Hello and welcome back to Emily’s Maids! Today we’re discussing some of the habits that make house cleaning harder for house cleaners. Let’s dive right into it!
Over the last 15 years, we’ve had many types of clients at Emily’s Maids. And a good part of these clients are helpful and want to do the cleaners job easier and not harder. Sometimes this means spraying a countertop an hour before we arrive or trying to remove a stain with the wrong cleaning product.
Of course, we value our clients trying to be helpful and conscious of the hard work that it takes to keep a home clean. Even if these small routines feel productive in the moment, that can change the moment a cleaner walks into you home and realize this may not have been the best approach.
These habits backfire sometimes, so we created a guide with the habits that make house cleaning harder instead of easier. This will help you save your professional house cleaner some frustration, avoid permanent damage on your items and surfaces, and get a better result of every visit.
When Letting Products Sit Too Long Backfires
One of the habits that make house cleaning harder happens before anyone even walks in the door.
Sometimes, our clients spray a cleaning product before we arrive and they let it sit for 30 minutes, an hour, sometimes two or three hours before arrival. You may think that the longer you let a product dwell on a surface, the cleaner it will be. In reality, it doesn’t work that way, or at least, not on all surfaces.
Marble and granite countertops, hardwood floors and wood furniture are all sensitive to cleaning products if they’re applied for too long. Leaving an acidic, alkaline or abrasive product on the surface can cause etching, discoloration, or permanent stains.
These surfaces should only be in contact with specialized cleaning products or even some light, pH-neutral cleaners like mild dish soap. And even if they are cleaned, it’s important to wipe them dry so moisture doesn’t damage the surface.
Doing the opposite causes a different problem. A similar habit that we’ve found with clients is that they spray and wipe areas quickly. They don’t really let the products work chemically on the surface and breaking stains and grime down. Instead, the grime just gets pushed around and repplied, which means the surface still looks dirty even after cleaning.
Laundry and Kitchen Habits That Add Up Over Time
The same “more must be better” logic happens up just as often in laundry rooms and kitchens. Using too much fabric softener leaves a waxy coating on items that are supposed to be fluffy and absorbent.
Washing everything in hot water or running the dryer on high heat isn’t much better either. Although this is recommended for white linens to deodorize and kill some types of bacteria, some fabrics shrink under heat. If this happens, these fibers never really bounce back to their original shape.
In the kitchen, we’ve noticed people leave their ovens and range hoods for last in the cleaning checklist. If this is something you prefer leaving in the hands of Emily’s Maids with our deep cleaning, that’s perfectly fine.
Just keep in mind that grease buildup is harder to remove. Sometimes, this can even cause scratches when trying too hard to scrub these surfaces. Wiping the oven 30 minutes after each use will make this grease buildup much smaller.
As we mentioned earlier, for granite and marble countertops, we don’t recommend using abrasive cleaning products, even DIY cleaners like vinegar or citric acid. These are too abrasive and can etch the surface. Use pH-Neutral cleaner or Mild dish soap.
If you want to help your house cleaner with this task, try tyding up any out-of-place items on the countertops and store them back in a drawer / cabinet.
What Not to Do If You Want to Help Your Cleaner
In general, it’s a bad idea to soak wood floors or furniture in water (or worse, a cleaning product) to get them “extra” clean. Wood was never built to absorb that much moisture, it’s treated to have some protection against external agents.
When you add too much water, it warps or leaves water marks and this doesn’t show up until weeks later. The same thing can happen to cabinet doors and if they swell just enough, they stop closing proplery (like it happens to any door) and then this becomes a functional issue as well.
Magic sponges are a similar example. They work because they’re mildly abrasive. In reality they’re closer than sandpaper than an actual sponge. So, if you use them on the wrong surface, they can cause scratches or dull the surface a little more and more over time. They’re fine for a stubborn, isolated mark and for surfaces that are easily repainted.
Storage and Tidying Habits That Make House Cleaning Harder
Even though we are a cleaning company and not professional organizers, sometimes crowded shelves and drawers can cause a different kind of problem, especially for you as the owner. When every inch of space is packed, you take out one item and everything else shifts or falls.
Besides, it makes you waste more time finding items that should take 30 seconds because you forget where’s every item supposed to be in.
Walk-in closets and pantries are a similar story. Professional cleaners usually leave these areas alone, as they are personal spaces. However, if this is a move-out cleaning service or if you request them to do it, some professional cleaners may agree to help you clean these areas.
Kids’ toys scattered across a living room or bedroom floor cause the same bottleneck effect. Every minute spent picking up toys, or asking a client to do it first, is a minute not spent cleaning.
That’s why we recommend our customers to pick up these items before we arrive. If you’re short on time, at least set them aside to a corner so we focus on actually cleaning the space instead of organizing.
Good Cleaning Habits to Help Your House Cleaners
Now that we’ve given some examples of cleaning habits you should avoid, let’s talk about the habits we encourage. These are the habits that truly make our jobs easier and more productive, which in turn improves your experience with us.
As we mentioned earlier, we always ask our clients to remove miscellaneous items such as kids’ toys, paperwork and pieces of clothing from the floors, countertops and other flat surfaces. This allows us to focus on our task which is vacuuming and mopping and wiping surfaces.
If you have items like oven trays or racks and range hood filters, you can soak them in soapy water 30 minutes before we arrive. However, we only recommend doing this if you’ve done this in the past without issues.
If you want your cleaners to make your bed, just leave a fresh set of bedding on the edge of the bed. We’ll take out the current ones and replace them with fresh ones.
Let us know if you have pets, especially dogs, as they can become anxious around people they’re not familiar with.
Conclusion
We always appreciate our customers trying to help us and getting their house ready for us. It’s a small gesture but we appreciate it. What we always suggest is talking to us beforehand or letting us know if you plan or cleaning or tidying up something before we arrive.
If you’re new to working with a cleaning service, our breakdown of what to expect before hiring one covers a few more habits worth building early.
None of these habits mean someone’s doing it wrong on purpose. Most people genuinely think they’re helping. A few small changes, skipping the extra dwell time, going easier on fabric softener, keeping shelves and toy piles a little less packed… This will make a real difference in how smooth a cleaning actually goes.
And honestly, they tend to leave the whole house feeling calmer too. This is something we’ve touched on before when we wrote about how your environment shapes your mind.
That’s all for now! As always, remember to contact us or visit our booking page if you’d like a cleaning service in the DFW area. We’ll be back soon with more cleaning tips!