Spring cleaning

It's mid-March and I'm in the mood for some spring cleaning. Are you?

It's mid-March and I'm in the mood for some spring cleaning. Are you? Join me in learning how to perfect our polishing of porcelain!

Traditionally, spring is the time of year people want to clean their houses from top to bottom

...and to re-decorate, re-furbish, maybe even fit a new kitchen, new bathroom or do general renovations and maintenance on their houses. This is a natural phenomenon in life and as we look around at Mother Nature, birds are re-building their nests, and a whole host of other creatures are repairing their dwellings after the hard winter; getting their homes ready for the spring and summer. Springtime is a period of new birth, and when springtime comes around finally, this inbuilt feeling awakens. We get the urge to fling the windows open, let in the fresh air, and rid our houses of the last clingy remnants of the gloomy dark, cold winter, and replace it with a more cheerful, light, warmer, breezy, sweeter smelling, fresh spring.

There is plenty of advice and cleaning hints and tips to be found on the Internet, but these are just some of my personal, tried and tested ones I have to share with you here!

There are many products on the market aimed at helping you clean your house, with names such as Fresh Springtime Blossom, Lemony Fresh, Tropical Sunshine Fresh, and many more. These are aimed at you buying them through clever marketing ideas, names, colours and images! It does not have to be this way. There is no need to use products containing harsh chemicals to clean your house. Indeed, harsh chemicals do not only damage your home over time, but they can damage your skin, or cause someone sensitive to the chemicals in the products to become ill. The harsh chemicals used in these cleaning products also damage the environment, causing damage to our rivers and streams and fresh water fish.

By using an ecological cleaning product, not only are we saving the environment, but we are also saving ourselves from sensitivity issues with prolonged use and cleaning products. You can buy plenty of eco friendly products at supermarkets for instance, but why not have a go at making them yourself? This is a cheaper alternative to buying expensive cleaning products that do not always do what they say on the tin!

For instance, when cleaning windows, the best way is with warm water, chamois leather and a clean towelling cloth, a drop or two of vinegar and elbow grease! Wait for a warm day, but no full sun. Dip the clean towelling cloth in the vinegar water solution, wring out. Wipe the window down with the clean, wet, towelling cloth. Then, using the chamois leather, wipe the window, removing the excess water from the window and making sure you keep rinsing and wringing the chamois leather nearly dry. Change the vinegar water regularly. Your windows should be clean and streak free.

Laundry whites are kept fresh and white as the day you bought them, as long as you do not wash the white load with anything else! People ask me why my sheets are so clean and never look grubby? This is because I have always washed the white load by its self. Washing whites at ninety or sixty degrees Celsius is not necessary if you remember to do a white load only. You can easily turn the temperature down to thirty degrees Celsius and not worry about them going grey. Most biological wash powders and stain removers have enzymes in them, to help break down stains and spillages on the clothes. Most enzymes are de-natured at sixty degrees Celsius and so, best your laundry is washed on a thirty wash and let the enzymes in your wash powder do a better job for you!