House Cleaning in San Diego – a Housekeeping Cleaning Experience
I remember the times when I had this really big house in San Diego. At first, I really enjoyed it; however, only after several months of weekly cleaning each and every room I realized that getting everything in order and things cleaned in a house with more than five rooms can be a real pain if you don’t have the necessary knowledge or if you can’t afford to hire a professional maid to do the work. To be honest, my San Diego house cleaning experience was a total mess until I realized how important was to have a professional team of cleaners perform the whole work. However, approximately three months passed since I managed to understand that I can even make more out of my time than spending it for all these housekeeping activities and that in fact paying someone to help me around wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. Nevertheless, during the period that I did everything on my own I learned a lot of important aspects related to one’s home cleaning that I would like to share with you right now.
If you don’t have someone to help, you’ll soon realize that any house cleaning maintenance will become your second full time job, especially if you have a big family that doesn’t really like to keep things in order. This kind of work isn’t a onetime activity. It is done periodically and regularly forever and ever since the moment that you either moved in or bought a new house. However, there is a chance to put an end to this never ending house cleaning nightmare and that would be paying contractors to give you a hand. Nevertheless, what I am trying to say is that if you simply don’t want to do it or simply can’t afford it (most mid-level income families can’t afford a maid), you should be searching for methods and ways to ease your house maintenance. Here is how I managed to get things sorted when I was living in San Diego. It wasn’t that complicated once you have a well established plan.
When trying to figure out how to clean their house, people are always doing the wrong way. Instead of thinking about a plan that would break up tasks based on the number of rooms and on the things that are required to be done, they desperately start to clean little by little in every corner of the house, constantly thinking about this huge amount of mess that they wouldn’t be ever able to remove. If you don’t change this attitude before you start to get this house or apartment maintenance done you are going to be sorry because you will fail. Think positively when having to clean your home because you don’t want to charge it with negative emotions. Anyway, the idea is to always think about this room by room plan of cleaning when you want to finish everything faster and to better understand where you should start from and how long it will approximately take to get everything done. However, don’t get me wrong, not every room should be cleaned identically. Most of the tasks need to be done daily; other in a week or even once in several months. You have to learn how to take these decisions yourself.
When I was doing my house cleaning in San Diego I always planned everything room by room and this helped me do everything like three times faster than when I just started out and also helped formulate a better housekeeping plan from the very beginning. It helps; you just have to figure out how to get it done properly. What I would suggest you guys to do is just walk around your house for several minutes and analyze which rooms need to be cleaned and which one particular would be better to start with from the very beginning. When this is done, you should take each particular room one by one and try to break down the tasks for that specific room. This way you have this plan for getting things done faster and you don’t let anything else bother you or take from your precious time. While after several years of such experience most people tend to keep everything in mind, I recommend getting a sheet of paper and a pencil and note every single task that needs to be done. Don’t worry, this will help you become more organized and not forget about something. Sometimes it’s so frustrating to discover, after you though that everything is done, that there are several more things that need to be done. Oh, that state of mind! Don’t be shy to build a check list because it is going to help you become more organized and give you the certainty that you need in order to begin and to end your house cleaning maintenance. It will also make you realize what tasks need to be done daily, weekly, month, so forth and so one. We talked about this before. There are certain aspects and parts of your house that are not required to be assisted from dust cleaning for example each and every day, it is simply not worthy and requires a lot of time and too much work.
Depending on what your preferences are, you can either start from getting things in order and washing everything in either your bathroom or your kitchen. I usually do my bathroom and toilet first because these are the places which require the most hygiene and need to be disinfected. It is also important to get them done first especially if you have young kids playing around your house and you want to maintain them healthy and fit. So, when I was living in my big San Diego house I was always beginning with my huge spacious room for bathing.
Start with bathroom cleaning
No matter where you live, I strongly suggest beginning your house cleaning process with the shower and your bath. Why? Well, because these appear as quite frustrating challenges for most homeowners out there and the sooner you get them all done and cleaned up – the better it is for everyone. When it comes to your bathroom, the requirements are pretty simple. First of all, you should investigate the place for mold or maybe even mildew. Make sure you always destroy it fast, because if you don’t get rid of it in time, you might soon by facing a huge proportions mold infestation which is not pleasant at all. It spreads quite fast and you don’t want something like this to happen in your bathroom. Make sure that the level of humidity in this room is above normal and you shouldn’t be worried about hunting down mold. If you have marble floors, use some kind of chemical cleaning solution to get everything properly washed and disinfected. Don’t use bleach unless you are sure that the members of your family are fine with it and have no allergy and also check if your bathroom flooring won’t become affected by the components of the cleaner. You are trying to clean your house, remember – not to destroy it!
Keeping your toilet clean
When you are done with your bathroom, immediately go to your toilet because this is what needs to be kept in perfect hygiene in order to avoid all kind of infections and illnesses. Clean everything that you can inside and outside. Do not try to save your cleaning solution. Mix it in water and wash everything. You can also attentively spill some bleach directly inside your bowl and then wash it. The sink always requires a better attention and so do the mirrors, all the existing shelves and splash backs. When keeping your toilet clean use proper equipment. If you are going to deal with bleach and other partially toxic substances make sure you have a mask and always purchase a few rubber gloves for your own safety. When you are done cleaning both your bathroom and the toilet I suggest you finish everything with flooring. Patiently wash your floors. However, before doing it you can use a vacuum to suck in all the existing dust, dirt and hair that accumulated since you last did this type of serious cleaning. When washing the floors make sure you use a special cleaner or disinfectant. Besides sparkling and looking good you should also think about getting rid of all the germs and bacteria.
How to clean your kitchen
You’ll realize about the importance of daily housekeeping maintenance and mess prevention only when you start cleaning your kitchen, after you’ve last done it like several months ago. The place where you usually eat and prepare food tends to get dirty pretty fast, so there are some special measures that need to be taken here. The main challenges however are the refrigerator and all the upper cabinets of the furniture that you have installed in this room. The surfaces need to be perfectly cleaned and for doing so you are going to be required to remove all the stuff that you have in those cabinets and shelves and do the work. Remember to get dressed in something that you won’t be sorry if it either gets dirty. I’ve mentioned about your clothes and equipment because when cleaning your kitchen you are going to need to get under all existing appliances and to wipe round as you go. I usually forgot to do this back in the house cleaning days of San Diego and was pretty shocked when I discovered all the mess after several months. So you have to be attentive. That’s why keeping a list of tasks and things that need to be done is so important after all. Don’t forget the oven when doing your kitchen regular maintenance, the microwave and all the other appliances that you have in this room. I’ve recently read a good microwave cleaning method on a website. They say that putting slices of lemon in a dish with water in it for approximately three minutes and then washing everything is a good method to easier wipe out everything in its interior. Sounds interesting, right?
The next challenge – bedroom cleaning!
Your bedding needs to be changed at least once per week, otherwise it will start stinking and so would you. I’m sure that you don’t like that. The dust mites can be easily killed when doing your laundry (bed lining) regularly. When dealing with your bedroom house maintenance you need to periodically dust your bed covers. When I was living in San Diego I also remember opening the windows each and every morning while taking the shower, washing and eating my morning meal. A friend suggested me to do this since it lowers the humidity in that particular room (in this case the bedroom) and will help in reducing the overall level of dust mites. Have you ever done that before? Do you have any experience with this method?
Cleaning your home office
I was working a lot at my desk, in front of my personal computer, back in the San Diego days. I even had a room that was my private office up at the third floor of my house. Due to the aspect of this whole work I needed to maintain both my desktop and the whole atmosphere in that office clean, otherwise I couldn’t find the concentration I need to get the work done. If you have any computers, you need to understand that these are generally speaking magnets of dust. They attract dust like crazy and there is nothing you can do about it. Cleaning them once in a while is necessary! Your keyboard is the first to get stuffed with germs and various types of dirt so make sure that you shaken it properly from time to time, upwards down, in order everything to fall down. You’ll be amazed! You should also attentively clean the spaces between the buttons of your keywords. Warning! Do not use any liquids when cleaning your computer because you might be afterward wondering why is it not turning on or why several letters on your keyboard are malfunctioning? If you have a plasma TV or LCD monitor you need to clean it carefully and use special dry cloth to do it. I remember those guys from the cleaning company having a bunch of special utilities for cleaning the computers and all the other equipment that I had in my office room.
Vacuuming the living room
While the living room is not a high traffic area in your house (at least in my San Diego house it wasn’t) and you won’t be required to clean it every done, you can still vacuum the carpets and wash the hardwood or any other type of flooring that you have in this room. Sweep and clean everything around. I’m sure that you know how to do it properly. While all the other easy accessible things in this room (shelves, bookcases, TV, players, game consoles, ornaments, vases, armchairs, etc) are not so hard to get done, there is one place that you need to pay special attention to and that is the back of your sofa. Yep it is a pretty not accessible place that you need to maintain clean because usually plenty of dust accumulates in that particular area.
Finish off by cleaning your windows, the blinds and shades, washing the floors. Now it’s time to sit back and enjoy a cup of tea because you deserve it. Back in my San Diego house cleaning days I remember it took me about five hours to get everything done. I was exhausted. I never thought that I would do it again. However, powers come up fast after a week and you end up taking everything over from the very beginning. So, if you think that you have enough free time to do the entire house cleaning yourself make sure you follow several of the above steps and you are going to be fine. Anyway, if you consider this really time consuming and exhausting, you need to hire a maid!
Eveline
House Cleaning in San Diego Blog