Category Archives: House Cleaning

Life is a Stage – So is Your Home!

March 29, 2025   Matt

Life is a Stage – So is Your Home!

What is a home staging?
Home staging prepares a home for sale, and for the dozens of enquiring eyes that will be scouring the property looking for flaws. It creates an image of the perfectly decorated home, in move-in condition. This should be the next step after decluttering, cleaning and repairing your home. The changes may be as small as rearranging furniture to give the illusion of more space, or repainting with more neutral and soothing colors. Home stagers will offer great ideas for perking up a room with accessories and creating a new stylish look for your home

Why stage your home?

In this day and age, having to deal with a sluggish market, staging is a must. It can give you the edge that may result in a faster sale or a higher sales price.

First impressions can make or break the sale of the house, and a home that is properly staged helps to maximize your chances of a positive first impression.

Your home will have an advantage over other unstaged homes.

A staged home shows well in web site marketing and video tours, and since the majority of homes are chosen over the internet, this is a vital form of advertising.

Tips for staging your home.

As you go from room to room, there should be a flow to your home. Avoid overly bright or bold colored walls. This may mean repainting some or all of your rooms with more calming, neutral tones. Some people cannot understand that that bright purple wall can be removed with a coat of paint, and these distractions may result in no sales.

Clean the carpets

Furniture: The most common trick used by stagers is to rearrange furniture to create a more stylish look. During my house sale, my stager suggested I move my dining room table into the living room, creating a living/dining room. This freed up space for my crammed kitchen table and voila, I had a brand new and improved living space.

Rearranging may also mean reducing the amount of furniture so that a room looks more open. This includes emptying out closets, even if it means putting some things in storage. Consider renting a few pieces of stylish furniture or pieces of art.

Tidy up your bookcases so that they look pleasing to the eye. This may mean packing away many of your books and keeping out the ones that display well.

Brighten the house up by cleaning windows, and go with higher wattage light bulbs (just until the home sells). Make sure that the lights are left on before an open house, so the prospective buyers are walk into well-lit rooms and hallways.

Creative use of fabrics as accent pieces for additional texture and color are very common.

Remove family pictures, hockey trophies, any traces of everyday family life. You don’t want the buyer feeling that they are in someone else’s space; they need to imagine their family living in this house.

Use plug in room fresheners, especially to mask pet and smoking odors. If you can’t get rid of a smell, overpower it by providing a distraction such as baking chocolate chip cookies and leaving the tray in the oven.

Sweep out the furnace room and clean the cobwebs off the furnace. If the furnace looks cleaner, it appears newer.

Make a list of general repairs, and if you can’t complete them, hire a handyman to polish them off.

Add fresh or silk flowers to many of the rooms.

Kitchen:

Display bowls of colorful fruit.

Apply oil to cabinets to revive their finish.

Modernize your cabinet handles.

Clear everything off the counters, finding homes for small appliances – you’ll love the look.

Remove fridge magnets and small area rugs.

Have a table set for use, complete with place mats, place setting and napkins.

Bathroom:

Have a set of thick and luxurious towels reserved only for open houses.

Fill baskets with scented soaps and lotions.

Use a scented plug in air freshener.

Remove the collection of shampoo bottles from the tub, or toothbrushes lying on the counter.

Bedroom:

Clear off your night tables, maybe leaving out an interest looking book.

Outdoors:

Place containers of flowers on the patios, decks and entranceways.

Set the table with colorful picnic plates

Power wash the outside of the house, patios and walkways.

Freshen up the paint on all porches and doors

Weed the gardens and apply mulch; it makes them look like new.

In order to make your home staging a positive experience make sure you use either a realtor who is skilled at home staging, or a professional home stager. The latter is a trained designer and they understand how to create a mood or illusion for the buyer.

It can be difficult listening to strangers telling you how your home needs to look. You really need to be open minded and trust their expertise. Many people are surprised at how hard it is to separate from their homes; just keep telling yourself, “It’s not my home anymore”. You’ll probably enjoy many of the changes you’ve made and may reflect these in your new house as well. There is just something about living in a stylish, clean, clutter-free environment.

Read More

Air Purifiers Are They Worth It?

March 24, 2025   Matt

Air Purifiers Are They Worth It?

Definitely yes would be the answer. There are a lot of reasons and they all have to do with the fact that the problem of people who suffer from asthma, allergies and other respiratory conditions. These people may be discomforted by the particles of dust or pollen. For them air purifiers are necessary, as a main form of protection of indoor air pollution. Air purifiers are great useful tools in your fight with direct irritant sources or materials in your own home environment.

One should not ignore the air purifiers when one designs modern indoor ventilation or filtration systems. They offer a very good environmental control and reduce exposure dust, dander, smoke, pollen particles and many others particles that may be found indoors or outside your home. Air purifiers have different shapes and various designs. They can be: air cleaners, air filters and hepa filters, and they play an important part in the reduction and elimination of the danger of exposure to indoor and outdoor allergens. Usually, the air purifiers are chosen in accordance with the pollution sources and the quality filtration you want to get. Before going and buying such a device, you should think about what exactly you want for your home. You should not forget that choosing the wrong type of filtration system can lead to an exacerbation of the problem by agitating and circulating the particulate matter in your house throughout the place.

You should not consider the air purifiers systems a complete solution for any respiratory condition you may have. Using an air purifier should not make you ignore medical advice and guidance that can lead to the removal of the irritant sources and allergen habitats in your house. At the same time, they are not a substitute for thorough and regular cleaning of the air. However, they can help you to diminish the number of air particles and to maintain a healthier environment inside your house.

Read More

One Week to Go

March 19, 2025   Matt

One Week to go

Your final week will be filled with packing, rushing, and trying to arrange the last of your address changes. Your bank, credit card, mobile phone and utilities should all know that you’re moving and on which date you’re transferring to that address – so all that remains now is to make sure that you have new utilities in your new house and that they have a definite date for beginning.

The last week of packing is everything you have left – with an eye to ensuring that you’ll be able to live out of as few boxes as possible and seal the rest. By now, you’ll probably find that you’ve got a lot of boxes stacked in several rooms and will be sick of the whole moving process. But in just over a week you’ll be in your new home, unpacking.

Your appliances should be checked and cleaned with seven days to go – you should possibly consider not buying frozen goods at all over the next week, unless you’re sure that they won’t defrost during the move. Wastage is easily avoided and you can use up all of the items in your freezer without needing to buy more. You may also want to start making a list of any items you’ll need when you move to your new house – anything you’ve ran out of or will use before the move, so that you can buy more once you’re in your new house.

You should also consider, if possible, cleaning any rooms you’re not going to use much. Give them a through scrubbing – it will save you having to do it (or hire someone to do it) on the last few days before your move.

You should also order any items notifying people of your new address now – giving them plenty of time to reach you – or plenty of time to be printed and collected.

Read More

Turning Bathrooms Into In-Home Spas

March 14, 2025   Matt

Turning Bathrooms Into In-Home Spas

It may be the busiest room in the house, but for many people, it’s also the most relaxing.

Designers say the latest trend in homes is to create luxurious living spaces out of bathrooms-and a new study indicates that homeowners may be on to something. On behalf of German bathtub manufacturer Kaldewei, the Rheingold Institute of Cologne, Germany, found that bathing brought about psychological changes, and concluded that a relaxing bath in the evening was calming and helped people “wind down.”

So how do you transform your bathroom into an at-home spa? One way is through aromatherapy. Try these recipes for a luxurious bath:

Fortune and Harmony

Add 4 tablespoons each of honey and cream to warm bath water with 5 drops of jasmine, 3 drops of orange, and 2 drops of vanilla.

Dream Bath for the Soul

Forget stress and tension with a combination of 4 tablespoons of honey, 3 drops of lavender, 3 drops of rosemary, and 2 drops of violet oil.

Revitalizing Soak

Boil a cup of lavender flowers and strain through a sieve into bath water. Add 2 drops of peppermint oil, 5 drops of everlasting oil, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and 1 to 2 tablespoons of cream.

Of course, all the sweet aromas in the world probably won’t help you relax if your bathroom isn’t comfortable-and a good place to start is your bathtub.

Kaldewei, Europe’s #1 in baths, makes luxurious bathtubs that are guaranteed for 30 years. The bathtubs are manufactured from a steel enamel that resists damage from cleaning chemicals, abrasions, impacts and scratches. The resistance to scratches helps eliminate bacteria buildup, and the bathtubs can be cleaned by simply wiping them down with a dry cloth-meaning you can spend more time relaxing in the bathtub and less time cleaning it.

The bathtubs also resist the long-term damaging effects of perfumes and oils, making them particularly well-suited for aromatherapy.

Read More

Tips On Using A Warm Mist Humidifier

March 09, 2025   Matt

Tips On Using A Warm Mist Humidifier

Dry indoor air causes a wide variety of physical symptoms including a stuffy nose, dry cough, nosebleeds, dry skin and brittle hair. A warm mist humidifier will relieve these symptoms and help you sleep better. Dry air is common when the heat is turned on in the winter. If you live in a dry climate, you may need to humidify your home all year long. Excessive dryness causes wood furniture and flooring to crack and warp. Houseplants can dry out and the seams of your wallpaper could peel.

If your home is very dry and you need to add moisture to the air all year long, you may want to consider a whole house humidification system. These are installed on a forced air heating system and should be installed by a professional.

If you only need to use a humidifier in the winter weather, a single room model will be sufficient. These are plugged into any electrical outlet and can be used in the kitchen, bedroom or any other room in your home. The size of the water tank determines how long you can run the humidifier without adding water. Be sure the model you choose is large enough for the room and the amount of time it will be running.
 
Benefits of a Warm Mist Humidifier
 
A big benefit of the warm mist is the ability to put medication in the humidifier, as you can with a vaporizer. This is great for treating colds, congestion and winter viruses. Vaporizers release hot steam into the air and are notorious for causing burns in children. The steam in warm humidifiers is initially heated and then cooled just before it enters the room. This results in less risk of burns.

Because the water is heated, there is less risk of mold spores and bacteria breeding in the water. Since the mist is cooled before entering the room, mold can still grow, but happens less often than with cool mist humidifiers. Proper cleaning and maintenance can nearly eliminate mold spores in the air from the humidifier. In addition, monitor the humidity level in the room and make sure it doesn’t exceed fifty percent. Mold flourishes at higher levels of humidity.
 
Cleaning Your Warm Mist Humidifier
 
To keep your humidifier working well for years, regular cleaning and maintenance is needed. Always clean your humidifier according to the manufacturer’s directions. You will find this information in the owner’s manual. You should empty the water reservoir and rinse with clean water. Dry it out with a towel before adding new water. It’s best to do this each time you use it.

At the end of the season, give it a thorough cleaning before storing it. Use a disinfectant cleaner and dry thoroughly. You should clean the heating element at the end of the season to remove any build up that has accumulated. Doing this will help keep the air in your room cleaner.

Many warm mist machines have humidifier filters. The filter will need to be changed at least once, at the end of the season. Depending on the usage, you may need to change the filter more often. If you have hard water, the filter will need to be changed more often. Using distilled water can prevent the filter from becoming clogged with iron or other contaminants in your tap water.

Read More

Advice To Help You When Buying Jewelry (2)

March 04, 2025   Matt

Advice To Help You When Buying Jewelry

Many people feel overwhelmed when they are buying jewelry for the first time. They know that it is an investment and want to make sure that they are paying a fair price and getting a quality piece of jewelry. You will also need to know the basics of matching jewelry to clothing, as well as care and maintenance. The following tips will help you out.

As you begin to shop for diamond jewelry, you will notice that most pieces are presented against a black velvet background. Viewing a diamonds in front of a black surface can actually alter your perception of the clarity and cut of the diamond. Instead, ask to view the piece against a lighter-colored surface and under magnification. This gives you a more accurate visualization.

Remember that weight, cut, color and clarity will determine the price of any diamond jewelry you are considering buying. The store where you purchase the diamond should be readily able to provide documentation about the diamond. It is a red flag if they do not have papers to back their claim.

Preserve the texture, tone, and color of your turquoise jewelry by exercising the utmost care in storing and cleaning each earring, ring, and necklace. Although turquoise often features inherent surface imperfections, failure to cleanse it gently can affect the color of the stone. Wipe the stone, then dry it with a soft cloth. Do not use soap or chemicals on the stone.

Some people have difficulty tolerating the feel of metal around sensitive parts of their bodies, such as their wrists or necks. This makes it difficult for them to wear necklaces, bracelets, or watches. However, a popular substitute is a carefully knitted or crocheted piece with beads, which can be just as beautiful, but is much more comfortable.

Make sure that you remove your jewelry when doing things that could damage it, such as cleaning the house, swimming in a pool or hot tub, even just putting on lotion. Normal cleaners and harsh chemicals can do damage to the finish of your precious metals and loosen the stones.

If you are purchasing jewelry for a significant other, keep in mind the status of your relationship. A gift of jewelry may signify a change in the seriousness of your relationship that you are not ready for yet. Purchase a piece that is indicative of your current status with your boyfriend or girlfriend.

Hematite is a popular choice for modern jewelry. It is a silvery gray stone with lots of almost metallic-appearing sparkle, but doesn’t have the disadvantage of corrosion or easy denting. Look for it in rings as the primary component as well as the central stone of pendants, rings, and earrings.

Do not use ultrasonic cleaners and jewelry cleaning liquids on your precious and semi- precious gemstones. Most gemstones are easily damaged and their properties become corroded by the chemical properties in jewelry cleaning liquids. Ultrasonic cleaners can shake the gemstone settings apart and deteriorate the glue used to secure the gemstone in the setting.

Now that you have some tips to follow when buying and caring for jewelry you should feel confident and ready to find a great piece of jewelry. You can use the tips provided to find and maintain a lovely piece of jewelry that is affordable and well crafted.

Read More
« Older posts
Newer posts »

  • Subscribe

Support us!

If you like this site please subscribe