Why is it important to winterize my home?
You invest money and time into making your home the perfect place for you and your family. If you don’t take the time to properly winterize your home, you are risking damage to one of your most valuable assets.
How does winterizing my home help me?
Winterizing your home can help you in several ways. It can help keep your plumbing from bursting or your fireplace from creating a disaster. Winterizing your home can also save you money by increasing the energy efficiency when cold air comes blowing through.
What are the most important things to winterize?
Inside your home, it is important to winterize your fireplace, plumbing, heating unit, windows, and doors. If you notice anything wrong then get a professional to look at it as you won’t want to be without that appliance during the winter. For example, getting someone who specializes in heating Montclair nj or whoever is local to you when your heater is making a funny noise can be the difference between going with or without heat when it’s snowing! Outside, you should take a careful look at your plumbing, valuable outdoor equipment, pools, plants, and animals.
What are easy, simple winterizing solutions I can implement right now?
Inside, you can start by putting a draft guard on your door and weatherstripping on the windows to keep cool air from sneaking in through cracks. In addition, make it a habit of changing your air filter and switching the direction of your ceiling fans every season change.
When it comes to the outdoors, we suggest that you cover your outdoor spigots and other important outdoor equipment like grills and lawnmowers. Cover your plants or bring them in, and provide a warm place for your outdoor pets to seek shelter during the cold winter nights.
What are helpful investments I can make to make winterizing easier?
Getting a programmable thermostat can help keep your house energy efficient all year long. In addition, extra insulation and re-caulking all of your doors and windows can really help minimize draftiness.
When should I call in the professionals?
Your fireplace should always be cleaned and inspected by a professional to ensure it is safe to use. If you haven’t used yours recently, we suggest you find someone to help get it in working order. Also, calling in the professionals to winterize your pool will save you a lot of hard work in the spring. Finally, cleaning out gutters so that they drain properly is also another job you might could use some help with. You can call our specialists today at 541-601-6236 for a quote.
If you’ve fallen out of love with your home, let our team of talented house cleaners help rekindle the flame this fall season. Having a professionally cleaned home might be just the fresh start you need before the hectic holidays hit. Sometimes investing in your home is the best way to fall back in love with it.
4 Ways to Fall Back In Love With Your Home
- Organizing your home will help you as the busy holiday season approaches. Whether you more space in your craft room to store and wrap gifts or an organized kitchen to cook gourmet meals for the family, The Cleaning Crew can help clean and organize to save you time. So, whether you’re into one-of-a-kind gift-wrapping or trying those recipes you found online, you’ll have more time for the things you love.
- Decorating for fall means rich colors, warm throws and a welcoming feeling of coziness that is hard to match in other seasons. One of the simplest ways to add a touch of fall is to use lots of texture and vibrant warm colors. Clean up summer and pull out fall curtains, pillows & throws. Check out Pantone’s color report for the on trend colors for Fall 2018.
- Fall Food is a treat for the eyes, not just the stomach. Start with a clean home, organize and put away the past season’s decor, and decorate your home inside and outside with gourds, leaves, pumpkins and nuts, place bowls of apples ready for a bite or for dipping in caramel. These fall aromas add enticing flavors to your autumn table.
- Spices and smells are at the heart of fall. Wafts of freshly ground cinnamon, dried orange slices, sappy pine cones, and vanilla bean evoke a sense of coziness. Now that the weather is cooling down, bring some of those seasonal scents indoors. Just imagine the pure happiness you’ll experience when you’re cuddled up on the couch catching a fall flick with the fire going, inhaling those fragrant hints of pumpkin drifting through the air and clutching a mug of your favorite fall beverage.
So, don’t waste any more time in a stale relationship with your home. Let us revive your relationship and help get you excited about making memories in the upcoming months. Call us today for no hassle cleaning or organization quote.
If you haven’t already, it is time to prepare your home for winter. The cold weather and precipitation can do some real damage if your home isn’t properly prepped. We’ve checked some of the leading blogs and saved you time by gathering the top tips for winterizing your home.
Winterizing Basics
While almost all the lists include the traditional winterizing elements like changing your filters, reversing your ceiling fans, and caulking, several lists have some extra ideas to help protect your home (and wallet) against the harsh elements.
Heater and Fireplace
First, there are several ways for you to save money this winter. Popular Mechanics has an entire blog dedicated to the energy efficient benefits of winterizing your home. Changing your filter can help your heater run more efficiently, but it may be easiest to call in a professional to give your heater a quick tune-up. That way, you know everything is in proper working order and safe for your home and family to use.
Also, while your fireplace may be a great option for warmth and a gathering place during the holidays, it is one of the biggest wastes of heated air when it is not in use. Make sure to use a chimney balloon or screen when your fireplace is not in use to avoid the draft. However, if you don’t have a traditional fireplace setup in your home, you might want to have a look at an easy install fireplace that’ll help you stay warm during the cold months, without any unnecessary stress.
Gutters
Next, like Bob Vila, we take our gutters seriously. The first tip on this list is to make sure your gutters are completely cleaned out and everything is flowing properly. If not, ice and snow can do some real damage. Let the professionals take over this task. Call us today to schedule your winter gutter cleaning before the weather gets too bad. This is even an important task in places where you wouldn’t commonly associate with freezing winters, like Texas. Whilst you’re having a look at the gutters, keep an eye on the soffits and fascias too – those are the parts the gutter connects to. Any cracks along them could also cause issues with water getting into your home. As well as your gutters you are going to need to make sure there are no pending repairs to your roof, as even a small crack could spell trouble in the freezing months. If you have any existing problems with your roof, it might be worth looking up roof repair Austin TX before it gets too much colder.
Emergency Resources
In addition, one step to winterizing that is often overlooked is making sure you have resources for emergencies. Having a generator on hand can be very helpful if the power is knocked out by a winter storm. You can find reasons for owning a generator on Lowe’s list for winter preparedness. Home Advisor also adds the need for stocking up on canned goods and water, plus having a snow shovel around to dig your way out in an emergency.
Pipes
Finally, one of the most frequent issues when it comes to cold weather is problems with pipes. Lowe’s has an excellent plan for preventing and repairing frozen pipes. Interestingly enough, pipes in southern climates are more susceptible to damage because those owners don’t typically take the steps necessary to protect them from freezing.
Don’t be left out in the cold. Use these tips to prepare your home for the long winter ahead. Call us today and we will help you prep those gutters and maybe even throw in some window washing while we’re out there!
Every January is the same. It is a time for list after list of resolutions and tips on how to be and have the newest and the best during this new year. Creating change be a challenge if you find yourself in the same old surroundings. Most of us probably didn’t move over the holidays, so many of us find ourselves in the exact same place we ended 2016. Doesn’t seem like much of a new beginning, does it?
Because we want you to have a successful start on your resolutions, we thought we’d compile some tips to help you create an environment conducive to a fresh start. Even if you’ve lived where you are for a while, here are three easy ways to create newness in your well loved, not-so-new home.
Rearrange Furniture or Redecorate
Start the new year off by changing your home design. This will give your house a new feel even if you’ve lived there for decades. Move the furniture around to create more space or a different feel. Find some new peel and stick wallpaper to cover those drab, old walls. Purchase new draperies or change out some of the décor. These small changes will make a huge visual impact. You don’t just have to limit yourself to small changes though. If you want to make a really big difference to your house, then you could always change the exterior of your home, by getting new windows fitted. You could easily use a replacement window company to help you out with it. If your home has small windows, then getting new bigger ones will make your home feel lighter and almost brand new! Obviously, if you like the way your house looks, then you just focus on changing up your interior.
Plus, moving the furniture can allow for a thorough floor cleaning and the ability to reach areas that may have gone ignored for months. Even if you don’t change out the drapes, now is a great time to wash all of those things that get neglected throughout the year. Launder area rugs and shower curtains along with your window treatments and any other specialty fabrics.
Reorganize
We’ve talked about decluttering in previous blogs. During the new year it is nice to take some time to get rid of things and reorganize the things you have accumulated throughout the year.
If necessary, purchase an organizational system of some sort and put it to use. In this article, Abby at Just a Girl and Her Blog walks you through the step-by-step process of totally reorganizing a room. Her first suggestion is to remove everything from the space. That’s a great time to call us in for a top-to-bottom scrub before you start putting things back into place.
Deep Clean
If you haven’t already guessed it, the biggest part of having a fresh new start for the new year is the word FRESH. While you’re rearranging and reorganizing, it is the perfect time to clean out all of those nooks and crannies that haven’t seen a scrub brush in a while and give them a good cleaning.
From vaulted ceilings to baseboards, we can help your house look it’s best–maybe even brand new–for the New Year! When your home is spick and span, it is a clean slate for you to begin whatever adventures await you this coming year.
Let us know in the comments ways you create a fresh start every New Year.
Start 2017 off well. We’d love to help you tackle your New Year to-do list and start conquering those resolutions!
Call us today: 541-601-6236. Or, shoot us an email: info@thecleaningcrewonline.com
The holidays are a busy time for all of us. We go from fall festivals and pumpkins straight into peppermint and winter holidays. Here at The Cleaning Crew, LLC we want to help make keeping your house clean a stress-free experience even while you are balancing a busy schedule.
Here are 3 easy tips to help you prepare for the holiday rush.
1. Declutter
The less clutter you have, the easier it is to keep your house clean. So whether it is easier to buy portable sheds (to be able to store unwanted items before having time to look through it all), get rid of unwanted items completely or give items to charity, it’s all about having less in the home, especially items that are not being used anymore. This can be stressful, but once it’s all done, hopefully, there’ll be more space in the home. If you have a particularly large amount of junk that you no longer need you might want to reach out to a rubbish removal company to determine whether they can take away your rubbish for you. A friend of mine who lives in Australia managed to find a rubbish removal company by searching for ‘Cheap rubbish removals Melbourne‘ online, so you might want to do some research to find a similar company in your area. Furthermore, as the cold weather approaches and you are stuck inside, it’s the perfect opportunity to take the time to purge. If you’ve got belongings that you’re not planning on actually getting rid of, you could look into renting a self storage facility to keep your clutter out of your home for periods of time if needed.
We pinned a helpful decluttering list recently on our Pinterest Page. You can check it out by clicking here.
Don’t forget to sort through:
- Fridge and pantry
- Filing cabinets. If you are guilty of throwing any document you find lying around your house into the filing cabinet without even realizing what it all is, it may be worth checking out sites like FilecenterDMS.com for a paperless option. This will save you space as you’ll no longer need the cabinet and the documents you do decide to keep will be a lot easier to file and manage.
- Storage bins
- Junk drawers
- Knick-knacks and décor
- Closet
This blog entry at A Debt Free Stress Free Life has some great tips for decluttering, but any professional organizer will tell you to start by making 3 piles.
- Trash is the easiest to get rid of, so start there. Get rid of broken or used items, and shred old paperwork.
- In the spirit of the holidays, fill up a box to donate. These can be food items from your pantry or clothing and household items to take to the nearest donation center.
- Decide what is valuable enough to sell. Maybe you are a collector and have things that can be sold online at auction sites, or maybe you just have a few things you want to put together for a yard sale.
Whatever system you use for decluttering your house, it is the first step to a truly clean home.
2. Deep Clean
Most of us do a typical “Spring Cleaning,” but it is a great idea to do a deep cleaning every season. With all the gatherings and meals coming up, your kitchen needs attention now, not in a few months! Plus, your gutters and windows need attention after all the fall leaves, and your guest bathroom will be used more than it has been all year.
That’s where we come in. The Cleaning Crew, LLC would love to take care of all the cleaning duties you don’t want to think about so you can focus on what’s important during this holiday season.
Let us come help you with things like freshening up guest rooms, deep cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, gutter and window cleaning.
3. Prepare for Overnight Guests
Once you’ve got the house decluttered and deep cleaned, it’s time to prepare for guests.
Teresa at Tiaras and Tantrums has created a fabulous checklist for those preparing for overnight guests. You can find it here. But, we’ll give you the basics.
In the bedroom, keep things like tissues and extra blankets in sight. Give guests their own space. Leave room in the closet or dressers for them to unpack their things, especially if it is an extended stay. No one likes to live out of a suitcase.
Also, make sure there is a dedicated guest bathroom that is stocked with plenty of necessities like toilet paper and towels.
For an extra touch of hospitality, you can consider some of these ideas:
- Supply extra toothbrushes or specialty soap.
- Leave non-perishable snacks and water bottles in each guest room.
- Have plugs available for charging stations.
- Leave fans in each room if you know your guests will need them.
- Supply them with air freshener or cleaning wipes.
- Share the Wi-Fi password.
- Write a note to welcome them.
Leave the preparation to us so you can enjoy the celebration! Give us a call at 541-601-6236 today for a hassle-free quote or to give the gift of cleaning with a Cleaning Crew gift card!
