Prepping Your Home for the Professional Cleaners 

If you’ve never had a professional cleaner of any type through your home before, it can be a bit daunting but choosing someone like Portland house cleaning professionals can make the process a lot easier. Someone who is more or less a stranger – at least at first – is going to come into your place to clean it (or the windows or the carpets). Most people feel a bit awkward with this at first – although as a professional cleaner myself, I’ve usually found that they get over this pretty quickly. With some of our older customers who don’t get out much, having a cleaner come in is a bit of a highlight, as it provides a bit of social interaction and helps them be and feel less isolated. 

One of the things that people feel a bit odd and awkward about is about what to do with their homes? After all, nobody really likes letting another person – and a stranger at that – see the mess in the home. A number of first-time customers of home cleaners report the urge to clean up before the cleaner comes. The same goes but even more so in the case of carpet cleaners and window cleaners. What do you do and what don’t you need to do to get your place ready for the visit from your cleaner? 

Hopefully, this little guide will help novice customers know what to do to prepare their home for different types of professional cleaner. 

Before the Domestic Cleaner Comes 

The whole point of having a home cleaner come in is so that you don’t have to do the housework. It’s up to you what you want the cleaner to do, and you should let this dictate what you do. For example, if you want the cleaner to take care of the vacuuming and the dusting and scrubbing the bath, etc., you might get the kids to pick up their toys and you might want to put away the laundry so the basket full of dry clothes isn’t in the middle of the living room floor in the way. With some companies even, that is taken care of i.e. Anyclean’s cleaning service will tidy everything before they start vacuuming or dusting. You may also want to hide away anything you’re really embarrassed about that’s in your bedroom. OK, your cleaner has probably seen it all before – some of us have worked as commercial cleaners in the red-light district as well as working as domestic cleaners – and we won’t judge you. It’s totally up to you. 

The main thing that you need to do when preparing for a domestic cleaner to come is to make sure that dogs are not going to get in the way. Most home cleaners don’t mind friendly dogs and cats (cats tend to hide, anyway) but any dog that’s likely to resent a strange person poking around with a vacuum cleaner may need to be confined or restrained. If you’ve shut the dog in the laundry, then it’s probably a good idea to let the cleaner know about this so that he/she doesn’t open the wrong door. If you can do it, the dog is best in a crate or outside. 

Preparing for Driveway Pressure Washing 

If you’ve called in a professional to clean the driveways and steps about your place with a high-pressure washing system, then he or she won’t need to go inside your house, so don’t worry about this side of things. You will need to keep pets confined – you can shut the dog inside the house this time. 

You’ll also need to ensure that the pathways have things like children’s toys, bikes, scooters and skateboards moved off them. It’s often a good idea to move planter boxes off the area you want cleaned as well, although this isn’t possible in some cases, like the planters that seem to weigh half a ton – don’t worry; we’ll work around these. Patio furniture is best moved as well so that it doesn’t get in the way or damaged. You may need to move your car into the street or into the garage if you normally park it in the driveway that you want cleaned. This allows the cleaner to get at every part of the concrete or tiles or whatever’s down there. Seasoned pressure washing professionals suggest taking a few minutes to do this preparation ahead of time so the cleaning process can be completed efficiently. Clearing the area properly helps ensure more even results and reduces the risk of missed spots or accidental damage.

A good pathway cleaner will try to avoid accidentally blasting plants with water – and we’re pretty good at doing this. However, if some plants are sprawling all over the path and you want the path cleared, it’s best if you cut or trim that plant out of the way with secateurs or the like rather than seeing if the high-pressure system will do the job. Patio washing systems aren’t strimmers or weed-eaters, and the action of the water doesn’t do a neat job on plants, as they’re not designed for this. If we see plants encroaching the driveway or path, we tend to avoid them just in case you don’t want them damaged. The only exception is, of course, moss, which you probably want out of the way! 

Before the Carpet Cleaner Comes 

Getting ready for a professional carpet cleaner is a bit more complicated. If you want the entire carpet in a room cleaned, then everything is going to need to be off that carpet and we mean everything. Heavy items like sofas need to be off the carpet and, if possible, stay off it during the drying period. This means shoving the sofa into another room for a bit, and working around it until you can put it back into place. If you call in a professional with a proper truck-mounted vacuum system for the cleaning gear, then the drying time is a lot shorter than it could be. 

You will need to move the furniture out of the rooms where you want the carpets cleaned and leave them there for a couple of hours afterwards. If this isn’t possible, then you may just want the carpet cleaner to do the areas of the floor where the furniture isn’t. Yes, it’s a bit of a hassle, but the results of having nice clean carpets are totally worth it! 

It’s also a good idea to vacuum the carpet before the cleaner comes in to remove surface debris. This way, the carpet cleaning machines will be able to tackle the deep-down stuff and won’t waste time, space or steam on what you’re able to do yourself. 

As usual with most cleaners, if your dog is likely to try defending the home against the intruder with the weird machine, then confine your dog.  

You don’t need to dust or do any other housework, however, unless you feel like it. 

Preparing for The Window Cleaner 

Most window cleaners who are any good at what they do are pretty good at doing things like moving lighter bits of furniture out of the way so they can get at the windows – and putting it back again when they’ve finished. They’re also good at opening and closing curtains and blinds so they can access the glass. This means that you don’t have to do too much in this area. 

However, if the window cleaner is going to be dealing with interior windows, then it’s best if you get the sofa and other heavy items out of the way so that he or she can access the glass easily. Any houseplants or ornaments on the windowsill are also best removed so they don’t get in the way, get knocked or get damaged. 

In the case of exterior windows, there is even less that you need to do. The main thing that I’d recommend is that you keep vegetation cut back from the glass. Not many people like having things growing over their windows but it does happen now and again. The advantage of keeping vegetation cut back from the windows is that the glass will stay cleaner for longer in between the window cleaner’s visits. Plants are pretty to look at but they are messy things that shed sap, leaves, pollen and more all over the glass. 

Well, that was not too difficult wasn’t it? Make your life easier and do not try to invent the wheel. That’s what my advice is here for. 

 

** This is a guest post **