| By :
Nick Vassilev
Being a professional cleaning maid is not as sexy as it sounds. You don't get to wear a short little dress and a frilly apron with fishnet stockings to do your job (if you do, cleaning probably isn't part of the job description). If you're a professional domestic cleaner, you probably wear ordinary workaday denims or track pants that can stand getting in contact with lots of water and gunge. Or even a boiler suit. However, one of the downsides of being a professional cleaner is that you can be over-exposed to household toxins. You think being exposed once or twice a week is bad enough as you clean - just think what handling ammonia, etc. for hours is like. Rubber gloves are a must, as a minimum. Unless you switch to natural cleaning methods, which work just as well as the commercial stuff. This may be a bit harder to implement if you become part of a cleaning team, but if you're cleaning your own house (or you are starting your own cleaning service), it's time to crack out the microfibre cloths, the vinegar, the vodka and the baking soda, plus good old-fashioned soap and warm water. Honestly, they get the same job done for a fraction of the cost. If you want to introduce natural cleaning products and you're the office cleaner, you can suggest to your employers that they'll save money and will reduce workplace hazards. Where to use what cleaning product: * Ordinary soap and water: hard floors. * Baking soda: bathroom sinks, kitchen sinks, inside microwave ovens, removing greasy marks, getting foul smells out of rubbish bins. * Dilute vinegar: glass and mirrors, around the lid and seat of the toilet, cleaning metal and stainless steel. * Damp cloths: general dusting and wiping down stuff. * Vodka or strong spirit: removing "permanent" marker, glass and mirrors, as a disinfectant, removing residue left by sticky post-it notes. If you're an ordinary amateur cleaner giving your own house a bit of a scrub down, make things a bit easier with these tips that this writer used as a professional cleaner: * Categorise jobs into daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly and less frequently. Exactly what job will fall into which category depends on the sort of place you are cleaning. For example, as a professional cleaner of a school library that had lots of people trekking through, plus a big birch tree by the door shedding seeds, vacuuming was a daily job, as was cleaning the staff toilet. However, in my home, the vacuuming and toilet cleaning needs to be done only weekly. * Carry a bucket, even if you're not using water. You need some way of carrying the tools of the trade around with you. * Work in a set order. This may sound boring, but once you get into the swing of things, your hands (and feet and legs) get into the pattern of working automatically, allowing your mind to concentrate on other things while you're cleaning. * Little and often is better than one big session less frequently. * Do the vacuuming last - the work of dusting, straightening, etc. can knock fluff and the like onto the floor. * You can never have too many cleaning rags.
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