Hello! We’re back with another article! Today, we’ll discuss how to safely store and handle cleaning products.

We all know how important it is to use cleaning products in our home. They help us keep our household hygienic and comfortable.

Besides knowing how to use them, it’s also important to store and handle cleaning products safely. If you have kids or pets, this is even more important.

In this article, we will give you some tips to safely store and handle all your cleaning products. You will save time, avoid accidents and preserve their effectiveness for a long time.

Before we start, remember that Dallas Maids of Frisco offers a professional cleaning service in the Frisco area. Our cleaning service will help you keep your home spotless and you will never have to worry about a dirty home again!

Without further ado, let’s start with our cleaning tips!

When in Doubt, Read the Labels

Always read the label on the cleaning product to understand its proper use and, of course, how to store them and discard them. Follow the directions carefully and, when in doubt, always call the company first.

The labels will tell you what the product is for, how to use it, what not to do, and the safety measures.

The instructions are there to help you! It’s ok to read them as many times as you need to properly understand what you need to do and, most importantly, ensure you won’t get run any risk in the process.

Sometimes, labels will fall off. In that case, always have at hand a permanent marker, sticky notes and some scotch tape. As soon as you notice the label is going to fall off, copy the name, ingredients and expiry date and stick that post-it into the bottle.

Keep Cleaning Products Out of Reach

As we all know, we have to keep cleaning products out of reach of children and pets. Here are some options:

If you have absolutely no storage and you are into DIY projects, you can install a small shelf using floating shelves (which are around $5 a piece). They are also super easy to install! Make sure you have a small edge to prevent them from falling.

If you like buying gallon-sized cleaning products, these probably won’t work for you because they might be too weak. Instead, you might want to use upper kitchen cabinets.

Related: 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Cleaning

Do Not Mix Cleaning Products

As far as handling your cleaning products, make sure you are careful with transporting them. You can use a cleaning caddy or a small utility cart to transport them safely.

When it’s time for the actual cleaning, the most important thing to keep in mind is to avoid mixing cleaning products.

Many cleaning products are perfectly safe to use by themselves. However, they can produce explosive reactions or toxic fumes if mixed with other chemicals.

For example, even though vinegar is quite safe to use on many surfaces, you should never mix it with bleach, as it produces chlorine gas. This can irritate your lungs and eyes and cause breathing difficulties.

Even mixing vinegar with hydrogen peroxide will create something called peracetic acid. This chemical reaction can be dangerous to your skin, eyes and respiratory system.

If you want to read more about the potentially dangerous cleaning products in your home, check this guide from Emily’s Maids.

Separate Incompatible Cleaning Products

As we were mentioning earlier, commercial cleaning products are not meant to be mixed together. When you are going to store cleaning products, you need to separate incompatible products to avoid mixing them by accident.

For example, bleach is a product that does not get along with other common cleaning products (white vinegar, ammonia, rubbing alcohol). These products can create toxic fumes, and you never know when they are going to spill or get mixed by mistake.

You can use your bathroom and your kitchen sink as two separate areas to store your cleaning products.

Related: 6 Features to Look for In Green Cleaning Products

Store Cleaning Products in a Cool, Dry Place

If you live in Frisco, you will have noticed by now that you have big temperature and moisture changes throughout the year.

Temperature and moisture changes can weaken the effectiveness of a cleaning product, and extreme heat conditions can even make them useless.

This is because some products need to be stable in order for their properties to stay active. This is especially true for items such as soaps, which need to be in a solid state in order to work.

Therefore, try to make sure that your cleaning products pantry is as cool and dry as possible.

Cleaning products can also emit fumes that spread to other areas of your home through your HVAC vents. Avoid storing them in areas like basements, garages, or near furnaces or water heaters.

If you don’t have a cleaning pantry or available cabinets in your kitchen or bathroom, you can get yourself a 3-tier utility cart.

This will be perfect to store all your cleaning products while keeping them separate according to the type of product. Utility carts are compact and designed to fit everywhere!

A small cleaning caddy works just as nicely, especially for smaller bottles and cleaning items.

Wear Protective Gear and Proper Safety Measures

Even if they are mostly harmless, it’s always good to use the proper safety measures.

First of all, ventilate the area by opening up a window or a door. It’s not safe to stay in a closed space when using abrasive cleaners like bleach. Turn on fans, if you have them.

It’s important to let fresh air circulate and disperse any fumes that may be building up in the room.

Next, you have protective gear, which is usually safety gloves, masks, and goggles. You should also wear aprons or long sleeves to avoid spilling products on your arms or hands.

Related: We Still Wear Masks

Conclusion

There it is! Our guide to safely storing and handling cleaning products. Speaking about handling cleaning products, there’s no one better to do that than cleaning professionals.

Remember to check Dallas Maids of Frisco if you need maid services in the Frisco area. You can forget worrying about your bleach spilling all over your cabinets or breathing toxic fumes from oven cleaners. Don’t stress! We’ll handle your mess.

Follow our blog for more cleaning tips!

The post How to Safely Store and Handle Cleaning Products appeared first on Dallas Maids® | Maid Service & House Cleaning Services Voted #1 for a Reason.

Hello! We’re back with more cleaning tips! In this article, we’ll let you know everything research has shown about the connection between a clean home and mental health.

This is one of our favorite topics because we believe that cleaning is so much more than having your home look nicer.

The state of our home environment has a deep impact on our mental health. We all know that a messy space makes our brain feel ‘crowded’, especially if we are already stressed out or going through a hard time.

The same goes the other way around: a clean, tidy home is a good symptom of our lives being somewhat organized and on the right path.

Before we start, remember to check Dallas Maids if you need a professional cleaning service in the Dallas area.

Not Having a Clean Home Will Affect Your Mental Health

A cluttered home leads to a cluttered mind. Or is it the other way around?

When we live surrounded by mess and chaos everywhere, it’s difficult to focus and stay consistent with work. You have probably noticed that, whenever you see clutter around your home, your stress and anxiety increases.

Research has shown that women who describe their homes using the words ‘cluttered’ or ‘messy’ have higher levels of stress, when compared to those who describe their homes using words such as ‘restful’ or ‘restorative’.

Other studies have shown that people working around messy environments tend to make more errors. Therefore, a messy home impacts on your productivity as well. This is particularly important if you work from home and, as we all know, working from home increased a lot since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Furthermore, we all know that a messy home is a constant source of arguing between family members.

We’ve all heard complaints in our homes about cleaning. There’s a saying that goes like “A housekeeper is cheaper than a divorce” and there’s a reason why!

“The dishes are still dirty”, “no one vacuumed the floors”, or “when are you going to clean the bathroom?” probably sound familiar to you. If you don’t fix these small issues, you can have serious marital and/or family problems.

As you can see, a clean home (or lack of) has a significant impact on mental health.

If you think about it, most (if not all) people you know who are truly happy and proud of their homes, are usually organized and tidy around their household.

This doesn’t mean your home has to be immaculate all the time. You just need to take the right steps to keep your home at least somewhat tidy and clean.

How Can We Keep a Clean Home (And Good Mental Health)?

This is the heart of the problem! Now that you know all the different ways a clean home will impact on your mental health, we’re going to discuss how to get to this point.

Cleaning is certainly a daunting task at first. It’s a repetitive set of tasks and a house is too big to do them all at once. Besides the physical demand, you have to choose your cleaning tasks and work your way around your home. And that is overwhelming sometimes!

So, what can we do to create a clean and organized living space? Here are some tips for you to try:

Declutter regularly:

Decluttering is, to some degree, the essential part of a clean home. According to research, between five million and 14 million people in the U.S. are compulsive hoarders. That’s half the entire population in Texas!

And that’s only actual compulsive hoarders, now imagine how many people with low to mid hoarding tendencies are.

This is why it’s important to declutter our home regularly and get rid of things we don’t want or need anymore.

Create a Cleaning Schedule

As we were mentioning earlier, there are a lot of cleaning tasks that you should do in a year. However, they are way too many for you to do at once, and some of them are more urgent than others.

This is why you need to come up with your own cleaning schedule/routine for cleaning your home. A schedule helps you keep your home clean and organized in a consistent way.

It never hurts to clean your home without planning beforehand. It’s certainly better than not cleaning at all! However, if you do it with a plan, it will be easier to keep your home tidy on a regular basis and not just once in a while.

This is one of the most direct links between a clean home and your mental health. And it’s especially important if you have several members in your household (roommates, family).

If you know exactly who should be doing what cleaning task today, you remove a lot of the mental burden of cleaning.

Related: January Cleaning Checklist

Organizing Is Important for Your Mental Health Too. Develop a System for It

Besides a cleaning system, you need to have an organizing system.

Knowing exactly where every item in your home should be makes your organizing and cleaning faster. Also, finding that object is much easier afterward.

It’s always a good idea to come up with an organizing system shortly after you’ve decluttered. All your items will be fresh in your mind.

With the momentum you created from decluttering, it will be easier to organize them.

Make Cleaning Fun!

Cleaning doesn’t necessarily have to be boring or a dread task. In many ways, it’s like exercise: it’s tiresome but with a little creativity, you could turn it into something fun!

Put on your favorite music or podcast. Create a challenge with goals and give yourself a reward if you’ve accomplished what you had in mind.

It’s important to give ourselves a pat on the back when we’re doing things right.

Related: 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Cleaning

Get Help If You Need To. And Even if You Don’t Need To!

We all know sometimes we’re at a point in our lives where cleaning is the last thing in our priority list. And that’s ok!

If you’re busy with work, family, or whatever ‘lemons’ life is giving you at the moment, then you should consider hiring a house cleaning service and/or a professional organizer.

There are dozens of maid services in the Dallas area (or wherever you are currently!). By removing cleaning from the equation, you will have much more time during the week to focus on what’s really important for you at the moment.

You don’t even need to be overwhelmed or unavailable. Maybe you do have the time and energy to clean, but you actively decide to leave that in the hands of professionals. And that’s perfectly acceptable!

We all pay someone else to fix problems for us. Every day when we go to the coffee shop, we’re leaving that task in the hands of someone else. It’s exactly the same with cleaning!

Related: How to Hire House Cleaning Professionals

Conclusion

That’s it! We hope this article helped you understand that there is a strong connection between a clean home and mental health.

Remember: a clean home doesn’t have to be a perfect home. You can have a few items out of place or a kitchen cabinet can be messy.

Many times by doing excessive cleaning and organizing, we are actually creating unhealthy habits that bring more problems instead of solutions.

The goal is to create a space that feels comfortable and works for you in the long term.

As always, we invite you to visit Dallas Maids if you need help from a professional cleaning service.

We’ll be back with more cleaning tips!

The post The Connection Between a Clean Home and Mental Health appeared first on Dallas Maids® | Maid Service & House Cleaning Services Voted #1 for a Reason.

Hello everyone! This is our first blog post of the year! We’re so excited to share with you our January Cleaning Checklist.

What better month to deep clean your home than January? It’s so much more than a new month, it’s a new year!

The holidays ended just 3 weeks ago. You probably still have some holiday decorations here and there. And this month is the perfect time to test and carry out a monthly cleaning checklist that works for you and your family.

By creating a checklist, you will reduce mental stress and it will be easier to keep your home nice and clean. Different rooms and cleaning tasks need to be performed at different times. It’s much easier to create a guide to help you remember when you are supposed to wipe your kitchen cupboards or declutter your closet.

As always, we invite you to check our cleaning service in the Frisco area. We know January is one of the busiest months of the year for many families. Having a recurring cleaning service to take care of your home seems like the perfect way to start your year off.

Less cleaning means more time and energy to invest in personal projects or spend quality time with your family. Maybe you want to take the chance to visit the Frisco Commons Park or the National Videogame Museum with your kids.

However, we do know that many people find it fun and even therapeutic to clean and declutter, especially at this time of the year. If that is your case, let’s start!

First On Your January Cleaning Checklist: Declutter and Donate

If you haven’t done so, decluttering is the very first step in our January Cleaning Checklist. There’s a very simple reason to start with decluttering: by the end of it, you will (hopefully) get rid of stuff you won’t even need to clean!

This will allow your home to look and feel different, and encourage you to organize and clean your remaining items.

There are many ways you can declutter. There is the 20/10 method, for example. This is especially helpful if decluttering makes you feel frustrated or overwhelmed quickly.

Now, where to start decluttering?

You can declutter by room (e.g., kitchen, bathroom, living room) or by category (e.g., clothes, books, documents).

If you find it hard to toss out items, set a goal first. Maybe it’s going to be 10% of each room or category. Or, it could be (at least) 20 items in total.

Fix, toss and store any holiday ornaments and decorations.

It might be easier to decide which items you are going to donate first. Set a donation box and fill it out with (at least) 15 items. Thinking and deciding fast can be beneficial if you have a hard time “ripping off the band-aid”.

After you’ve decluttered all your rooms/categories, you can finally organize and deep clean all your areas and surfaces!

Vacuum Your Home Inside Out

After decluttering and organizing your items, it’s time for vacuuming. We often stick to vacuuming our floors quickly, but this is not a regular cleaning!

After the holidays, you are going to find thousands of pine needles and food crumbs. Make sure you reach every corner, including under the cabinets and furniture.

Baseboards, ceilings, and room corners are often forgotten. Pay attention to your entryway too. Especially during winter in Frisco, your entryway gets filled with dust and dirt from the outside.

Leave your floors for last, as Here is a tip to ensure 100% of your floors get cleaned: start in one corner (the furthest from the door) and push your vacuum forward. Then, move backward but this time, moving slowly to the side as well (left or right) until you’ve covered the entire width of your vacuum (around 12 – 18 inches to the side).

Then, move forward again and repeat the process. This way, you will have vacuumed the surface twice, removing pretty much any crumbs and dirt on the way.

Related: What Is the Best Way to Vacuum Your House?

Clean Out Fridge and Pantry

Many people like to start their January cleaning checklist with the kitchen. And it makes sense, as people forget to clean appliances, fridges, containers and drawers.

And now that you are just getting started with this year, it’s time to reorganize and make sure your fridge and pantry are spotless and cleared out.

First of all, it’s time to ensure all your canned goods and ingredients are not expired or rotten. For both the fridge and the pantry the process is very similar: start by removing your shelves and racks.

If this is your fridge, you can mix baking soda and dish soap until you form a paste. Baking soda acts as a deodorizer and soap will remove grease and food scraps.

If you want more tips about your fridge, don’t forget to check our Refrigerator Renew article.

In your pantry, you may find spices that are not spicy anymore or herbs that are no longer fresh. This is the perfect time to replace them. Then, you need to deep clean your pantry by scrubbing with soapy water.

If you have laminate or wooden shelves, stick to using very little water and always dry with a clean cloth afterward. To soften up grease, you can create a baking soda and dish soap mix. Apply and scrub with a soft sponge.

Once you place your items back, label and date containers and organize items by type and expiry date.

Wash Couch Pillows, Curtains and Blankets

These are items that often gather dust and sweat throughout the year, but they often go unnoticed. It is only after you’ve cleaned them that you realize how dirty they were.

Pillows, curtains and blankets can be cleaned using the same process depending on the type of fabric and the care tag instructions. Silk and velvet items usually need dry cleaning fluid, while cotton can be cleaned with water and soap.

Let’s start with your couch pillows. If they are washing-machine safe, use warm water (if they don’t have any stains) and delicate cycle.

If they are not, fill a bathtub or sink with warm water and mild detergent. Soak your pillows and press softly. Then, rinse your pillows until the water runs clear. Make sure you dry them properly afterward so they won’t lose their original shape.

To fluff the pillows, use a dryer on the no-heat or low-heat mode and throw a few dryer balls or tennis balls. This way, your couch pillows will come out nice and fluffy.

Next, we have curtains and blankets.

Some curtains, depending on the material, can be washed and rehung when they are still damp without needing to iron them. In any case, it’s best to dry them for as long as possible before rehanging them.

Blankets follow a cleaning process similar to couch pillows.

If you wash them using a washing machine, it is extremely important that you use a delicate cycle and, in this case, cold water. Blankets usually end up getting loose and stretched out if they come in contact with warm water. If you wash them by hand, make sure you don’t wring them too strong either.

Spot Clean Couches & Carpets

January is the perfect opportunity to spot-clean your couches, rugs and carpet floors. After the holidays, the occasional wine or food spills start to become noticeable.

Couches, rugs and carpets have different care instructions depending on the material. For example, some fibers are organic and more sensitive to water or certain chemicals.

If you are not able to find the care tag or the material your item is made of, a good rule of thumb is to blot the stain and never scrub. This way you won’t spread the stain even further.

Clean the stains as soon as you see them, and don’t use hot water as it will set the stains instead of removing them.

You can use a stain remover or a Oxigen-based bleach is much safer to remove stains than chlorine-based bleach.

If you want more tips for cleaning your couch depending on the type of fabric, check the guide from our fellas at Emily’s Maids.

Sanitize Surfaces

Last but not least, we know January is a cold month this year. Take your time and sanitize all surfaces that you use frequently and items that you grab or touch with your hands.

For example, electronics such as TV remotes and keyboards. They gather an enormous number of bacteria, especially if you share them with multiple household members.

They could be very sensitive to cleaning agents or liquids in general, so if you are using any (water or rubbing alcohol) do not apply to the surface directly. Instead, apply to a lint-free cloth. For TV, computer or smartphone screens, make sure to follow manufacturer’s instructions.

Door handles are also a strong source of bacteria. Always keep rubbing alcohol at hand and sanitize them once a day.

Conclusion

We hope this January Cleaning Checklist motivates you to start your month -and your year- off on the right foot!

This list will help you get through all those areas you probably do not include in your regular house cleaning.

Remember to check our booking page if you want to learn more about our house cleaning service in Dallas.

Don’t forget to check our blog for more of our cleaning tricks and secrets. This year we hope to bring even more articles and tips on our social media.

We’ll see you soon with more cleaning tips!

The post January Cleaning Checklist appeared first on Dallas Maids® | Maid Service & House Cleaning Services Voted #1 for a Reason.