Home is where the heart is. It is where we retire to each night after a long, hard day in the office or some time socialising with friends and family. It should serve as a safe haven where we feel comfortable and can kick up our feet to relax in a pleasant environment. This is why it’s extremely important that we keep everything in good condition. Sure, you might have to dedicate a little time out of your schedule in order to get things looking and feeling nice in your home 24/7. But clutter, mess, and dirt have actually been found to cause stress, and an unhygienic home environment can result in sickness or allergies. Faults with your property are also unlikely to go away of their own accord or rectify themselves, so the longer you leave them, the tougher a job you will have when you finally get around to sorting out the situation. To get you off to the right start, here are just a few tips and tricks in regards to keeping your home clean and well maintained year-round!
Cleaning
The first step that you will have to take to ensure that your home is presentable at all times is to implement a thorough cleaning regime into your routine. Remember that the purpose of cleaning isn’t purely to make sure your home looks nice – it’s to maintain good levels of hygiene throughout your property too! There are various different cleaning tasks that you will have to carry out around your property to ensure that everything is sparkling and that dust, dirt, and other allergens do not mount up. Some activities will have to be carried out on a daily basis, some weekly, and some monthly. Here are a few steps that you can take to make sure your cleaning regime is up to scratch, and a few less common tasks that you might forget about.
Choosing the Right Cleaning Products
Different jobs require different cleaning products. Think of your home like a large body. You wouldn’t use shampoo to exfoliate your feet, and you wouldn’t use moisturiser to wash your hair. Each task you carry out will require a different cleaning product containing different ingredients to get the job done properly. You can find the right cleaning product by conducting research into how to carry out each cleaning job. Wherever possible, try to use all natural products, as these will do just as good a job without posing a threat or being detrimental to the environment.
Washing Shower Curtains
So many people make the mistake of assuming that shower curtains stay clean of their own accord, simply because they come into contact with clean water on a daily basis. But this is not true. You do have to clean your shower curtains regularly, as being damp for extended periods of time with little opportunity to dry off properly makes them a potential breeding ground for mold, mildew, and bacteria. This is not what you want in an environment where you go to get clean yourself! So, wash your shower curtains regularly. Generally speaking, you can place them in your washing machine with a couple of towels and clean them on a relatively low heat. Hang them up to drip dry!
Cleaning Air Ducts
Most properties have air ducts in their bathrooms and kitchens. These ventilation systems allow foul smelling air or smoke to be removed from a room easily. Alternatively, you may have air ducts in your property through your home’s heating or filtration systems. For some reason, people assume that because air is passing through these ducts on a regular basis, dust and other contaminants can’t mount up in them. But, again, this is merely a myth. These ducts can become filled with dirt and dust overtime, and do need to be cleaned to prevent allergens from being spread around your home. You can clean these yourself, but the majority of people will call in professional help with this job, as it can get a little tricky when ducts are difficult to access.
Cleaning Your Mattress
The majority of us do not change our bedding as regularly as we should. A study has found that one in twenty people wait for four weeks before washing and changing our bedding and more than a third wait fourteen days. We should be changing our bedding once a week, cleaning the sheets on a hot wash to destroy bacteria. So, if this percentage of people are neglecting washing their sheets regularly, just think how many people are not cleaning their mattresses regularly! Ideally, you should clean your mattress once a season or twice a year. There are a few ways to go about this. They include vacuuming your mattress, deodorising it, practicing stain removal, and steam cleaning. You can find out more about proper technique here
Maintenance
Maintenance varies from cleaning in that it is the process of righting wrongs in your property. If you notice that something has broken, you’re going to have to fix it at some point or another, so it’s best to tackle these tasks as early on as possible. Here are just a few different home maintenance situations you might find yourself in down the line!
Plumbing Problems
You really don’t realize how much water you use on a day to day basis until something goes wrong with your waterworks. When your supply of clean fresh water either stops or won’t turn off, you’re likely to find yourself with serious problems. When your supply stops, you won’t be able to clean yourself, clean your dishes, clean your clothes, drink from the tap, fill up the kettle, or water your garden. When your supply won’t stop, you can end up with overflowing toilets, sinks, bathtubs, or water spurting from pipes. Water damage can do a whole lot of harm to your property and tends to be difficult to fix. The good news is that with most water-based problems, you seem to get a bit of warning. Perhaps your tap is leaking a lot. Maybe your toilet is filling up a little too high each time it flushes. Maybe you’ve noticed small droplets of water dripping from a pipe. When you notice these tell tale signs of problems, call a plumber in right away. Sure, there are certain plumbing jobs that you could do yourself from home given the right equipment. But most of the time, it’s best to leave these jobs to the professionals. This guarantees that though problem will be completely rectified, and you can put the issue to bed.
Electrics
Electrical faults definitely require professional attention. Electricians train for years to correctly identify electrical faults and put them right. Anyone without all of this knowledge could easily end up touching the wrong thing or cutting or disconnecting a wrong wire, and causing themselves serious harm – electric shocks can even prove fatal. So, if you notice a flickering light bulb, identify some exposed wiring, or notice burn marks around a socket, call a professional immediately. Do not put this off at any cost. Not only do electrical problems pose the risk of shocking you or cutting out your entire property’s power supply, but they also pose the risk of sparking off (pun not intended) electrical fires.
Faulty Locks
Faulty locks in your home can be a real inconvenience. If you cannot always guarantee that your key will open the door that it is intended for, you’re going to face some really irritating situations. Sometimes you will be locked out of your property until the lock and key decide to collaborate, sometimes you will be locked inside of your property when you have things to do and need to go out. Either way, you need to call a professional locksmith for help as soon as possible. Your key needs to easily open your door, and there are certain situations that could arise where you really won’t have time to be fiddling about or exerting patience. A locksmith will be able to change your locks and cut new keys that will open your door as they should.
Sure, this may all sound like a fair amount of effort. Especially when you bear in mind that you have more basic and more routine tasks to carry out, like dusting, vacuuming, and polishing. But the effort will all be more than worth it when you can bask in the results of living in a clean and properly functioning home! So, incorporate some of the above steps into your routine today!
