7 Spring Cleaning Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make
Helpful Tips for Your Spring Cleaning Routine
With warmer weather on the horizon, spring cleaning is a great chance to refresh your home, declutter your space, and welcome the new season with a fresh start and a clean house. For many, spring cleaning is the deepest, most comprehensive whole-house cleaning of the year.
While you’re scrubbing, dusting, and organizing your entire home, it can be easy for a few important chores to fall through the cracks. From skipping a deep carpet cleaning to overlooking a key touchpoint, these small missteps can hamper the results of your entire spring cleaning effort.
Keep reading to discover some of the most common spring cleaning mistakes that typical homeowners make—and avoid them this spring for a deeper, more satisfying clean!
Mistake #1: Forgetting to Clean High-Touch Surfaces
High-touch surfaces (or those that are regularly touched by people in the home) can harbor bacteria, viruses, and other nasty contaminants, yet so many of these areas can be easily overlooked during a major spring cleaning effort. Light switches, remote controls, and handles to doors, refrigerators, cupboards, and more should be cleaned and sanitized as part of your routine.
Also, don’t forget about other easily overlooked spots, like baseboards and vents.
Mistake #2: Skipping Deep Carpet Cleaning
As a good homeowner worried about cleanliness, you probably vacuum your carpets on a routine basis throughout the year and clean up spills and spots to the best of your ability. Those efforts in and of themselves are crucial, but if you don’t keep up with regular deep carpet cleanings from a professional service, you’re missing out on even more benefits.
Professional carpet cleanings from an experienced, trustworthy provider like Oxi Fresh will help keep your carpets in beautiful, clean condition for longer. They’ll also help to extend the lifespan of your carpet, protecting your investment over the long haul.
If you have a home with fairly normal levels of traffic and soil, ordering a professional carpet cleaning during every spring cleaning could go a long way towards keeping your home looking and performing at its best.
Mistake #3: Not Working from the Top Down
When you’re cleaning your whole home, you need to pay careful attention to the order in which you clean the various parts of the house. Starting with your carpet cleaning, for instance, would be an ineffective spring cleaning strategy—as much of the dust and debris you wipe off other surfaces would fall down to the carpet after it’s been cleaned.
Instead, work from the top down, starting with ceilings or ceiling fans and ending with your floors. That way, you’ll be able to clean up all the fallen and dislodged soil from your carpets and floors at the end of the spring cleaning process, leaving you with a deeper, more thorough clean.
Mistake #4: Using the Wrong Cleaning Products
At Oxi Fresh, we’re known for our use of environmentally friendly carpet cleaning products that are safe for you and your home—and we’d encourage you to use safer, green cleaning products whenever and wherever you can.
That said, you probably won’t get the results you’re looking for if you use distilled white vinegar to clean every surface in the home. Instead, do your research to find suitable yet safe solutions that are purpose-built or highly effective for the specific applications needed for your spring cleaning routine.
From there, always test a new product on an inconspicuous part of the surface you’re trying to clean, just to make sure it doesn’t cause any unwanted effects. As an extra tip, always be cautious when mixing cleaning products, which can sometimes lead to dangerous situations.
Mistake #5: Not Giving Your Products Enough “Dwell Time”
Dwell time, sometimes called contact time, refers to the amount of time your cleaning products are left to “dwell” on the surface you’re cleaning after you’ve applied them but before you’ve blotted them up. In many cases, this is a crucial component of the cleaning process, and so many homeowners have a tendency to spray their product and immediately wipe it away, leading to poor, unsatisfying results.
So read your labels, and be sure to give your products the right amount of time needed to actually work their magic.
Mistake #6: Neglecting Upholstery and Rugs
Maybe you’ve already booked your professional carpet cleaning for this spring—but what about your upholstered furniture and area rugs? Similarly to carpets, these items can often benefit significantly from deep, professional cleaning on a routine basis, yet they’re frequently overlooked during spring cleaning. Oxi Fresh offers eco-friendly upholstery cleanings, and we can also clean many area rugs.
Mistake #7: Using Dirty Cleaning Tools
Too many people forget to clean their cleaning tools, or swap them out as needed, during the lengthy spring cleaning process. Of course, cleaning with dirty materials isn’t likely to get your space particularly clean—and it will only get worse as you progress through your routine.
This spring, try swapping out your sponges, towels, mop heads, and other items long before they get so soiled that they’re actually spreading grime around your house. Likewise, clean out your vacuum filters, bags, brushes, and bristles frequently, along with any other tools or equipment you’re using. Most vacuums actually lose about 50% of their suction power by the time the bag or canister is just one-third full.
Book Your Spring Carpet, Rug, and Upholstery Cleaning Now
Following these tips and avoiding these common mistakes will have a big impact on your spring cleaning efforts this year. And if you’re interested in leaning on Oxi Fresh for your carpet, rug, or upholstery cleaning needs this spring, we’d love to hear from you. Just call our team at 1-877-694-3737 to get your cleaning in the calendar today.
