5 Tips to Make Cleaning Fun

If your sense of shame outweighs your desire to entertain, it might be time to step up the housework.

Piles of stuff, a smelly fridge, an oven that needs cleaning, toothpaste on the bathroom sink—if this describes the way your home looks most of the time, finding a few cleaning shortcuts will definitely help you out.

It’s not necessary to spend every day engaged in heavy housework if you know and practice the cleaning tweaks recommended by the pros.

Soaker Method

Spray it down and let the cleaner do the work for you. Often, allowing a cleaner five minutes to soak into a surface will save you 20 minutes of strong elbow grease. The same goes for toilet bowl cleaner when you treat the bowl before bed and swish it in the morning. For odors that just don’t want to leave, Clear the Air products will get your house smelling fresh and clean. Placing a bag or sprinkling granules around the house will completely eliminate those stubborn smells.

Make an Appointment With Yourself

If it’s clutter that has you firmly in its overwhelming grasp, make an appointment with yourself several times a week. Even 15-minute intervals provide enough time to whittle down the piles of mail, toys and dislocated items that belong in other rooms or out of your life altogether. Pencil yourself in on your desk calendar, just like you would a doctor or dental appointment. This way you’ll be more apt to honor the commitment you’ve made to a more organized home.

Make Cleaning Convenient

Imagine how difficult it would be for your mechanic to fix your car without the proper tools. Mechanics have implements that make their jobs easier, such as specialty wrenches, extension arms and more. If you approach cleaning with the same mentality—that it takes tools to get the job done right—the task will take on a whole new energetic feel. Find the products that work best for you and make those little household jobs easier:

• Antibacterial wipes
• Microfiber cleaning cloths
• Specially shaped mop heads
• Over-size buckets
• Handy cleaning caddy

The items mentioned above shouldn’t cost much, but you should also invest in a a high-output, low-weight vacuum, like the ones made by Dyson and sold at department stores.

Hampers in Every Room

If even one person in your family is guilty of leaving a trail of discarded clothes in their wake, keeping a laundry hamper in every room will make life much easier. Those little piles of socks and leggings that were pulled off and tossed in the corner go far in giving your home a disorganized feel. Keep the clothes off the floor and neatly tucked away in hampers.

An Ounce of Prevention

It’s the little things that matter—like one doormat that sits just outside every entrance and a second one that lays just inside. It’s the double whammy of dirt prevention. Removing shoes at the door, Keeping a cleaning tablet dissolving inside your toilet tank and adding a few drops of olive oil to your floor rinse to help prolong the shine on your wood floors are all excellent preventative measures you can take to help cut down on the workload throughout the week.

Cleaning Tips For The New Year

The end of the year is almost here and it is time to do some cleaning to prepare for the near year to come!

Before you start throwing away or donating your items you no longer need, read on to find out how to keep from advancing the careers of local thieves by making it easy to steal your identity as a result of ridding your home of old papers and electronic gadgets like computers, phones, tablets and scanners.

Remember to use Clear The Air for any odors you have while you are cleaning areas you haven’t cleaned in a while! Here are four ways to clean house without compromising your privacy:

Make a Date With a Local Shredder

You’re probably well aware that important documents should be shredded, but this doesn’t mean letting your 7-year-old loose with a stack of papers and a pair of scissors. Privacy Rights suggests that you invest in either a shredder that does cross-, diamond- or confetti-cutting to ensure that your documents can’t be pieced back together.

Alternatively, contact an office supply store or commercial shredding company and take your paper piles to be shredded while you watch. Boring, yes, but wouldn’t you rather spend an hour doing this than days trying to clean up the mess if the papers get into the wrong hands?

Clean Your Electronics

Passing your old electronics onto a new home requires more than just putting everything into the “trash” and then doing the digital equivalent of setting it out on the curb. An article from Tech News Daily says that, with a bit of understanding, it’s not difficult to wipe away sensitive data correctly. There are several programs on the market that allow you to do this. Or, if you would rather, you can take it to a professional.

If you’re going to resell your device, consider just selling it to a company that does refurbishing, because they then take on the liability of your personal data and are highly motivated to make sure the device is as safe as possible. For items that are going directly to the trash, use this as an opportunity to physically release some tension by destroying the memory chips and circuit boards. For CDs and DVDs, use specialty scissors that are tough enough for the job and cut each disc into at least four pieces.

Keep Important Documents Under Lock and Key

You certainly don’t want to accidentally toss out an old tax return, complete with social security numbers of each of your family members. This opens up the possibility of your personal information becoming compromised or even your children’s identity theft, if it falls into the wrong hands. For the items that you need to keep forever, you should consider a fire-proof safe that keeps documents safe and out of harm’s way.

Documents that you should never get rid of include:

• Birth, marriage and death certificates

• Social security cards, passports and citizenship papers

• Prenuptial agreements, divorce documents and military paperwork

• Wills, power of attorney and trust papers

• Insurance and investment paperwork

• Heath records, diplomas and organization membership cards

Set Up a Digital Organizational System

With all the paper that comes into the house via the mail, your child’s backpack, print media and organizations you’re involved in, it’s hard to find a way to keep clutter at bay.

For things that don’t require physical copies, like owners manuals, kids’ artwork and articles that you want to ready, have them scanned into your computer, which you can do through applications like Evernote. Once you’ve filed it away, you can easily search for it when the need arises.

According to Real Simple, receipts should be kept until the items are worn or used. In the case of clothing and food, or for larger purchases, receipts should be kept until the warranty expires or when you discard the item(s).

So before you put that leaning tower of paper in the recycling bin, or attempt to recoup the money you spent on that clunky old desktop, make sure to implement these tips to ensure your privacy and keep your identity protected. Sure, it takes a little extra effort, but it’s a small price to pay when you consider the worst that could happen.