Blog - Illinois Valley House Cleaning Services

5 Effective Tips To Clean Your Home During The Fall

September 17, 2020 by Illinois Valley Clean Team

Fall is the time you start spending the most hours indoors. That’s why it’s important to implement fall cleaning. But tidying up your home can be challenging, especially if you don’t know where to start.

Fortunately, we’ve prepared a simple fall cleaning checklist for you.

Shampoo your carpet

With the beginning of the fall season, you can start your cleaning by scrubbing your carpet. You can rent a carpet cleaner, or decide to save some bucks by implementing popular DIY cleaning tricks.

Clean all windows

For the best results, use glass cleaners or dishwashing liquid. Fill a spray bottle with clean water and add a few squirts of the dishwasher liquid. Gently wipe the windows using a clean microfiber cloth. Washing your windows on a cloudy day can help you spot the streaks easily.

Clean bedding and curtains

Even though you might replace your beddings regularly, your bed might still be home to a lot of dust and dirt thanks to your unchanged mattress. And it’s not only dirt that might be a challenge to you – bedbugs might also set up shop in your beloved bed, threatening your peaceful night sleeps. Cleaning your mattress regularly can help you get rid of the dirt and bed bugs.

A vacuum cleaner allows you to cleanse your mattress thoroughly. Steam cleaners do an even better job, considering they eliminate 99% of germs. The heat from the steam cleaner get rids of bedbugs and their eggs on your mattress. Better yet, the tool doesn’t release any chemicals, meaning you won’t be at risk of consuming any harmful products.

The steam cleaner can also come in handy when you’re cleansing furniture and curtains. It gives such surfaces a thorough clean.

Freshening up the bathroom

Your bathroom should always be tidy, regardless of the season. Given it’s the room that gets you ready for the day, the bathroom needs a thorough and deep cleaning. Ensure you’ve cleaned the toilet, counters, and sink, and wipe the walls thoroughly.

You can use a disinfected toilet brush to get rid of all the stains quickly. Also, regularly replace the towels, using the older towel to wipe your toilet’s sink.

Organize the garage

The garage is one of the most difficult places to clean, so most homeowners put it aside, promising to declutter it one day. When you realize your car doesn’t even fit well anymore in your cluttered garage space, then it’s time to tidy up.

To ensure the cleaning process is as smooth as possible, note all your garage’s belongings, taking into account how you’d like to carry out the cleaning. You can decide to give some things you no longer use away – it will help in creating some space.

Use a wet-dry vacuum to remove dust and install any bins. You can then put away any of the stuff you’re considering keeping.

Deep cleaning your garage can take a few days, but after you’re done, you’ll be surprised how easy it will be to clean the space afterward.

Book a cleaning with us

Having a tidy home, clear of any clutter, requires a lot of long hours. Illinois Valley Clean Team can help you clean every inch of your home, leaving you with a house you can be proud of. You can call us today and we can arrange a date and time for our visit.

Tips To Protect Your Kids’ Mental Health if Schools Reopen This Fall

August 27, 2020 by Illinois Valley Clean Team

Prevent anxiety and fear during the 2020 fall school season. Check this parenting advice to help your children cope with negative emotions.

Tips To Protect Your Kids' Mental Health if Schools Reopen This Fall

Essential Measures For A Safe Return To School This Fall

August 11, 2020 by Illinois Valley Clean Team

For many parents, the return to school is a welcome, important and serious step that must be measured and planned carefully. The pandemic is still ongoing, and school principals and parents alike can’t take their guard down. Make sure your kids are safe if they return to school. Here in this blog, we list some of the essential preventive measures you can advocate for as a parent.

Research the school’s preventive actions

Schools must be able to make in-person learning safe. First of all, the facility must have enough space and classrooms to ensure social distancing and appropriately scatter staff and students. School principals and districts must also present a detailed plan for administering extracurricular classes, food services, health, and other topics. Some other preventive measures are the following:

Staggering lunch and class schedules

Reducing the number of students in one place is the best way to avoid the virus spreading. Creating different schedules for segments of each group can be one way to do it.

Moving classes to the outdoors

If your kids’ school has the resources and spaces to move classes to different spots, this might be a crucial advantage in the fight against COVID. The virus doesn’t spread so freely outdoors, and changing from place to place will give the cleaning staff time to disinfect.

Putting signs to reduce crowding

Hallways, corridors, or stairs can be major crowding points where students and personnel can avoid being near other people. The school must provide a well-planned strategy to manage traffic circulation, directions, and put signs on the walls to guide students.

Validate transportation.

On your side, you have to evaluate if it’s better to use public or private transportation, like the school’s bus, or your car to take your children to school. Undoubtedly, the safest way is to make them yourself, but this won’t always be possible.

Be prepared for a return to online classes.

The pandemic isn’t over, and classes might go online again in the following months, depending on the number of new cases in your community. The best return-to-school plan has to consider this. Be prepared to have your kids all day again. Talk to your boss, your school principals, listen to the authorities and have a plan b to adapt quickly.

Check your child’s medical condition.

Although kids aren’t as susceptible to serious complications from COVID-19 as adults, they can be part of the high-risk population if they have underlying medical conditions. Be sure to have your child’s medical condition checked. Talk to your pediatrician, and clear all your doubts. Also, consider:

Update immunizations

All students (and the school’s staff) must be up to date with their flu shots., especially considering that flu season will come soon during fall and winter.

Ensure emotional support

Children can be affected by stress during this pandemic, the same as adults. Schools have to provide reliable mental health support to their students and recognize the signs of this affection. If you have noticed some anxiety in your child, search for support, and decide if returning to school is a good idea.

Months before we were asking when do kids return to school? Now, we are preparing for this change of routine, as safe as it can. Please take care and follow the preventive guidelines. Remember that Illinois Valley Clean Team is offering cleaning and disinfecting services to help our clients prevent COVID-19 and feel calmer in their homes. Book your service on our website.

Planning A Small Gathering? Check These 5 Preventive Measures To Avoid COVID-19

July 28, 2020 by Illinois Valley Clean Team

There’s a safer way to see your friends or family this summer. Check these 5 recommendations to avoid COVID-19.

7 Essential Yard Maintenance Tips For This Summer

July 13, 2020 by Illinois Valley Clean Team

If you’re looking for summer or fall yard clean up tips, this blog focuses on everything you need for every season. We gather the essential hacks for maintenance, remodeling, and cleaning of any garden, porch, and yard, also the steps you to be more efficient, and how to avoid problems with wild weed and filled up gutters. Keep reading to find out!

Use the right tools

Gloves, hand pruners, tree saw, and a ladder are the essential gardening tools. Sharpen your devices if required. You don’t want to struggle with blunt tools that will hurt your precious plants with multiple and unnecessary cuts.

Declutter

First of all, pick up any clutter like big branches, bicycles, sports equipment, and anything blocking the way. Also, collect pet messes, and other small objects that contaminate the soil. Treat your yard like another room of the house, and your plants will be much healthier!

Stop malicious weed

Wild weed can be quite aggressive for your garden plants and, if you let them, they can grow strong and thick roots that will be very difficult to pull out. The best strategy is to identify them and pip them off early. Latter, you can buy weed preventer to avoid having wild weed again.

Trim and prune

Reinvigorate your shrubs and trees by trimming their dead branches. There’s a wide variety of tools to get the job done quickly: pruning shears for small cuts, and loopers and pruning saws for bigger ones. Also prune your wildflowers like azaleas, maple, birch, and dogwood.

Wash and disinfect the furniture

Old chairs, swings, tables, or any furnishing you have in the open needs a checking every season. If you are having a small gathering this summer, be sure to have enough seats and disinfect them properly. Use a sponge or a nylon scrub to wash your plastic or metal furniture. Use a mix of bleach, dish soap, and water to eliminate mildew and germs.

Clean your gutters

Many might think a leaf blower is a non-essential appliance, but the truth is, it comes in handy when you have to deal with leaves in the gutters. Picking by hand all the leaves in your gutters is a tedious job, but with one of these machines, it won’t be more than a minute. Just remember to use the leaf blower before raking the leaves on your yard, because you will end up with more mess.

Keep your edges sharp

A beautiful garden can have any shape you want. Every now and then, trim your plants in soft or hard edges, respecting the limits of your property and giving a chic style to your yard. Remember that these edges have to be maintained regularly, so consider buying an electric cutter.

We hope these essential tips and hacks are helpful for your summer project. Enjoy your remodeled garden or clean front porch! Remember that small gathering in yards are one of the safest ways to get in touch with friends and family during the current pandemic. Stay safe! Also, contact us if you want to book a cleaning service for your home or workplace.