I mopped my way through the house. It wasn’t until I was heading back to the office that I realized the entire time I was scrubbing, I had forgotten about the argument. Likewise, although dirtier, I felt calmer and lighter. The pit in my stomach was gone, I didn’t feel like bursting into tears at any minute, and divorce didn’t even seem like a word that existed. Everything was OK and everything was probably going to be OK.

Years earlier, (before I was a house cleaner) a therapist had suggested to me that I clean when I was in a bad mood. She said that the gross motor action would help me to better process things and I’d have a clean home as an added bonus. I took that suggestion and threw it right out of my mind. After all, who wants to clean when they’re in a bad mood? Having to clean, PUTS me in a bad mood! Why would I want to make it worse?!?! But years later,  I have to conceded that she was right and as it turns out, there’s plenty of evidence  to back up her advice.

So, the next time you’re in a bad mood, take it from the Diary of a House Cleaner, when you’re having a bad day, scrub it away!