House Cleaning Tips: Garage, Pets & Windows

Garage Cleaning:
To me garage organization can be a real hassle, but it actually should be one of the easiest jobs we have. If you do not have any industrial strength shelving that can fit around the side of your garage or closed cabinets, they can certainly be a godsend for cleaning up the garage and making it look awful nice. If the budget is an issue, then the heavy-duty five shelf storage units can hold a phenomenal amount of stuff. Do not forget to organize in plastic bins that can fit real nice in those shelves. Remember, an old garbage can serves real well for storing baseball bats, brooms, shovels, anything with a long handle, and just use a big 5 gallon bucket for some of the kids’ baseballs and a laundry basket if you need to for basketballs, helmets, and the like. If you have outdoor chairs, lawn chairs, hoses, extension cords, and things like that which you can coil up and hang on the side walls, for a couple of bucks you can buy hanging hooks at your local hardware store and hang those items up to get them out of the way. Once everything is off the floor as much as possible, get out that blower and blow out the garage. Boy, will you be amazed at how much dust and leaves and crap you can accumulate in there and how nice it will look when you are finished.

The Pets:
For a good, instant deodorizer if you have cats or dogs, baking soda in the catheter box after you clean it out or baking soda on Rover’s bed, and then a good vacuuming ought to handle that task in a hurry. Any accidental stains on the carpet, be sure to reach for Nature’s Miracle Stain and Odor Remover which actually works extremely well for those little pet accidents. Be sure to follow instructions on the container. If you do not have an easy storage space for that 40 pound bag of dog food, you can always use a plastic container with a sealed lid that will hold at least half a bag while you store the other half in a more convenient location. For cats, they have the very convenient automatic feeding bowls which come in quite hand. Well, I cannot guarantee this is going to work for you, but if your pets live like humans, like they do in my house, your couch and loveseats might have a little bit of odor. Lets go ahead and decrease that odor a little bit by putting some dryer sheets into an envelop, poke a couple of holes in there and just tuck them in under the cushions and that will certainly help out. Last but not least, what about that cat and dog hair that is all over the upholstered furniture? I bet you did not know that you could put on a pair of rubber gloves, wet them a little bit, and run your hands across your couch, loveseat, or other upholstered furniture, and a lot of that hair will come right up with it.

Window Cleaning:
Before you start cleaning that glass, be sure you wipe around the frame and the window sills and window tracks for accumulated dirt, and even sometimes marbles. Get the dead bugs out with a vacuum. If you thought screen cleaning only required a hose or a power washer, think again when you can just take your vacuum with the brush attachment and run it over the interior side of the screen. Be sure to clean your windows either early in the morning or late at night, especially if it is hot outside as the window cleaner dries too fast and it comes out too streaky. Still never tried newspaper for cleaning your windows? Give it a try! You will be amazed at how streak-free and clean those windows come out.