After this long, cold, and "grey" winter......I think we are all ready for spring to finally arrive! It gets old being cooped up in your home for 5-6 months, and thoughout those months -- our home can get a little messier than we like. Especially in certain areas that aren't temperature controlled. They can easily accumulate junk and become glorified storage areas for most of us. Not to mention all the salt, sand and dirt gets tracked in and just feels.......well, dirty and gross!
Rather than going the whole year looking at these areas in discust and avoiding them at all costs, we recommend sprucing them up in the early spring so you can enjoy them during our "good weather season"!
Obviously it's always good to give your home a good deep cleaning if you have neglected all cleaning tasks throughout the winter, but for those of you that get regular cleaning services or tend to keep up on your home pretty well -- we have some tips for you to put on your "spring cleaning checklist". (If you don't want to do this yourself, you can simply click on the service below to schedule your specialty cleaning online or simply add it to your next recurring appointment.)
3 Areas To Clean This Spring
Window Cleaning
It's highly unlikey for any of us to keep up on our windows when the weather is below freezing, but they can get extremely dirty thoughout the winter and now that the sunshine is here: we want to soak in all the light we can!
There are three types of window cleanings that we offer to our clients. Here is a list to help you do you clean your windows like a pro:
Exterior Window Cleaning: Our exterior windows take a beating during the winter and that diry snow tends to leave them looking a little frosty. Once the weather breaks we can get outside and give them a through cleaning. We use specalized equiptment and have extened poles to reach second story windows, but you can do them yourself with basic supplies and a ladder.
Interior Window Cleaning: Everyone likes looking out a clean window, especially in areas that you like to spend a lot of time. You can use a good eco-friendly window cleaner on your interior windows with a microfiber cloth or you can use a cloth along with a squeege.
Window Tracks: This is typically the most overlooked part of cleaning, but it's one of the most common add-on services for us when it comes to cleaning rooms where you like to have the window open. A lot of people like to open up some windows to enjoy the weather, but they don't necessarly want to look at a window track that is full of dirt. This is kind of a tedious job, but it makes a big difference in appearance and keeps your hands from getting dirty everytime you open or close the windows. We recommend using a good eco-friendly cleaner, a brush, a magic eraser and to have plently of towels on hand because this can get pretty messy.
Garage Cleaning
This is the most common area to clean for us Wisconsinites. After a long cold winter, the floors can get pretty discusting with all the salt, sand, dirt, and whatever else gets tracked in. We don't typically notice this until the weather gets a little nicer because we aren't just using our garage to store our snow gear and we aren't just running to our vechicles to avoid the cold. However, once the weather breaks and it's time to put away the snow gear -- it's probably time to do a little garage cleaning.
When we go out to do a garage cleaning, we like to focus on three main things:
Cobb webs/ Dust: With any type of cleaning, it is always advised to start from top to bottom. This is to ensure you are cleaning areas above prior to areas below. (You don't want to clean the floors first and then knock all the dirt on your clean floor or you will be cleaning the floors twice.....)
A traditional duster isn't usually the best option because it's not long enough and can get extremely dirty in a hurry in areas like your garage. We typically recommend using a broom. This will allow you to reach all the corners and get the cobb webs off the wall.
After you take care of all the cobb webs, you can dust any storage shelves, work benches or other surfaces that accumulate dust. (If there are areas that make sense to sanitize, we reccommend giving them a quick wipe with an Eco-friendly all purpose cleaner.)
Organizing: After doing the inital dusting and cleaning. We have a pretty good inventory of our garage. If you are doing this yourself, we recommend doing some "clean out" and getting rid of anything out there that you no longer use. (You can donate things others might be able to use or visit the dump to properly dispose of things in an eco-friendly manner.)
When we do organizing for our clients, we don't throw things away because we obviously can't make that decsion for you, but we do our best to organize things in a way that makes sense.
Sweep/Mop Floors: Last but not least, we get to the floors. This isn't always going to make your floors look perfect, but the goal is to get rid of all the debris and get everything sanitized to minimize the amount of gunk getting tracked into your home.
If you can move things out from the wall you can sweep behind everything to get a really good cleaning, but sometimes things are anchored and you will just have to do your best to sweep around things. After everything is throoughly swept out of the garage, you can get your mop ready.
We recommend using a traditional mop and bucket for this because it is a pretty dirty job and you will need to change the water multiple times during this process. Startin the back of the garage and gradually work your way to the front of your garage and repeat the process until all the grim is removed.
3 and 4 Season Room Cleaning
Some people use these rooms thoughout the year, but how often do you really focus on cleaning these areas? Let's face it, this is one of the most neglected areas and we don't usually think about cleaning them until they are in less than ideal shape. Here is the process we use in 3 & 4 season rooms to help you get it into a space you actually want to be in:
Dusting: You will want to dust with a duster of appropriate length in order to reach all the cobb webs in the corners. This is a pretty basic task, but it's important to do this before cleaning anything else. You can then dust everything else in the room that accumulates dust.
Sanitize surfaces: Sanitize all surfaces with an eco-friendly all purpose cleaner using microfiber towels.
Window Cleaning: We already went over all the different types of window cleaning, but these rooms are typically surrounded by windows, so it's essential to do the window if you want to get these areas back to 100%.
Sweep/Vacuum/Mop: The flooring will dictate the process for cleaning your floors in your three and four season rooms. If you have carpet, you might need to start with a shop vacuum to get rid of any large debris. If you have hardwood floors, you can simply use a broom and dust pan to gather the debris.
After doing that inital step, you will want to use your traditional vacuum to remove everything from the floor prior to mopping. We recommend using the wand to get all the corners and basebaords.
Finally, you will want to hand wipe all the corners and mop the entire area.
Spring Cleaning Services
Hopefully these spring cleaning tips help you get your home ready for the months ahead. These tasks can be a great DIY project, but if you are in the Madison area and have other plans for the weekend -- we would be happy to check some or all of these tasks off your Spring Cleaning checklist!
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