Category Archives: House Cleaning

A Wish List From Mom To Dad

September 26, 2023   Matt

A Wish List From Mom To Dad

Here is just a little wish list I put together for you. First, I feel I should tell you that I greatly appreciate all that you do for me and our family. Feel free to grant any or all of my wishes time permitting. They can be fulfilled in any order. I will gladly accept them on any given day. No need to wait for a special occasion or holiday to grant any of the following:
A thorough house cleaning preferably when the house is dirty. I will gladly show you where the cleaning supplies are kept and will provide a detailed list for you if needed.
A night out. Just about any activity will do. This would include everything from a simple picnic to a night on the town. Oh, I almost forgot, no kids. So you will need to arrange for a sitter.
A few diaper changes. For the baby of course, I’m past that stage. If you really want to impress me, you can change a few of the pooh pooh ones. That would be great!
An occasional morning to catch up on my beauty sleep. So I can remain the beautiful woman you adore. This can be arranged around your days off of work.
A night free of dinner duty and clean up. I trust you, so anything you decide to prepare will do just fine. I know you wouldn’t even consider serving me a TV dinner. And don’t worry about getting dish pan hands from the clean up. I use a wonderful dish soap that will moisturize your hands while doing dishes.
A couple of late night feedings would be nice. Not for me, I’m watching my weight. But, the baby is known to wake up a time or two hungry for a late night snack.
A bedtime round up. This would consist of rounding up all the munchkins and getting them tucked in their beds. Really its good exercise. All the repeated trips to the restroom and the kitchen for last minute drinks.
A thank-you for a job well done. It really boosts my self esteem and shows me how much you appreciate all that I do.
Now this was just a small list. Feel free to add anything to it or repeat any of my wishes. I will accept most graciously.
Love,
Me

Read More

Death to Fleas

September 21, 2023   Matt

Death to Fleas

Summers here in Texas can be brutal! The intense heat, the humidity. Not a summer passes without hearing of at least one person collapsing from heat exhaustion. I am fortunate to possess what every Texan aspires to own: air conditioning. Now that might seem as mundane as, say owning an indoor toilet, but truth be told, there’s still many people here in Texas today who do not have A/C. In fact, until I was thirteen, I also lived in a house with no A/C.
But I digress from the subject of this entry, which is FLEAS. I only mention that about the heat here in Texas as an example of however bad it may be, it does not even come within spitting distance of the horrors of FLEAS.
See, with the coming of summer, the heat and humidity, we also get, you guessed it, FLEAS. Humans might dislike excessive heat, but these blood-sucking creatures LOVE the heat. It’s their breeding time. People may do most of their conceiving during the winter months, but not FLEAS! Oh no, they like it hot, apparently a fan of the movie.
Anyways, we have three cats, one inside cat and two outside cat. Now, dealing with these fleas every year, you’d think that we would have become smarter about it. But no, each June when the FLEAS start hatching, we do nothing to take any precautions until it’s too late. What can I say? We’ve slept since last summer.
So, our outside cats pick up the fleas, and presents them to our inside cat. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: Why don’t you keep your outside cats outside? Like I said, the FLEAS only get bad in early summer. The rest of the year they are not a problem; so we forget their existence until, you guessed it, it’s too late!
For the last two weeks, I have been cleaning my house much more than normal. I’ve been vacuuming my WHOLE house every day! Constantly shaking flea powder on the inside cat, Brat. I should just throw her fleabag butt out the door, but she’s just too pretty! A holy terror for sure (hence the name) but beautiful nonetheless. Besides, she’s just a baby still, and it’s not her fault she has FLEAS. Poor thing, she runs and tries to hide whenever she sees me coming toward her now!
So, back to cleaning. My house SHINES, it SPARKLES! Not a dustbunny anywhere. Martha Stewart would be proud. But the FLEAS remain. I’ve spent at least fifty dollars on flea and ant death powder to put on carpets and floors. The darn things won’t sit still long enough to be killed. They jump and jump and jump all over my SPARKLING house, evading the death powder. How inconsiderate is that? My daughter, complaining of killer dust clouds in the house, ran away to a friend’s house last weekend where she could, presumably, breathe without gasping.
But still they’re here.
I was tired. I was discouraged. I was just about to admit defeat and remove myself to another lodging and let the FLEAS take over this house.
THEN the fleas crossed the line. All the time I had been engaged in open warfare with the FLEAS, I had not felt any personal animosity towards them. They did their best to suck my blood; I did my best to stop them. Just the way of nature, right? I didn’t hate them; not them personally. Of course, I hated it when they bit me, but I didn’t hate them, even though I was doing my best to kill them.
But then, like I hinted at above, they crossed the line. They, in their arrogance and perceived superiority, committed an error they will soon regret. One of their bloodsucking soldiers, either ignorant of or completely disregarding the rules of warfare with humans, that is, to stay within the bounds of feet and ankles, decided to reconnaissance my son’s ear. He quickly paid for his transgressions.
But it does not end with only the one transgressor dying a horrible death (being squashed between my fingernails). Oh no! Because now my blood is boiling! My hatred is rampaging! I will hunt down every single flea and make them ALL pay for the sins of the one!
DEATH TO ALL FLEAS!

Read More

Make a Weekly Cleaning Schedule

September 16, 2023   Matt

Make a Weekly Cleaning Schedule

We all know how easy it is for our week to get away from us. It seems strange because we live in such a highly technical age. Sometimes it feels as if all those toys that are supposed to help us live easier lives have actually taken over the world. Instead of a little more down time, we’re constantly being called on our cell phones, beeped, paged, and generally at the mercy of others every hour of every day.

Our regular routines are more difficult than ever to keep. When we’re not at work or school, we’re driving the kids to events. We also try to schedule a work-out, lunch with a friend, and recreational activities. It’s not hard to see where a weekly household cleaning schedule can fall by the wayside. So how do we keep up with that aspect of our lives?

One key is to actually write out a weekly household cleaning schedule. Seeing something in black and white gives us a much better sense of just what needs to be done. Once you list your chores, you can decide if you want to devote an entire day off every week to doing them. You may find that there are some things you can do during the weekday evenings, thus freeing up a little more time to relax.

Floors definitely demand a lot of our attention. After all, there’s a floor in every room. Some are carpeted; some may be tile, marble, or linoleum; while others might be hardwood floors with area rugs lying on top. Chances are you use a variety of tools and products to clean them. Most likely you vacuum carpets and rugs. For the wooden floors you would use mops with hardwood floor cleaners. Hopefully you use earth friendly floor cleaner on hard surfaced floors.

Cleaning Your Floors

Most of us feel a lot better about the whole house when all the floors are clean. There’s something really unpleasant about looking down and seeing dirt, stains, and piles of objects that aren’t in their normal place. In terms of our weekly household cleaning schedule, floors can take up a fair amount of time.

As with anything else, keeping up with problems as they happen, is an important factor. For instance, if you spill something on your tile flooring, grab your earth friendly floor cleaner right away and clean it up. If your pets shed regularly on your carpet, vacuum every couple of days instead of waiting until your weekly household cleaning schedule tells you it’s time. As with most things, preventative maintenance and prompt action can be big time savers.

Wood floors are beautiful and always add a special something to the appearance of a room. Just as with your carpeting, they don’t require a huge amount of work if you stay on top of the job. Usually, you can do them when you do the rest of your weekly household cleaning schedule; or maybe you’ve elected to do all of your floors on a certain day or night. Generally using mops and hardwood floor cleaners will do the job.

Fortunately, one of the things technology has done for us is to make our weekly household cleaning schedule easier. For instance when it comes to floor care, you can often do it in one step. In times gone by we’d have to wash the floor, often on hands and knees and then follow up with a wax or polish. It’s also great to know that research and developers are creating more in the line of earth friendly floor cleaners.

Kitchen and bathroom floors often take the brunt of the abuse in our homes. It’s usually better to work on them more often than our weekly household cleaning schedule dictates. When we cook, we often spill food and drink, as well as splash water around while we’re scrubbing vegetables or washing our hands. In the bathroom, hair spray and other products go with gravity and head for the floor. These rooms are ideal for combined cleaner/ polisher. Many homes use hardwood flooring or look-alike tile in which case mops with hardwood floor cleaners are appropriate.

Regardless of the flooring combinations in your home, you want to save time and make all the chores as easy as possible. You already have plenty to do on your weekly household cleaning schedule, so plan for it to go as smoothly as possible.

Whenever you can use earth friendly floor cleaners as well environmentally safe cleaners everywhere that you can.

Read More

Take Control Of Stress And Relax With These Tips

September 11, 2023   Matt

Take Control Of Stress And Relax With These Tips

Stress is a common problem that all people suffer from. Stress can have a negative effect on your health. The more stress you experience in life, the more discomfort your body will have and the more likely you are to suffer from headaches or worse. If you want to combat stress, then read this article.

If you’re feeling stressed out, consider taking up martial arts. Not only can martial arts give you an outlet for any pent up anger or stress, but it will teach you to focus your mind and body. You’ll learn effective ways to manage stress and to clear your mind. It’s also a lot of fun and can be a break from the rest of your life.

Find out what is the cause of your stress and try to eliminate it. There are many different things that may cause you stress in your daily life. By eliminating the problems that are causing you stress then you will not have to deal with that particular stress anymore.

Reducing clutter in your life will automatically reduce some amount of stress! Be it your desk, pantry or closet, anything over cluttering your physical environment makes it much harder to work and find things and just isn’t pleasing to look at it! By cleaning up clutter you can operate more efficiently, enjoy your surroundings more and simply be less stressed.

If you eat foods that have a lot of carbohydrates, your body will release serotonin. This is your body’s natural relaxing chemical. So if you’re feeling stressed, munch on some crackers, pretzels, a bagel, or other snacks that have a lot of carbohydrates in them. This will help your body naturally relax itself.

When you are feeling stressed, count to ten before you react. Counting to ten gives you a minute to step away, and think about what you’re doing. It can help you to avoid a reaction that you might regret. This tip can be especially important if young children are the cause of your anxiety.

Although it may seem incredibly silly, the very act of counting to ten slowly can really help you to clear your head and allow you to move past the stress. If you think that there is no way that this could help you out, you should give it a try.

If you feel that you are being overwhelmed with stress and anxiety you should take some deep breaths. Deep breathing has been shown to reduce anxiety. It causes you to focus on the way that you are breathing rather than on what’s causing you so much anxiety.

If you have problems with stress, try joining a sport team or community. Look for adult softball, racquetball, basketball, or other team sports. Sports are great for relieving stress because they satisfy our need for competition as well as proving exercise. Let yourself have some fun and burn some calories to relieve your stress.

In conclusion, people suffer from stress. Stress has a negative impact on your health, by causing discomfort, headaches, and worse problems as stress accumulates. If you remember the tips found in the article above, then you can combat stress in your life and prevent your body from experiencing its negative effects.

Read More

Follow These Useful Tips To Help Relieve Stress (3)

September 06, 2023   Matt

Follow These Useful Tips To Help Relieve Stress

Life can be extremely stressful at times, but no time is more stressful than the holidays. All the cooking, cleaning, shopping, entertaining, and countless details can seem overwhelming. This article will give you some great tips to use to help bring your stress level down a few notches this holiday season.

Deep breathing can have a profound effect on your stress levels. The simple act of closing your eyes and taking a few slow, deep breaths can instantly relieve tension and help to clear your mind. To get the most out of this technique, slowly breathe in through your nose and then exhale through your mouth.

A great way to manage stress in your life is to console in a loved one. It is important to seek the guidance of those who know and love you the most. While they might not have a professional background in stress management, they know what is best for you.

There are some occasions that your life could be a bit overstressed because of the lack of balance between the things that you do in your life. If you spend too much time working and getting stressed out about the job, you need to find a way to take some time away from that job here and there.

Saying “no” more often will actually reduce the stress caused by giving in to things you really didn’t want to be obligated to and keep you from having to do them! When you are already pressed for time throughout your day, so saying “no” to offers people make that you are not actually interested in will give you more control and definitely less stress!

A great tip that can help you keep stress down is to turn off the television. Studies have shown that watching television actually increases our stress levels. You don’t have to stop watching it completely but you should definitely limit how much television you’re going to watch everyday.

If you live near a pool, an important thing to do for stress control is to swim. Swim a few laps in the cool waters to get your mind off of your troubles and reduce stress. This is also a great form of exercise, which will indirectly help your stress level.

A great tip that can help you relieve a bit of stress is to clench your fists as hard as you can for five seconds. You’ll be surprised at how calm you feel after performing this simple activity. You can also do this anywhere as people probably won’t notice.

Give aromatherapy a chance. It is a simple method of relaxation that can really work well to reduce the amount of stress that you feel. Find a scent that de-stresses you personally and use it to relax. Lavender is most commonly used as a relaxing scent and can also be worn as a perfume.

The holiday season should be a fun, warm and relaxing time to spend with friends and family, but as stated at the beginning of this article, the holidays can be an extra stressful time. Hopefully this article has given you some great tips you can apply when things start to get too stressful this season.

Read More

Putting Home Energy Savings on to Your System

September 01, 2023   Matt

Putting Home Energy Savings on to Your System

Using home energy everyday is easy. But, receiving high electric bills at the end of the month may be a little hard for you. Since most homeowners like you, want to know how to get those electric bill in a manageable and acceptable digits, there are several systems designed to particularly answer this. Systems that are guaranteed to make your electric bills low.

Here are those:

Insulating – The best way to keep your body warm is by wearing not only just thick clothing, but also clothes that will trap the body heat inside. The same principle goes with keeping your house warn during winter. Keeping good and tight batt insulation around wall enclosures is the best thing to do this. But it is not always the easiest. Any gaps at any point around the wall enclosure will definitely degrade the quality of the insulation installed. Gaps mentioned here are electrical boxes, pipes, and wires; places where batt insulation can be tricky to install even for professionals. As an alternative, you may want to use materials such as cellulose insulation for maximum area coverage. The cellulose insulation eliminates gap and voids, making your walls 100% insulated.

But this is not all.

After insulating your home, you might think you have done enough. It is true that insulating your home well will keep cold air from entering your home and degrading the performance of your heating system. But, your house is not 100% assured that it would e 100% insulated. The next thing is one important thing you should understand…

Airsealing – Leaks around the house are accounted for as much as 40% of your heating and cooling consumption. This means that no matter how good your insulation is, if your house have leaks, you still cannot assure total savings.

Airsealing your home is the next important thing you should remember and do in order to maximize the use of your heating system. Leaks from the front doors must be sealed by weather stripping. Doors leading to garage and attic, and doors to individual rooms should also be sealed. Sealants must be applied on windows, joints and sills. Walls with leaks can degrade the quality of air as well as the performance of your heating system. Leaks from floors will make your heating system work harder as well. All of these should be sealed in order to make your home leak-free that would equate to savings.

Extra savings – Now that you have ensured that your home is well insulated and air-sealed, it is time for you to solve minor problems that add big cost on your home energy.

Cleaning your air filter will give you 2 good effects:

1. Clean air filter reduces the heating system’s demand to work extra.
2. Clean air filter will provide clean recycled air around the house.

Making sure that the ducts are leak free will give you as much as 30% on energy savings from your heating system.

Turn on your appliances only if you will use them. Never leave them on while you were away. Lights should be turned off if not used. Lower down your thermostat if you are away or sleeping.

Set your washing machine to cold. Washing machine consumes as much as 90% more power on heating the water than using tap water.

Using small electric burner when cooking will give you better savings than using large burner. It will also keep your heating system less stressful in maintaining the temperature of the house.

Lower down the thermostat of your refrigerator.

Using your fireplace to warm the house up is much cheaper than using the heating system.

Maintaining – Keeping your home well maintained will give you a lot of savings. Invest on energy saving devices that will keep your home warn at the same time, enables your heating system to work as efficient as possible. Regular check on the leaks of the duct and periodical cleaning of the air filter will certainly make your heating system work efficiently.

With all these, you may now have electric bill that is both manageable and acceptable.

Try all these and see the difference they can do to your monthly electric bill.

Read More
« Older posts
Newer posts »

  • Subscribe

Support us!

If you like this site please subscribe