Same or Different?  House Cleaning and Hotel Maid Cleaning

As the owner of a professional house cleaning business, I don’t particularly want to cede the issue of who knows best how to clean to the hotel service, BUT I will admit there are some well-made points here, including more than the few which I’ll highlight with my own comments.  This is the link if you want to read the whole article:  Cleaning Insider Tips

1) Dust and Static

Dryer sheets are anti-dust (i.e. anti-static).  If you have a home office, especially one with a printer, you may have noticed that the floor under the power cables accumulates dust pretty quickly. Those electric cables are creating magnetic fields which in turn will attract dust.  Dryer sheets are designed to be anti-static – that’s why we cannot use them in the dryer with another of our own house cleaning secrets:

House Cleaning tip: Microfiber makes the BEST cleaning cloths

2) Microfiber Cloths

We use hospital grade microfibers – why? We found a study from the University of California at Davis which reported that high-quality microfiber cloths removed the same quantity (at least 99.9%) of pathogens using just water – as the quantity that disinfectants are required to kill!  So pick the weapon that’s best for your home environment:  removal with a non-toxic system versus killing with a toxic biocide (the ‘cide’ in biocide means to kill; ‘bio’ stands for life)!

Our microfiber cloths actually help us clean via their static attraction which helps attract and hold dust.

Back to those baseboards–in conclusion:  If static attraction is causing dust to settle on your baseboards, first wipe them clean with a microfiber cloth to remove any heavy deposits. Then follow up with an anti-static dryer sheet to delay the accumulation for a period of time – voila, “dust-free” baseboards – at least for longer than usual!

3) Vacuuming Entry Paths Twice Can be a GOOD Thing.

This one is brilliant. Priding ourselves on our efficiency, we generally go to the farthest point of a room and ‘back’ ourselves toward the exit, running Big Bertha (my affectionate nickname for our vacuum) in a pattern of overlapping strokes.  The pattern is made in an effort to cover every square foot.

The genius who decided to hit the traffic pattern at the entry point not once but twice is getting a lot more of the dry particulate matter out of the carpet.  This non-soluble grit makes up about 70 to 80 percent of the soils in our carpet, so thorough vacuuming reduces the wear and tear by all that pesky dirt that cuts and frizzes our carpet fibers and causes traffic pattern (wear) changes in appearance.

If you have ever noticed a swath of dirty carpet in a busy corridor near a main entry, you’ve seen the result of traffic leaving excess dirt in the carpet.  This is why cleaners obsess about the need for matting at entries, especially for busy office buildings, public spaces, garage door entries to homes, basically all high-traffic areas.

a Town & Country Cleaning Services professional cleaning and detailing a staircase for a Chapel Hill house

4) Professional Carpet Cleaning IS Needed on a Regular Basis

By the way, that remaining 20 to 30 percent of carpet soil is what your professional carpet cleaner is helping you remove every year or so. Cleaning more frequently than every year is recommended if you have heavy traffic with lots of feet bringing in dirt from the path, garage or garden.

That effort should also begin with a thorough vacuuming to get the non-soluble particles out before adding the cleaning solution – this helps reduce the ‘mud’ effect you otherwise get when adding liquid such as water, cleaning solutions and pre-spray. Town & Country Cleaning Services uses an 11-step process for carpet cleaning – high on our list in that process, in fact, the first step after inspection, is a thorough vacuuming.  You should demand that same step from every carpet cleaning service.