Sometimes, even thinking about cleaning becomes tough. Especially if you haven’t cleaned your home for a long time or winter just finished and you want to open all your windows and let that fresh air come in after almost 7 months of cold weather. Well, this might be a huge mistake.
I used to work in a cleaning company and my older colleagues liked to talk about their previous experience. Some stories became legends like that one from New York where workers cleaned all the exteriors of their old buildings and discovered that they were not actually black. Everybody got used to those black buildings so everyone forgot that they used to be white. The thing is that the entire Northeast of New York used to run on coal plants and that dust had to settle somewhere. Well, the same thing happens to the interior of your house because of your fireplace or a cigarette smoke.
This is why most of us decide to clean their house during those late months of spring or early months of summer. Some even decide to repaint the walls and give the interior some fresher look. Well, if you decide to do that all by yourself, you need to be aware of some possible mistakes you could make.
#1 Take your time, plan, and think it through
You need to plan the entire thing step by step. For example, you can’t clean your fireplace after you finish painting all the rooms. The same goes for cleaning the dust. Yes, the simplest thing in the world, but tricky. You need to clean the dust from top to the bottom. You don’t want to clean the floors first and then wiping the fan or remembering that you hadn’t cleaned the air conditioner.
#2 Make a plan
Everyone gets motivated for cleaning with the first summer breeze. However, once we start cleaning most of us end up covered in chaos before the noon. This is why one of my colleagues at Handy Cleaners used to say “it is best to break up that big cleaning project into a number of smaller, more manageable tasks. You need to choose the hardest task, finish that one first, and then continue to other, easier tasks. The first one will push you and give you the needed momentum to finish the rest of tasks.
The key is not to do everything in one day, but to stretch that into a period of several days, even a week.
#3 Use everything you have in the house
Look for all the machines you got and all the attachments those machines have in order to finish the job quicker and easier.
#4 Don’t forget the mattress
Most people finish the cleaning process without even thinking about the mattress. You probably clean the entire house, vacuum the carpet and maybe even you bed, but the chances are that you forget to clean your mattress. This thing is filled with billions of dust particles and microscopic creatures that can only give you a running nose, itchy eyes, and (in the worst case) a skin rash.
If you have a vacuum cleaner with a vapor steam attachment, which is the one you want to use. It will pull out even the toughest microscopic particle (or creature) it can find.
#5 Avoid using hazardous cleaners
Almost all commercial cleaners have the words “danger” and “hazard” on their package. This means that something in the ingredients is toxic and you should be cautious. Most of these cleaners can cause allergies and asthma. This is why you should use these cleaners in the toilet and your own solution of water and vinegar throughout the house.
#6 Chemical air fresheners
Don’t use them. They can affect hormone levels and reproductive abnormalities. Instead, you should use some homemade alternatives like essential oils and water in a spray bottle.
#7 You forget the decluttering process
Throw away the old stuff and declutter the space so the rooms of your house can “breathe” and it’s easier to clean when the “clutter” is gone.
If you need some additional motivation to actually start the entire process of cleaning, you should know that there is a Harvard study which claims that cleaning can make you lose weight, improve your blood pressure and it does good to your mental health too. That should make you clean your house more often.
Nina Smith 
Kim Marks