Using Vinegar to Clean Your Home: 2 Things to Do BEFORE the Pros Come

September 26, 2013 By Michele Peterson

Mini Mops House Cleaning in Fresno CA - Using Vinegar to Clean Your Home If you’ve been with us for any length of time, you know that we’re constantly using vinegar to clean various parts of your home. We bring it to jobs by the gallon because it’s such a great cleaner.

We use it to clean glass and mirrors. We also use it as a final rinse for floors to remove all lingering residue so that your floors will shine. When we clean ovens, we rinse those with vinegar, too.

We shared two ways to get rid of house odors in a prior article (one of them was to use vinegar). And here are still two MORE ways you can use vinegar to get a cleaner home …

1. On the night before your Mini Mops crew is scheduled to clean your home, pour 2 cups of vinegar in your toilet. It will help break down any water mineral and lime deposits that may be forming.

2. On the morning of the day the crew cleans your home, spray your glass shower door (after you’ve squeegee’d it) with vinegar. If you have any hard water deposits forming, this will help the crew get the door more clean.

It works!

The acid in the vinegar breaks down grease, mold, and even bacteria. It’s biodegradable and environmentally friendly. It’s user-friendly, too. So get yourself a gallon of the stuff and use it!

We’ll share even more things to do with vinegar in future articles. Please leave a comment below if you have any tips you’d like to share or if you have questions you’d like us to answer in a future article.

Until next time … Keep it Clean!

Two Simple Ways to Get Rid of House Odors

September 24, 2013 By Michele Peterson

Mini Mops House Cleaning in Fresno CA - Musty House Odors

When it’s hot and your air conditioner is running constantly, you’re probably not opening your windows to let fresh air in very often, and your home can develop a musty, stale odor. If you keep your pets inside to protect them from our extreme Fresno heat, they can add to the problem, too.

You may not even realize you have a problem, because you’ll probably only notice it when you first step inside after being gone for several hours. But, unfortunately, guests to your home are quick to notice it. Even if they’re polite enough not to say anything.

Here are two simple ways to get rid of house odors and prevent your guests from wrinkling their noses next time they visit:

Vinegar

Pour an inch or so in shallow bowls and place them in different rooms thoughout your home. Put more bowls in the rooms where the odor is strongest. The vinegar should neutralize the odor within a few hours or so. An alternate method is to put vinegar in a spray bottle and spritz it into the middle of the affected rooms. Don’t worry, the vinegar smell doesn’t linger!

Essential oils

Put ¼ c. baking soda and 5-6 drops of your favorite essential oil (lemon, orange, or lavender are great choices) into a small canning jar with a lid. Use a small nail to punch holes in the lid. Add a pretty ribbon and place the jar in a strategic spot in your home. You may want one for each room, maybe two in larger rooms. Shake the jars to reactivate the scent, and once it starts to fade, simply add a few more drops of the oil. (Bonus tip: these jars would make fabulous hand-made gifts!)

What do YOU think? Do you have a tip you’d like to share to help our readers get rid of house odors? Please share it in a brief comment below.

Until next time … Keep it Clean!

When a Caregiver Needs Care …

June 25, 2013 By Michele Peterson

A family’s primary caregiver — typically Mom — fulfills multiple roles and duties. She cooks, cleans, and chauffeurs the kids. She does the laundry and the shopping, and she pays the bills. She may hold a job and/or volunteer in the community.

So when Mom gets sick or injured, she needs help … lots of it.

Often Dad will take over, with help. Family members, friends and neighbors may pitch in to provide meals while Mom’s recovering. Perhaps someone will offer to take the kids where they need to go. Someone else may walk the dogs or throw a load of laundry in the washer when they come to visit.

But there aren’t a lot of cheerful volunteers offering to take care of the house cleaning. The hands-in-the-toilet, hands-and-knees floor scrubbing … the sanitizing kind of clean that is so necessary during recovery from an illness or injury.

A solution that works for many families is hiring a professional house cleaning company to handle those chores …

When you can’t handle your own house cleaning, turning it over to strangers is in many ways easier than having someone close to you do it.

By hiring professional house cleaners, Mom avoids any potential embarrassment of having friends or neighbors see the family’s “dirt.” She can relax in knowing that this is a just a job to the professional … and there’s no judgment on how dirty a house is except as to how it relates to the time it will take to complete the job.

By hiring professional house cleaners, Mom also knows that the cleaning is going to be done right. The professionals will use the proper cleaners, chemicals and equipment … they’ll even bring their own supplies! And they do this every day for a living, so they know what they’re doing.

By hiring professional house cleaners, Mom can relax and actually heal from her injury or illness. She will be less tempted to help do the chores herself.

To give Mom the most peace of mind, be sure to hire a house cleaning company that:

• is fully insured (both liability and workers’ comp),
• can provide references,
• gives an onsite personalized quote for the exact services you need, and
• has policies and procedures in place to guarantee your satisfaction.

Until next time … Keep it clean!

Mini Mops, Inc. is a professional house cleaning company serving residential and commercial clients in the Fresno-Clovis CA area since 1975. We are currently accepting new clients. Please call (559) 264-6677 to get started.

House Cleaning … Who’s At Home Taking Care of It?

June 10, 2013 By Michele Peterson

Mini Mops House Cleaning blog - Dad Taking Care of the House Cleaning Quick … who’s the first person you think of when you think “house cleaning”?

Most of us think “Mom.” But it isn’t always the “lady of the house” who’s in charge of keeping the house clean anymore.

In our 38 years of providing professional house cleaning services to homeowners in the Fresno/Clovis area, we’ve increasingly answered initial inquiries by men, coordinated cleaning priorities and schedules with husbands, and maintained a clean and healthy home to meet dads’ high expectations. (And trust us, dads can be just as demanding as moms — sometimes even more so.)

Earlier this year, Parade Publications reported that “the latest Census shows that 32 percent of dads regularly care for their children (up from 26 percent in 2002), and among those with preschool-age kids, one in five dads is the primary caregiver. In households where mom works, that figure rises to nearly one in three.”

And in addition to caring for the kids, these dads are also cleaning the house … and that involves more than just taking out the trash!

Mini Mops, Inc. has seen this shift in our clientele as well. We work for stay-at-home dads, bachelors, single dads, and other solitary men. Our male clients like our systematic method of house cleaning as well as the exceptional results that our professional house cleaning crews can achieve in their homes.

We’re more than maids, we’re house cleaning professionals … and our results speak louder than any marketing message.

So we’d like to suggest that you surprise Dad with a gift certificate for house cleaning this Father’s Day. He’ll enjoy the time he reclaims as his own (that time that he doesn’t have to spend cleaning), AND he’ll get an exceptionally clean home (because we really know how to clean)!

Certain restrictions do apply — for example, the house to be cleaned must be located in our service area. Please call our office — (559) 264-6677 — for more details.

Until next time … Keep it clean!

18 House Cleaning Gifts Mom Will Appreciate for Mother’s Day

May 6, 2013 By Michele Peterson

Mini Mops House Cleaning Gift for Mother's Day

Mother’s Day gifts can put people in a panic …

What can I get Mom that will be meaningful? That she’ll like? That she doesn’t already have?

We understand the dilemma! So to help, we’ve put together a list of ideas. Some are appropriate for even young children, while some are geared strictly to adults. Here’s our list, in no particular order:

1 – Vacuum the house
2 – Clean the water spots and toothpaste splatter off the bathroom mirror
3 – Clean all the toilets
4 – Polish the kitchen and bathroom faucets
5 – Dust the pictures on the walls
6 – Wash the woodwork (doors, baseboards, window sills, etc.)
7 – Wash the windows
8 – Scrub the kitchen floor
9 – Clean the oven
10 – Make the beds
11 – Fluff the throw pillows
12 – Clean and vacuum under the beds
13 – Dust the ceiling fans
14 – Wash light fixtures
15 – Dust blinds or shutters
16 – Vacuum drapes or valances
17 – Clean the outside of the front door

You can do any or all of these things yourself, of course. But another option — one that we can help you with — is to give Mom a gift certificate for professional house cleaning.

18 – Give her a Mini Mops gift certificate to have it all done professionally

But even beyond the gift you give her, we hope that you’ll make Mom’s special day one that’s full of happy memories that she will treasure forever.

And remember …

“God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.” ~Jewish Proverb