Home Hygiene and Family Health - Tips and Best Practices

Ms Sue Chetwin, chief executive of Consumer NZ, said in a meeting that 68% of people who attended their latest home survey picked healthcare costs as their biggest concern for the future. Home ownership costs and water quality were close behind.

Health care costs can be reduced by preventing diseases caused by unclean atmosphere in the home premises. This means that maintaining a clean home environment is an important point you should always keep in mind. Unclean homes can contribute to unhealthy children and disease-prone aged family members.

How to keep the home perfectly clean is however a million dollar question! Over 3 million children (below 5 years) die annually due to environment-related causes, a data collection with the World Health Organisation (WHO) revealed. It is therefore advisable to do away with air pollutants, mould, contaminated water, household waste, and accumulated dirt & debris from our homes. However, we need not pay heed to the countless advertisements that solely promote a wide collection of antibacterial cleaners waiting to be sold in the supermarket shelves.

So what should you use other than the antibacterial stuff to clean the surfaces in your home to get a clean and healthy environment? Regular detergent, if possible environment-friendly, and water are sufficient to maintain hygiene, provided you follow the correct home cleaning procedures. 

Child health and home hygiene

Inadequately maintained indoor and outdoor areas in your home with overcrowding and clutter can adversely influence a child’s mental focus and physical development capabilities.

A health research published in a recent edition of the Journal of Neuroscience clarified that excessive clutter will lead to over-stimulation and eventually cause slower learning attitude in toddlers. It also said an overcrowded environment makes the children lazy and withdrawn.

A clean home with neatly arranged rooms emanating a pleasant smell, will contribute greatly to your child’s academic performance. Also a clean, germ-free home will improve the immune system of the child.

About 5,000 students in high school were surveyed in a recent study, which confirmed that children living in clean homes obtained higher grades than students who were not. Almost 80% of the students who got top grades revealed that their home had a clean and pleasant scent, while over 30% (with poor grades) admitted that their homes were not kept orderly and had an unpleasant odour. It’s thus clear that a clean home environment is inevitable for the better future of your children.

How to efficiently manage your home cleaning

It’s a challenge for working class parents to manage daily housekeeping and cleaning of their homes. For them, money is not much a big issue, but time is. They need to look for reliable, quality cleaners to maintain their homes in perfect shape. They will be happy if they can get a security checked and dependable cleaner who’ll clean their house safely in their absence too.

Even if one person in the family is a home maker, you’ll find that a Herculean effort will be needed to maintain a house with kids and elderly people. If it really feels beyond you, cleaning companies in New Zealand such as Select Clean can provide help on an hourly or calendar basis like weekly or fortnightly cleaning. They also have special cleaning packages to suit the seasons and particular occasions.

Check out various home cleaning activities and price ranges at Select Cleaning. You can visit their website to know their cleaning standard, company’s security measures, and the training they provide to home cleaners in New Zealand and Australia. Also, watch a comprehensive video on all their home cleaning tasks & house maintenance ideas. Get your free home cleaning quote now by calling Select Cleaning on 0800 000 907 and give your children one less thing to complain about!

Hygiene Matters, Cleaning Industry News and Select Cleaning Advantage

The key to reducing the incidence of spreading a disease from an affected family member to others is to keep the home premises cleaned to the highest standard possible. In such medical cases, there is a need for methodical cleaning and disinfection procedures to be followed effectively. 

Easy tips to maintain cleanliness and hygiene at home 

Cleaning-clothes and sponges too have life period- replace them accordingly. These cleaning materials should be considered specific for particular areas, and are never to be exchanged. Don’t use the same cleaning cloth or sponge for the bathroom and the kitchen because it’ll carry the harmful bacteria and other germs from one place to the other.

Clean your bed sheets and blankets regularly and wash the towels daily. The bed sheets carry plenty of germs and can spread them easily among the family members. Clean them more often, at least every three days to make sure they are germfree.

Wash the dishes on time and clean down the benches and countertop perfectly after the meals because infectious germs easily spread through the food. Also make sure to clean the kitchen rubbish bin daily.

Special attention need to be given to toilet cleaning also. An unclean toilet is a haven for large colonies of bacteria and germs. The toilet cleaning jobs include, sweeping & mopping the floor, cleaning the tub, cleaning the toilet, and cleaning the sink, walls & windows. If you are not sure about achieving cent percent cleanliness in the bathroom and toilet area, it’s advisable to call a professional home cleaning company in New Zealand to do the job for you.

Home cleaning industry news

The cleaning sector in Auckland and other major cities is growing aggressively and faces new exciting challenges on a constant basis due to various factors like economic growth and changing business dynamics.

One of the latest trends in the home cleaning industry is the popularity for eco-friendly cleaning or the green cleaning concept. Green cleaning is “a marketplace phenomenon that is being driven by customer demand and the overall trending of the broad marketplace for environmentally preferable products and services,” the Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association remarked.  

People are now more knowledgeable about the bad effects of chemicals used in the supplies and processes of home cleaning. So, home and business owners these days are particularly looking for cleaning services which follow environment-friendly cleaning approach. 

SelectCleaning does a better job

Select Cleaning has a knowledge sharing mechanism by which all its home cleaners are well educated to clearly understand different surface types and their cleaning requirements. This way, you can rest assured that your cleaner knows the most efficient and effective way to take care of every spot in your house.

Select Cleaning team members are aware of the green cleaning concept in the cleaning sector and strive hard to minimise the negative impact on our environment from petrochemicals and solvents. Their home cleaners do their best to select the ideal cleaning products, world-class systems and processes that don’t harm people and our eco system as a whole.

You can call them now on 0800 000 907 and experience the Select Clean difference today. Currently their cleaning service is available in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Tauranga and Hamilton.

General Housekeeping Tips and Health Care Advice

The pollution, low indoor air quality (mould, formaldehyde, and radon can make indoor air unhealthy), germ colonies in the kitchen and bath area etc. can adversely affect your health and comfort, causing serious hygiene-related diseases. Let’s consider some general cleaning tips and tricks to avoid such unwanted health issues.

Home Cleaning Tips

Homemade all purpose cleaner: Take a half cup each of water and apple cider vinegar in a spray bottle, add 22 drops of any good quality essential oil and keep the bottle in a cool, dark place. Shake well before using this all purpose cleaner.

Here’s a working idea to remove ink stains: Apply some toothpaste on the ink stains and wait for sometime till it dries up fully. Now you can wash the cloth as usual and see that the stains are gone.

How to whiten your clothes:  Take some hot water in a metal bucket and put a slice of lemon. Now soak the white cloths in the hot water for around 10 to 15 minutes. You’ll get a brighter cloth whitened well.

Mirror cleaning: Pour few drops of Sprite into a cotton cloth and clean the mirrors to get them shine.

Tricks: Open the water tap and pour water into a dustpan and direct it to fill buckets or pots that don’t fit under the sink.

  

Health and Cookery Related Tips

Kitchen and cookery tips:

Put the lemons in a container with hot water for up to one hour, and then juice them. This way you can extract maximum juice from the lemons.

In order to easily skin the potatoes, first boil them and then soak in cold water for five minutes.

If you can put a piece of bread along with the cabbage while cooking, there won’t be any pinching smell of cabbage.

Do you face the tears problem while cutting onion? Just chew some delicious chewing gum and there won’t be any tears!

Get good shine to your hair by applying one teaspoon of vinegar to hair ten minutes before bathing.

Dip a cotton ball into some Listerine and dab it on pimples to shrink them within minutes. The alcohol will dry up the pimples and cause them to fade.

Boiling the drinking water first before placing in the freezer gives you pure and fresh water.

You’ll love this splinter removal method, especially for kids:

Remove a splinter by applying a paste of baking soda and water mixture at the affected spot. Wait for a few minutes and you’ll see that the soda mixture forces the splinter to pop out of the skin.

Health tips

No more migraine headache:

Dip your feet and hands in warm water while placing a frozen bag of peas at the base of your skull. The heat difference will pull the blood from your head and relieve the headache.

Sore feet?

Fill a plastic water bottle with 3/4^th water and freeze it, then use it after a workout or a marathon run to roll the bottoms of your feet to reduce inflammation.

Easy way to clear a blocked nose:

Push your tongue against the top of the mouth and apply pressure in between the eyebrows using a finger. Do it for about 25 seconds, and the sinuses will slowly drain out. 

 

Sore throat?

Eat four marshmallows and you will get relief from sore throat. The gelatin ingredient in marshmallows helps in soothing the throat and relieving the pain.

Stop night time coughing

Coughing at night can be disturbing for self and others in the family. Try these simple remedies:

• Use a comfy pillow to keep your head elevated.
• It’s advisable to keep comfortable distance from fans, air conditioners or heaters because direct cold or hot air can make your nasal airways dry, leading to coughing.
• Mix organic honey with warm water and have it before going to bed. Honey soothes your throat and stops dryness and irritation.
• Another method to stop coughing at night is by gargling warm salt water before bedtime. Salt water is very soothing and it also removes excessive mucus.
• Ginger and turmeric are also very effective for dry cough. 

These home maintenance and health related tips are brought to you by the research wing of Select Home Cleaning Company in New Zealand and Australia. We know what the pollution and air quality in your home can do to the health of your family members. Contact the friendly admin staff of SelectClean on 0800 000 907 for booking a home cleaner today.