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.

How to Ensure That You Are Not Using Cleaning Products with Harmful Chemicals?

Almost all medical journals say New Zealand has high asthma rates, with one in six adults and one in four children affected with asthma and allergic diseases. Some physicians indicate that low quality cleaning materials often contribute to the deterioration of indoor air quality, causing asthma and allergy symptoms.  

Surveys have shown that New Zealanders spend up to 90% of their time indoors. Even if you are working, you spend around 8 to 9 hours per day in the workplace. This highlights the importance of keeping the indoor air free from harmful chemicals, dust and pollen etc. When we’re spending so much time inside, have you ever considered that your workplace and the chemicals used to clean it could actually be affecting your health? Yes, it is; and that’s why the asthma cases shoot up.

About one-third of commercial cleaning materials consist of one or other substances that can badly affect people and the environment, the US Responsible Purchasing Network’s cleaning guide reported. This puts housewives as well as office workers vulnerable to health hazards. When people use these chemicals indiscriminately to clean their home, their presence in the air spreads to every nook and corner in the house and everybody breathes them in.  These harmful substances also get inside our body by absorption through the skin or through ingestion of household dust and chemical residues.

To support the harmful effects of harsh chemical cleaners, Spanish researchers also recently came up with evidence of everyday cleaning products causing asthma or other health problems. The Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona ascertained that cleaning sprays could be contributing to an increase in asthma cases in the workplace.

It’s thus very important to check what you or your home cleaning company are cleaning with. Here comes the need for looking into the credentials of the home cleaning services you depend on.Once you’re sure about the quality assurance of a home cleaner, you can also seek their advice on what everyday cleaning product you should use for your daily cleaning.

Quick Tips for 15-Minute Cleanups

• First jot down a priority cleaning checklist.
• If you got a message that guests are arriving within 15 minutes, think what you’ll be doing and follow it in an orderly manner. Your guests are sure to see places such as the kitchen, one bathroom, a gathering space like living room, and most probably the dining room.
• Collect cleaning materials and equipment together at one place. If the cleaning materials are spread all over the places like the garage, underneath kitchen sink, bath area etc., then you’ll be wasting more time searching for them. So put everything in a basket and keep ready for easy use.
• Then start from one corner dusting, putting away clutter, or easy vacuuming. Floors in common spaces and one bathroom should be given extra attention while doing the quick cleaning.
• Prefer dry dust cloths to average rags for effective dusting of surfaces. If you’re in a hurry, only dust those areas that may be clearly visible to anyone.
• If you can get help from children or your partner, guide them properly so that collectively you can achieve better result.
• Clean the kitchen counter and bathroom surfaces with disinfectant wipes. Similarly paper towels come handy in drying wet surfaces. Also use them to buff surfaces so they get a nice shine and sheen.
• Use nature-friendly air fresheners to impart a pleasant feeling to your guests as they stay with you for a while.

It’s thus obvious that getting into a cleaning routine is very important to have peace of mind. Putting aside at least 15 to 20 minutes to do some quick cleaning can make a huge difference in maintaining cleanliness and hygiene for a healthy life. For queries regarding home cleaning task, call the most dependable and award winning cleaning service in New Zealand on 0800 000 907.