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Cleaning Myths vs. Facts
Cleaning Myths vs. Facts
How To Clean Your Floors Like A Pro
by Amy Sardone on Oct 11, 2024
Whether you have hardwood, laminate, carpet, concrete, or tile floors, you’ll want to know how to do the best job you can maintaining them. Here, we have a list for any floor type so you can easily read about how to clean and maintain your floors.
Carpets: Vacuum, vacuum, vacuum! Especially in heavy traffic areas. Dirt and grit acts like fine sand paper fraying the ends of your carpet pile. Regular vacuuming with a high quality vacuum will lengthen the life of your carpet and keep the pile looking tall and fluffy much longer. If you need a suggestion on a great vacuum to purchase, check out our vacuums page. Sturdy and dependable, these vacuums are for the pros!
Now, I’m sure you already do a lot of vacuuming, but what about spills? Spray spills and stains immediately with Speed Cleaning’s Red Juice and blot up with a cotton cloth. Red Juice works miracles, I tell you! My husband spilled a cup of red tea on our living room carpet, and just blotted it up with a towel….needless to say, the stain was still there the next day. So I grabbed my bottle of Red Juice and sprayed and blotted. Voila! Completely stain free, even a day after the stain had dried.
Hardwood: If you happen to have the older high-maintenance, get on your hands and knees and wax hardwood floors, we wish you well… They require a lot of upkeep! Nowadays, most wood floors have a hard, plastic-like finish such as polyurethane, which requires much less maintenance since it is a no-wax finish. Do be sure to keep it swept/vacuumed, but do not wash the floors with any soap-based detergent. Clean with a dilute ammonia solution or a neutral cleanser formulated for these floors.
Laminate: Laminate flooring is one of the easiest floors to keep up with. All you need is a solution of warm water, vinegar, and a mild detergent like dish soap or a neutral cleanser like Sh-Clean. Easy peasy!
Tile: The key to keeping tile looking great is to clean up dirt/grease/spills quickly. Sweep or vacuum frequently. It will keep the grout looking clean and new as well. Mop with either Sh-Clean or a little bit of Red Juice to keep floors spotless.
Cement: Cement floors are pretty simple to keep up with. Start by running over with a dust mop or a wet/dry mop. Follow up with a solution of warm water and a mild dish detergent or neutral cleaner like Sh-Clean. Be sure to not get these floors overly wet.
As is the case with all cleaning and maintenance chores, the key is to clean often rather than letting the dirt build up, which makes the cleaning more time consuming. Who wants to spend more time cleaning???
Cleaning Myths vs. Facts
What’s in Your Dust? A potentially cancer-causing toxin and more!
by Amy Sardone on Oct 11, 2024
A 2016 study on household dust has revealed that it’s loaded with toxins, which can be inhaled and absorbed through the skin.
Ten harmful chemicals were found in 90% of the dust samples taken from homes in fourteen states. The second most prevalent chemical was phenols which are used in many “non-green” cleaning products. Also found were flame retardants, some of which have been linked to cancer.
As someone who is always interested in healthy cleaning and is often sought out for her expert opinion, Debbie Sardone, has given many radio interviews concerning this latest study on household dust.
Here are just a few of Debbie’s eco-friendly green cleaning suggestions: Use a vacuum with a HEPA filter and vacuum often, dust with a slightly damp microfiber cloth, and seek out green-cleaning products such as Speed Cleaning’s Red Juice.
Read “Household dust is laced with toxic chemicals, study finds” to learn more about the study.
Cleaning Myths vs. Facts
Our Top 5 Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products
by Amy Sardone on Oct 11, 2024
If you’ve been thinking about switching to eco-friendly cleaning products, read on. Maybe you’ve heard that green cleaners aren’t as tough on dirt as their toxic counterparts. These products give you the best of both worlds, while saving our world! You want your cleaning products to be green, but tough, and you don’t have to sacrifice quality for eco-friendly. These green cleaners have been tested to be the top cleaning products around! See for yourself what they can do:
Red Juice – Made from sea kelp. Yes, you read that correctly. This product is the best all purpose cleaner you’ll ever try! Read more about what makes it awesome here.
Blue Juice – The “Environmentally Correct” choice for glass. Blue Juice is a non toxic, odor free, environmentally friendly, personally safe, biodegradable, unscented, all natural, green cleaner. What’s more, it works better than the other leading chemical-filled glass cleaners!
Scum Bum – This is a highly effective green, personally safe and environmentally friendly cleaner. It gently dissolves even the toughest scale, mineral deposits, hardwater stains and soap scum. It also removes mold and mildew…all the while being green!
Sh-Clean – Safe for use on all finished floors, Sh-Clean is a neutral cleanser, free of ammonia and other harsh toxins. Clean your floors worry-free!
Microfiber Cloths – Forget the newspaper (if you even have those anymore!) and don’t bother with expensive, non-reusable paper towels. A set of microfiber cloths will last you for years without having to go through roll after roll of paper towels! Reduce, reuse, recycle! Not only are these towels great for dusting, you can even use them with just a little water to clean off fingerprints and other dirty spots on glass, walls, countertops…you name it.
These Speed Cleaning eco-friendly products will tackle most of your household cleaning chores with ease and peace-of-mind.
Cleaning Myths vs. Facts
How Do You Know If You Have A Clutter Problem?
by Amy Sardone on Oct 11, 2024
So how do you know that you have a household clutter problem? We’re not going to give you one of those self-scoring tests that you’re doomed to fail. But here are a few questions you might want to ask yourself in a benign manner.
1. Do you save magazines indefinitely that may have articles you really “should” read because you might miss something?
2. Do you need more than one “repair drawer” or “junk drawer”?
3. Do you save things that seem just too good to throw away even though you have no particular plans for ever using them?
4. Are you storing all sorts of things on behalf of your grown children?
5. Do you save broken things for years, never repair them, and then realize you don’t like or need them anyway?
6. Do you lose your keys or wallet or purse regularly?
7. Do you buy things you already have, but didn’t know it because the cupboard is a rat’s nest?
8. Do you have under your kitchen sink cleaning products – including numerous “miracle” cleaners – that you’ve never touched?
9. Do you save spare parts to unknown things?
10. Do you collect empty boxes?
11. Do you know what bills are coming due this week or this month?
12. Have you lost a chunk of change because you’re late with payments and get zapped with late charges and interest because there’s no time to write the checks?
13. Has your collection of porcelain ducks, frogs, penguins, elephants, etc., begun to seem like it’s just something else to clean – without the interest or fun it once had?
14. Are some drawers or shelves stuffed so full that you can use only the items on top?
15. Do you keep putting things in places that you know aren’t right and then tell yourself you are just putting them there “for now”?
16. Do you live in a house with more storage space than ever before, but every spare space fills up immediately and you still don’t have enough?
17. Do you feel guilty and depressed about the state of your home?
18. Would you entertain more often (if at all) if you could only get things under control?
Aren’t you glad that wasn’t a test? So . . . if you’ve determined that you have a clutter problem, check out Speed Cleaning's Clutter Control ebook. Let’s get organized!
Cleaning Myths vs. Facts
8 Uses for a Razor Blade Scraper
by Amy Sardone on Oct 11, 2024
The Tool that Should be in Every Cleaning Kit and Toolbox
A razor blade scraper (a straight razor blade in a holder) is perhaps one of those tools you don’t realize you need until you’re in the middle of a project and it occurs to you that what you really need right there and then is something sharp, something thin, something very accurate. A razor blade.
Here’s a small sampling of uses for a razor blade scraper:
1. Scrape soap scum off shower doors and tile.
2. Scrape dried paint off windows.
3. Scrape baked-on food off glass oven doors.
4. Remove old caulk, either entirely or cut out just a small section very cleanly and accurately.
5. Peel off stickers and decals, including the adhesive, from windows and smooth surfaces. To prevent scratching more delicate surfaces, dull a sharp blade and round the corners with sand paper first.
6. Spread caulk and epoxies in a super thin layer or cleanly remove excess material after filling pinholes and scratches before the material dries.
7. Cut through packaging and shipping tape on boxes; a razor blade is especially effective on fiberglass-reinforced tape. That stuff is tough!
8. For all you crafters out there, keep a razor blade holder with your craft supplies for when an X-ACTO® knife isn’t strong enough for the task.
For optimum safety, choose a razor blade holder that retracts the blade, such as Speed Cleaning’s Razor Blade Holder with 5 Blades. One product reviewer commented on how securely the handle holds the blade, with even pressure across the entire blade. This holder is available with the Speed Cleaning Apron Tools Kit as well, which also includes a heavy-duty plastic scraper and professional toothbrush – all excellent tools to have on hand.
So if you don’t already have a razor blade scraper in your cleaning kit or toolbox (how about having one in each?!), be sure to add one before you start your next project. They’re very handy in and around the house!
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