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Carpet Cleaning in Walla Walla, College Place, Waitsburg, Dayton & Milton-Freewater

Cleaning Tips For Homes With Pets

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Triple Trouble

Over 40 million homes count pets among their occupants, which means there are many people cleaning up after their animals. Pet accidents, vomit, and everyday occurrences like hairballs and shed fur make things challenging for pet owners. If you can relate to this, follow these tips when cleaning your home and things will be much simpler and more harmonious.

Potty training is one of the best things pet owners can do to make their lives easier. It should take place within the first 90 days and if successful, should prevent indoor accidents. If small pets must be left alone for long periods, a potty training pad is recommended. If an accident does occur on a floor or carpet, it should be immediately cleaned up using the proper cleaning solution. Carpet cleaning is most effective when an enzyme cleaner is used.

Dogs and cats tend to shed, keeping their owners busy with sweeping and vacuuming. Hard floors should be swept or vacuumed daily and mopped as needed. Vacuuming frequency depends on number of pets. The recommendation is once per week for each large pet or human. Therefore, carpets in a three-person, one-dog household should be vacuumed every other day. A deep carpet cleaning should be performed when carpets appear dingy or vacuuming does not remove debris.

Some pets, especially cats, find a piece of furniture and call it home. To avoid having to vacuum this item every day, place a towel or blanket over it. This protects the upholstery and keeps the pet cozy. Remove this covering weekly, wash it, and replace it. If pets sleep on the bed at night, keep the bedroom door closed during the day or put a cover over the bedding and wash it weekly.

Use pet-friendly cleaning products when dusting, wiping, and mopping surfaces. Otherwise, pets may lick or breathe the substance and become ill. If you must use cleaning products that contain bleach, prevent pets from accessing the area during cleaning and wipe the surfaces with water after applying the bleach cleaner.

Keep an old towel or rag by the door pets use for outside access. Wipe paws before permitting the animal to reenter the home. During winter, wipe paws with water to remove salt from them. Purchase a low-profile mat for both inside and outside this door. When pets walk over it, loose dirt will be removed from their paws and deposited on the mat.

Courtesy of our friends at: BusyBee Cleaning Service

Commercial Carpet Adds So Much to Your Facility…Here are some maintenance tips.

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Caring for Commercial Carpets

Carpet makes any area a welcoming spot and with so many styles, colors, and patterns available, it can also enhance the ambiance of an environment by complementing the décor. Carpeting an area helps to deaden sound and if cared for properly, it can help improve the quality of indoor air. Caring for carpets is one of the things that commercial cleaning services do best and they are now revealing their secrets.

Hard floors enable dust, dirt, and other indoor particulates to easily redistribute themselves to the indoor air. Carpeting traps contaminants so they do not become airborne, filtering the indoor air. To perform this task most effectively, carpet cannot be overloaded with dirt and debris. This makes regular vacuuming and periodic hot water extraction a must. When it is regularly subject to this preventative maintenance, carpet will last longer, saving the building owner money.

Matting at the entrance to the building and carpeting in high traffic areas should be vacuumed daily. Less-traveled carpeting should be vacuumed two or three times each week. Removal of dry particulates from carpets through regular vacuuming makes intensive cleaning a less frequent occurrence. Cleaning professionals use ergonomically designed vacuums that are comfortable and clean all types of carpet fibers thoroughly.

However, even the most comprehensive regular vacuuming regimen cannot remove every bit of soil. Ground-in debris and greasy substances can cling to carpet fibers and a vacuum may not be able to remove them. Professionals use customized techniques and special equipment to remove these particulates. A dry cleaning process called encapsulation is easy and inexpensive way to remove soil in between deep cleanings.

Spots can easily develop on commercial carpets so professionals have box extractors, chemical solutions, and microfiber cloths on hand to perform carpet spotting to remove these. Hot water extraction is the ultimate in carpet cleaning and should be performed at least once a year. This process restores carpet fibers to an unsoiled condition so they can filter indoor air most effectively. Portable extraction machines are very expensive so many businesses find it more cost-effective to contract deep cleanings for carpeting.

When carpets are professionally deep cleaned, all the cleaning solutions and water are removed. This prevents rapid resoiling, soil wicking, fiber damage, off-gassing, and odor issues. It also increases their ability to improve indoor air quality, and they remain this way for a longer time, extending their life.

Source: BusyBee Cleaning Service

How to Improve the Air Quality in Your Home and Keep Your Kids Healthy

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How to Improve the Air Quality in Your Home and Keep Your Kids Healthy

 

 

We all know how important a healthy environment is for children. However, one factor that often goes unnoticed in a home is air quality. Since air quality is hard to sense, it can be difficult to recognize problems. And even when you know there’s a problem, it’s hard to know how to fix it. Here’s some information to help you understand the impact of air quality in your home, as well as how to reduce pollutants and learn to spot the signs of pulmonary diseases in children.

Factors That Impact Air Quality

It’s no secret that the outside world contains all kinds of pollutants. Although it may feel like you’re keeping your family safe from those pollutants, the air quality in your home could actually be up to 10 times worse than outdoor pollution. The primary reason is that potential pollutants can build up easier in contained areas than in open spaces. Since you often can’t see or smell pollutants, the air quality in your home can get poor before anyone realizes it.

Chemicals are one the most common causes of poor air quality. Every home has some level of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are released from a variety of household materials, such as wood preservatives, solvents and paints, cleaning products, and aerosol fragrances. You can cut down on harmful effects from VOCs by storing such products outside of the house and making sure you’re in a well-ventilated area when you do use them. Also, many cleaning products and new furniture items contain zero to low VOCs, so being pickier when you choose these products can help protect your family. Controlling the moisture and temperature in your home — particularly in climates with high humidity and fluctuating temperatures — is another way to improve the air quality in your home.

Reducing Allergens

Along with VOCs, humidity, and extreme temperatures, allergens are also a common cause of poor air quality. One of the first things you should do to reduce allergens in your home is to purchase an air purifier, which also goes a long way in helping kids who suffer from asthma. There are several high-quality purifiers to choose from, so do your research, read reviews, and pick one that you think will meet your needs. A few of the best selling air purifiers on the market today are the IQAir HealthPro Plus, Alen BreatheSmart-Pure, and Rabbit Air MinusA2. The right air purifier for you will depend on whether you’re targeting particular allergens, your budget, how much space you have, and whether you’re concerned with the purifier’s sound.

In addition to purifying the air, you can take several additional steps to reduce allergens from in your home. For instance, utilizing the air conditioner spreads fewer allergens into the air than ceiling fans, wall fans, or the breeze from an open window. Also, cleaning rugs, carpet, bedding, and drapes regularly will help remove irritants. A natural way to purify the air is to add indoor plants, which are natural air filters, to the inside of your home.

Watching Out for Pulmonary Diseases

Pulmonary diseases affect the airways and other structures of the lungs. Long-term exposure to air pollutants and allergens for a child impacted by a pulmonary disease can result in infection, difficulty breathing, and a decrease in lung function. Since children have lungs that are still growing, indoor air pollutants and allergens have a larger impact on their respiratory functions.  Some pulmonary diseases children face are asthma, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cold, cough, and pneumonia. Some of these cannot be prevented, but they can be mitigated and sometimes avoided by keeping children away from pollutants and irritants.

We may want to protect our children from harm and wish we could place them in a bubble to prevent illness and injury. However, the reality is that there’s a certain amount of exposure they will have to things that can harm them. While our children are susceptible to indoor and outdoor pollutants, irritants, and allergens, those risks can be mitigated with air purification, regular cleaning of the home, and minimizing the spread of pollutants.

courtesy of our very own guest columnist  Alice Robertson

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Saved the day…yet again!

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So yesterday we were called in to give a proposal on a house that is going up for sale here in Walla Walla.  We told her that we would be able to spiff it right up.  When we told her that most cleaning companies have a one or two step process and that we have developed a twelve step process she was impressed.  When we finished up with our carpet cleaning job (we were able to squeeze her in same day), she was thrilled!  We saved her hundreds of dollars and lots of time and headaches.  That’s what we do everyday.  We are looking forward to serving you!

Tile cleaning to improve your enjoyment of your home and to make it last longer

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Recently, we were called upon to clean this floor at a home on Berney Dr in Walla Walla, Wa. It was a tough one because of all the hairspray built up on the floor. We applied our preconditioner, agitated, and then extracted with our rotary jet extractor. When we were done we had to go back and clean all the edges and then touch up all the grout lines. Our client was thrilled to say the least. Clean floors really do last longer. Enjoy your Friday and have a great weekend.