Everyone wants to enter the new year with a clear mind, ready for a fresh start. How better to do so than with a clean home?

From organising this years’ calendar to a full house deep clean, January is the perfect time to kick off your cleaning regime. Read on to discover our top tips for January cleaning and how to make sure you start off your year with a sparkle.

Replenish supplies

First things first, you can’t clean your home without a fully stocked supply of cleaning essentials. Baking soda, ammonia, vinegar, hydrogen peroxide and new cloths are a few of the most important basics you need to freshen up your home.

Freshen up the kitchen

With grease, oil, food and liquids being used daily in the kitchen, it can easily become messy and stained. Start off with a full clean of your kitchen, making sure to tackle the oven, hob and microwave, where grease tends to linger.

Focus on the walls

The walls and skirting boards are often neglected in regular cleaning. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need a quick wipe down in January. Walls can collect dust just as side boards or cabinets do, so they need a once-over with the feather duster every now and then.

Vacuum forgotten areas

It goes without saying that you should vacuum your home at least twice a week to keep it looking clean. But it’s easy to neglect hidden areas, such as under the bed or your mattress. This January, give the whole home a new look by taking care of those forgotten areas.

Refresh your furniture

Without care, sofas, chairs and beds can easily start to look tired and worn. From time to time, they need a thorough, professional clean to keep them looking as good as new. Not only will this freshen up your home for the new year, it will make them easier to maintain year-round.

Clean the flooring

For many, the floor is the hardest part of the house to maintain and keep looking fresh. That’s why you should kick off the new year with a professional carpet or tile flooring clean, complete with a carpet protector to keep your floors looking fresher for longer.

We can help

If you want to start the new year off with a glistening clean home, the team at Clean & Dry Doncaster are here to help. We’re a local, family business with over three decades of experience. Rest assured, our professional carpet, tile flooring and upholstery cleaning will leave your home looking as good as new in no time.

Bringing home your new bundle of joy is a wonderful, exciting time for many parents. But it can also be a time of sleepless nights, with an abundance of visitors and an endless list of to-dos. The last thing you want to be worrying about during this precious time is how clean your home is.

Keep reading to discover our top 4 home cleaning tips for expecting parents…

1. Preparation is key

Trying to clean your home and get everything in order with a newborn for company is much harder than you may think. With visitors coming and going to meet the new family member, you may find yourself pressed for time. Or, when you do have a few spare minutes to yourself, cleaning your home is not high on the priority list. That’s why having everything in order before the baby arrives will make for a much easier, calmer transition into your new life with a newborn.

2. Accept help from others

Having a baby usually brings offers of help and advice from a range of family, friends and even strangers! Don’t be afraid to take people up on these offers. Any help you can get during the first few weeks can be life-saving. If you feel comfortable doing so, perhaps ask family members if they would do a quick once-over of your house, or most-used rooms, while you’re giving birth, so you can bring your baby back to a clean home.

3. Focus on certain areas

If cleaning the entire house feels overwhelming for you and your expecting family, try to focus on key areas instead. The living room, nursery and the kitchen are often the most-used rooms in the house during the first few weeks of a new baby’s life. Making sure these areas are clean and sanitised, as well as making room for all your new supplies, is a great way to make bringing home a new baby less stressful.

4. Hire a professional

There are a lot of basic chores you, your partner and family can tackle yourselves. But, when it comes to making sure your carpets, flooring and furniture are clean, sanitised and ready for a newborn, a professional cleaner is the best option. While you’re preparing for the baby, or even in hospital giving birth, the professionals can get to work on your home, getting rid of pesky germs, making everything spotless and leaving you with one less thing to worry about.

Clean & Dry Doncaster can help

Clean & Dry’s ‘Welcome New Baby Home’ package can leave your home clean, fresh and safe for your new bundle of joy. With carpet sanitisers, thorough deep cleans and stain protectors, our cleaning team will help you to prepare for this exciting stage in life.

With an estimated 51 million pets living in the UK, it’s clear that we’re a nation of animal-lovers. With the loyalty, companionship and enjoyment that a pet brings to our lives, however, comes mess, stains and bacteria.

Admittedly, it can be difficult to balance a clean carpet and happy pet – or pets. But it is possible. Read on for our handy pet-friendly, carpet cleaning guide…

Keep their paws clean

Dogs need walking at least once a day, while cats wander freely in and out of your home. All this coming and going can bring dirt and grime from the outdoors inside, dirtying your carpets and spreading germs.

Keep a towel near your front or back door, cleaning your pets’ paws when they re-enter the house. They probably won’t thank you for it, but will grow used to this routine, learning that they can’t come back inside until their feet are clean.

Add a protective walkway

Whether it’s a doormat or a tile entrance, having a barrier between the great outdoors and your clean carpets can be a lifesaver when it comes to keeping things clean. Doormats absorb water, dirt and mud from mucky paws, preventing the dirt from getting into your home.

Place an absorbent doormat in front of each doorway that your pets use to come and go, making sure to clean it as and when is necessary.

Tackle stains quickly

Toilet training your pet can be a messy and tiring process, for you and your carpet. Until your cat or dog has nailed going to the bathroom outdoors, its important that you’re on the ball with stain removal.

If your pet has an accident, remove any excess from the area before blotting it clean. Use a white vinegar solution to keep odours at bay. Without removing those odours, your pets may continue to return to the same spot.

Call the professionals

If you’ve tried everything, and your carpet is still looking and smelling less than impressive, it may be time to give the professionals a call. Vacuuming quite simply isn’t enough. Pet hair, residue dirt, odours and bacteria can still continue to accumulate within your carpet.

We recommend regular professional cleans, to get rid of the deep, built-up dirt and hair lingering within your carpet. Clean & Dry provide a complete carpet cleaning service in Doncaster to keep your home, and your pets, happy and clean. Our friendly team will restore your carpets in no time, with great value cleaning packages for every need.

Some people are frequent cleaners, while others leave their carpets for months on end. But what if we were to tell you that both options leave a surprising amount of dirt hiding deep in your carpet?

The truth is, cleaning your carpet yourself – however often – simply doesn’t get deep enough. And the results are truly shocking. Back in the noughties, Richard and Judy treated two viewers to a closer look at what’s lurking within their carpets.

Both had their carpets deep cleaned, with dirty water collected from the cleaners and sent for analysis. This post looks at some of the shocking results when carpets aren’t cleaned professionally.

Self-cleaning doesn’t cut it

In the eye-opening carpet cleaning segment, Richard & Judy introduced two viewers – one who never had her carpet deep cleaned but invested in a good quality vacuum cleaner, and one who attempted to steam clean the carpets herself every six months or so.

Despite these attempts, both carpets produced a murky black sludge. From the off, you can see just how little a difference DIY cleaning makes. But it’s what the sludge contains that really highlights the importance of professional carpet cleaning.

What lies beneath…

Think your carpets are clean? Think again. Here’s just a taste of what analysts found within the cleaning water:

• Millions of bits of dead dust mites
• All kinds of hairs – including one which, after analysis, was found to be from a rat
• Body parts from over 30 different types of insect, including a moth wing

They also found enough pollen grains to fertilise an entire wildflower meadow. Yes, your carpets could be making your allergies worse all year round.

Next on the list was a bowl full of human skin. Why? On average, a family of four shed just over three pounds of skin cells in one room over the course of a year.

That skin doesn’t just fester – if only. It’s actually eaten by silverfish, dust mites, cheese mites and carpet beetles, allowing them to thrive. These creatures were all found in abundance in the two volunteers’ carpets.

Dirtier than the streets

This one-off analysis isn’t on its own. Research by Dr Schubert Pereira, Head of Technical Research at Rug Doctor, found that carpets in the UK are five times filthier than the streets. That’s not your quiet village street either – carpets were being compared to some of London’s busiest urban streets around Piccadilly Circus.

It’s simple. Leaving your carpets without professional cleaning for two years produces a massive two pounds of grease, dust, dirt, skin, hair and more, per square foot. That’s why Dr Pereira himself suggests having carpets deep cleaned once every three months, or at least once every six months as a bare minimum.