Illinois Valley Clean Team, Author at Illinois Valley House Cleaning Services

What Is A Cleaning Routine And How Do I Keep It?

September 20, 2017 by Illinois Valley Clean Team

Creating A Daily Chore Routine There is a reason why many consider cleaning the house part of the daily chores. Chores are not things people often look forward to and many consider it with dread and apprehension. One way to battle these fears is through creating a cleaning routine. It helps to organize your cleaning and keeps you from getting overwhelmed.

What is a Cleaning Routine?

At its most simple, a cleaning routine is just a series of tasks that you choose to do during a particular time of day. You can have daily routines, weekly routines and others set up however you want. The key is to make sure and stick with it. If you don’t, then it doesn’t really make it much of a routine. Routines are good because if you do them long enough they just become part of your day. You end up cleaning and don’t even realize you’re doing it. It’s just part of life like waking up and eating breakfast.

Daily and Weekly Routines

One of the key aspects of a cleaning routine is setting things up in required intervals. Daily routines are those small things that you can almost do without thinking such as doing the nightly dishes or tidying up around the living room. They’re small tasks that need to be done every day. Weekly routines are those more difficult tasks that need to be done, but not necessarily every day. Vacuuming or dusting might be considered weekly tasks. Also, all weekly tasks don’t have to be done on the same day. You don’t need to call Saturday your weekly task day. Space the out throughout the week and add them to the tasks lists for that day.

Give Incentives To Stay On Track

Since cleaning routines aren’t fun and exciting, you may find is difficult to keep and maintain it. It’s like starting that exercise routine or diet. You may be all gung ho, but after a few weeks of kale and asparagus burgers, it’s not so easy to keep going. Your cleaning routine is important, so try and stay focused by giving yourself rewards or other incentives to keep you on track.

If your weekly or monthly cleaning tasks are just too much to handle, why not call us. IV Clean Team Inc. can check those tasks off for you. We’ll be happy to ease your burden and you can even get a free quote.

Top 5 Cleaning Distractions To Avoid

September 11, 2017 by Illinois Valley Clean Team

top 5 cleaning distractions Let’s face it, there are very few people who wake up and say “Yeah, I get to clean the house today. Whoohoo!” Those that do, usually end up in our line of work. Given cleaning can be more of a chore than a fun pastime, it’s easy to get distracted throughout the day. The best thing to do is avoid these pitfalls entirely, so here is an examination of the biggest distractions that can happen when you’re cleaning.

Social Media

If there is one societal distraction, it’s social media. It can be Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or any of the many others available these days. The reason they’re so distracting is because you think you’re going there for only a few minutes and next thing you know two hours have gone by and you’re knee deep in cat videos.

The easiest way to eliminate this distraction is to not go on them. Silence your phone and stay off the computer until you’re done. If you scheduled yourself reward time, visit them then, but stick to your time budget.

Television Shows

In today’s world, we’re not limited to just the television in the living room. We can watch our favorite shows streaming on television, computers, phone and tablets. You can be anywhere and watch the season of Arrow you didn’t have a chance to watch. The worst part isn’t the opportunity to watch, but the duration. Movies last an hour and a half minimum and most television shows are 45-minutes to an hour.

Nothing derails cleaning faster than binge watching. The best thing to do is stay away and put that phone on silent so Netflix can’t send you notifications.

Friends

We love our friends. They deserve to be more important than cleaning, but unless they’re going through a crisis or an emergency, you should get the work done first. We love it when out bestie texts us that it’s Starbucks time or they’re heading to Target and ask if you want to go, but cleaning doesn’t do itself…unless you call us.

When friends call or text, politely tell them what you’re doing and ask to reschedule. Do it in the afternoon or clean in the early morning.

Children

Children are a blessing in every way, but they can make things difficult. Toddlers and babies always take priority, that’s a given, but if you’ve got older children, then get them involved. Want to cut down on them asking a million questions or asking for everything while you’re trying to get things done? Tell them to go clean their room or give them specific tasks like picking up the clothes or doing dishes. The cleaning will get done faster and you eliminate a distraction.

Online Shopping

Online shopping these days is a lot like social media. With apps like Amazon and Wish, you can literally sit for hours and peruse cool, weird and unique products. You may think you’re going there to check out prices for a new toaster and end up 45 minutes later looking at steampunk Christmas lights.

It’s best to wait until after cleaning to look at these apps or at the very least set a timer and stick to it.

If you get distracted easily or need someone to come clean your home to you can go shopping, then contact the area’s leading home cleaning service, Illinois Valley Clean Team Inc. Call for a free quote today.

Cleaning Your House With Pets

August 29, 2017 by Illinois Valley Clean Team

Cleaning With Pets We love our pets and love them as if they were members of our family. Who am I kidding, they are family. When it comes to cleaning your home, pets can be a distraction and add unique problems that non-pet owners don’t have to deal with. We’ll delve into pet issues and how to best take care of them when you clean your house.

Clean Your Filters Again and Again

One the biggest problems with pets is they shed…everywhere. If you have multiple pets then you likely own nothing without hair on it. Anyone that has tried to do laundry while owning multiple cats sees cat hair every time the clean the lint traps. It’s going to be the same for every filter you have in the home. Your furnace and AC filters should be cleaned more frequently than suggested. Your vacuums HEPA filter needs to be cleaned and expect more than the occasional hair clog in the vacuum cleaner. It’s a good idea to make cleaning home filters a task for every time you clean.

Scratched and Chewed Up Furniture

Cats love to claw things. When there is nothing else, they’ll claw your furniture, doorways and anything else they can. Dogs, especially puppies, love chewing on chair legs and arms. They can shred fabric, take paint off and leave wood shavings all over the floor. There’s no way to stop them from doing this because it’s something they need to do, and is ingrained into their natural behavior. What you can do is deflect their needs to proper areas. Cat trees are a place where they can rest and sharpen their clothes on fabric designed to not shred. Dogs need chew toys that keep them busy instead of eating chair legs.

Then There are the Messes

When people think about animal messes, they think about the accidents that happen on the floors. We’ve talked about that before in other articles, I mean the actual messes our beloved pets make. They knock things over running around the house and sometimes you swear your cat does it just to be a jerk. Owning a pet is a lot like taking care of a small child, you have to “baby proof” your house.

Anything that you want to keep safe needs to be up where the animals can’t get them (in the case of cats, that’s nowhere) or placed on the ground, preferably in a carpeted area, so if it does fall off there is a low likelihood of breaking. Also, don’t keep dishes out very long or else you risk them being knocked to the floor. The last thing you want is grape juice on the carpet or spaghetti in the floor because your pet decided it was hungry or thirsty.

If you’re tired of cleaning with your pets, then contact IV Clean Team today and get a free quote.

Laundry is Backed Up? Wash It Efficiently

August 18, 2017 by Illinois Valley Clean Team

Doing laundry efficiently It happens to the best of us. Life and work become overwhelming and you keep telling yourself you’ll get to that ever-growing laundry pile tomorrow. Pretty soon, you’re driving around town in Winnie the Pooh pants and a T-shirt you haven’t worn since there was a Bush in the White House. It can be intimidating to see that massive pile of laundry and try to figure out how you’re going to get it all clean. All you need is a plan and you’ll be back in your favorite clothes in no time.

Separate Into Different Baskets

A mound is daunting. No one looks at a mountain and says, “Yeah, that’s easy to climb.” Grab as many baskets as you can and separate all the clothes by person and use. Separating the baskets by person makes it easier to fold and manage everything once it’s clean. You should also separate out by use, for example, bedding in one basket and dish towels and wash towels in another. The act not only makes it easier to eventually fold, but also makes it look less daunting. You have a quantifiable amount instead of a massive laundry mound that may or may not be harboring evil demons (depends on how long the socks have been in there)

Wash By Basket, Not By Load

You might be able to fit both your child’s basket and your spouse’s into the washing machine, but that can make things confusing. Efficiency is about more than just time, it’s also about action. If you put in more than one person’s basket, then when you dry it and fold, you’re once again sorting not only by clothing, but by person. When you go to put them away, you might be going back and forth or rummaging through to find what clothes go with what person.

Make a Plan for the Future

The best way to avoid a massive laundry glut is to keep ahead of it. Make a plan to do one load of laundry per day and keep the laundry mountain from forming. If you miss a day, then do two loads that day. The goal is to keep up with the laundry so it doesn’t get overwhelming. It’s time to put those Winnie the Pooh pants back in the closet where it belongs.

If you’re looking for someone to spruce up your home, then contact IV Clean Team. We’ll get your home looking great.

What Is Decluttering And How Do I Do It?

August 4, 2017 by Illinois Valley Clean Team

Decluttering your home What do you see when you look at your house? Is it perfect or do you see clutter and items you don’t need everywhere you look. There have been many books and news articles about the concept of decluttering not only your home, but your life. They both tend to go hand to hand, but many people don’t understand what decluttering actually is how they can do it.

What is Decluttering?

At its very core, decluttering is about taking something complex and cumbersome and simplifying it down. We live in a society of things. People believe the more things they have the better off they are. A home filled with furniture and things is better than a home without it if the minds of many people. Unfortunately, more things often fill up too much space and can be a serious detriment to your décor and how you feel about your home.

Decluttering Your Home

Everything starts by taking a look at your home and take an inventory of what you’ve got. How much of it works with the décor you want and how much of it is just stuff that’s accumulated through the years. We all do it. We get some strange attachment to that end table we got at the Goodwill when we were a sophomore in college. It’s worn and falling apart, but every time we moved, it came with us.

Much of the things we own have memories associated both good and bad. We just can’t seem to get rid of it, but decluttering it about cleaning house and cleaning out your past too. If there are things in your home that don’t add anything to it, then they should probably go. I’m not saying to throw out everything. It’s fine to keep items of particular sentimentality or importance to you, but many of us overestimate how much we really care about them.

You’ll be surprised how good you feel once everything is out and your rooms have much space and everything works together.

Decluttering Your Life

The concept of decluttering your life isn’t much different than cleaning your home. It’s about decreasing the complexity and instead focusing on what’s important to you. We all have those friends that are toxic. They live for drama or they leech off everyone. They’re like that old falling apart table from college. You have some good and bad memories associated with it, but when it comes right down to it, it just doesn’t fit in your life right now.

Decluttering isn’t easy. It means parting with things that you’ve had for a long time that are taking up space, but doing nothing for your life. Once your house is decluttered, you’ll probably need a deep clean and Illinois Valley Clean Team Inc. can help.