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Cleaning Tips, Tricks, and Tools
When it comes to cleaning, having a few tricks up your sleeve is the way to go. And if you want to know how to quickly get rid of dust bunnies, grime, dirt, and allergens, count on The Maids to provide the best cleaning tricks for your home. With over 30 years of experience under our belts, we have more than a few house cleaning tips to share. After all, we don’t go anywhere without a vacuum and cloth in hand! Read on to learn more about cleaning tools and housekeeping strategies you can use to get your home shiny and bright.
The sage advice of “sleep while your baby sleeps” often goes unheeded by new parents, especially parents of new babies and older children. We all know that nap times prove to be some of the
5 Ideas for Romantic Bedroom Decor
Your bedroom might not seem like the soul of your home anymore—that’s probably the kitchen these days—but it’s still a very important place. It’s the area of the house that’s exclusively yours, where you and your sweetheart can unwind after a long day. But if your
I Use a Cleaning Service: Confessions of a Pet Owner
Before I get started, I want you to know that I’m a dog person. I love the look they get on their faces when you come home, the energy they inject into a room, and the way they just seem to
Maintain Your Clean Streak: How to Keep Up Your Home Between Cleanings
That feeling. You know the one. The one when you first walk into your home after your cleaning team is done, and all is right with the world. The one with gleaming floors and vacuum lines and
Easy Summer Clean-Up Tips
Summer means sunny days, gorgeous nights and the occasional humid or dry heat. Depending on where you are in the country, it might be your favorite (or most hated) season. One thing we can all agree on is that committing yourself to a deep cleaning when it’s over 100
Leave Your Kitchen Out of It: Three Easy Grilling Recipes That Keep Your Kitchen Clean
Grilling and eating outside has so many great benefits: Vitamin D, fresh air, a change of scenery and, most importantly, it allows us to take advantage of our recently cleaned home—by keeping it that way. Without those long and lovely days luring our families outside,
Easy Tips to Keep Your Home Cool During Summer
The summer heat is here, and for many, that means hanging out in the air conditioning and pretending you can’t fry an egg on the pavement outside. But what about those of us who don’t have the luxury of AC? Don’t worry, all hope is not lost—you can still enjoy the hot
7 Things You Learned In Kindergarten That Can Keep You Healthy Now
With the first day of school right around the corner, we thought we’d reflect back (in some cases way, way back) about our first days in kindergarten and the lessons we learned there. It’s
5 Ways to Organize a Small Bathroom
Despite what you see in magazines and on Pinterest, not every bathroom is a sprawling ode to marble and gilded fittings. In fact, some are downright small. This doesn’t mean you need to give up all hope of having a nice space for a quiet sit-down—far from it. To help
How to Make Your Short Term Rental Feel Like Home
Whether you’re in a short term rental for work, vacation or a major relocation with your whole family, it’s important you make the space feel like home. We partnered with HomeSuite, experts at finding luxurious and homey short term spaces, to show you some great ideas
I Use a Cleaning Service: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Mom
I was in your shoes once. I waited until my family was asleep, snuck down the toy-strewn stairs, around piles of laundry with ninja-like agility, and snuck onto the computer to ask the
It’s “Simplify Your Life Week.” Here’s What You Can Do About It.
“Simplify Your Life Week” is the first week of August, and just in time for the new school year. We’re taking the first step and giving you all of our home organization blogs in one
Clever Cleaning Tips for Kids Sports Equipment
Kids are messy. That’s something all parents learn at one point or another. Wherever your child is, at some point the order you’ve surrounded them with will become chaos. That’s especially true, and even amplified, for kids in sports. Just about every athletic pursuit
Retire From Work and Housework at the Same Time. Here’s Why (and How)
If you find yourself retiring from the conventional workforce, you aren’t alone. In fact, this year could see as many as 4 million people retiring, to the tune of 11,000 a day. The
4 Undeniable Reasons People Love Traveling With Their Pets
The American Pet Product Association (APPA) found in a survey that American pet lovers share their homes with 78.2 million dogs and 86.4 million cats. (Need a reference point? In that same
3 Eco-Friendly Kitchen Cleaning Hacks
The kitchen is often considered the heart of the home, and for good reason–after all, this is where the food happens! But the amount of foot traffic through this room means it gets cleaned a lot more frequently than other parts of your house. Think of all the
Ultimate Tips for Moving Cross-Country
How to Stay Organized during the Transition Moving cross-country just may be your personal Everest. It could be the most complicated logistical endeavor you ever undertake. Here at The Maids, we know that it’s all in the details. That’s why we’ve teamed up with
What Your Pinterest Boards Are Missing!
If you’ve been following the blog a while, you know we love to clean. We love everything about the cleaning process: the before’s, the after’s, the clean slates, and the fresh starts. Whether
How to Keep the Bathroom Stocked During a Party
Party time! You’ve lined up the adult beverages, warmed the appetizers, and are ready to throw a smashing good time for your guests. There’s just one lingering issue: the bathroom. It’s clean, of course; you saw to that. But there’s a ton of people coming over
10 Cleaning Memes That Prove You Aren’t Alone
If you are like us, every once in a while you need a cleaning meme or a few cleaning jokes to tell it like it is. We’ve collected a few of our favorites for you. Stay tuned! We find new favorite jokes about cleaning all the time! Clean Serenity
How Not to Ruin Your New Carpet
So you just moved into a swanky pad, and dang…that new carpet is looking fine. In order to keep things bright and fresh, we’ve gathered some carpet cleaning tips and tricks to tell you how not to ruin this blossoming relationship. Getting to Know Each Other First
Warning: You are losing money from a cluttered home office
If you work from home, a cluttered office can not only cost you time and productivity, it can also cost you a chunk of your paycheck, whether in the form of late fees on bills or billable hours. We’ll show you the biggest offenders and the best ways to banish them for
How to Prevent Dents and Scratches When Moving
There’s no two ways about it: Moving is stressful. For all the rewards that come from setting up a new home and decorating to your heart’s content, getting all your furniture and belongings into a new house, whether it’s across the street or across the country, is
Professional Kitchen Storage Ideas
At some point in your life, there comes a time when you’re not sure what to do with all your stuff. No matter how clean you keep your surroundings, life requires a certain amount of objects to get through the day—and those things can pile up. The kitchen in
Quick House Cleaning Checklist
Quick, hide the magazine stash! Guests are coming over, and your house is looking less than its best. We know things can get crazy sometimes, and daily tidying can fall by the wayside. Meanwhile, occasionally you need to blast through some cleaning in a hurry. Here
3 Reasons Why Hiring an Uninsured Cleaning Service Could Cost You Millions
We know that hiring the best maid service can feel like a luxury, especially when you know someone who cleans houses on his or her own for a fraction of the cost. However, any money saved at the forefront could cost you much more than pain, stress, and heartache; they
Don’t Lose Your Lid: Five Tips for Keeping Plastic Containers Organized
You can’t beat the convenience of plastic food storage containers, except when you go to dig them out of the drawer or cabinet only to find that you have twice as many containers as lids, or vice versa, and none of what you have fits each other. It might not be
Refrigerator Organization: Zone Defense is a Good Offense
Before we burst into refrigerator organization, make sure you read about how to clean a refrigerator properly. After all, what good is an organized fridge if it’s full of expired items on sticky shelves? Once you’ve tossed the expired items (check your salad dressings
What Nail Polish Stains, Mold and Hydrogen Peroxide Have In Common
One thing we’ve learned about our readers, you guys really love to learn how to do stuff. And based on the popularity of certain posts, it’s because you spill (how to get nail polish out of carpet), have unwanted funk (how to kill mold), or really just need a laugh
Your Teen’s Bedroom: To Clean or Not to Clean?
Teen bedrooms. In a word: Yeesh. A recent New York Times article explored the forsaken habitat of the human adolescent, and described, in anecdotal detail, the frustrations of both the parents and the teenager in the endless battle of who should clean what. It’s kind
Three Free Apps for Tracking Your Recycling Habits
We all understand the benefits of recycling, but we may not know what is recyclable and where it can be recycled. Here are three great (and FREE) recycling apps that help answer those two questions and more. Earth Day is April 22nd—what better time to start saving the
The 5 C’s of an Organization Wizard
Color-coded closets. Clean countertops. Captured clutter. While these C’s may resemble the homes of the organized wizards of the world, they aren’t quite the action verbs that teach the rest of us how to reign it all in. Master the five C’s below and you’ll learn how
Declutter Your Home For a Cause: Where to Donate Books
Even though there are numerous studies that link clutter to negative impacts on mental and physical health, most of us have a hard time parting with our stuff. As it turns out, however, the benefits of decluttering your home can have a much greater impact than you
March Madness Cinderella Story: Make a Clean (Commercial) Break
We get it, it’s March Madness. Workplace productivity is grinding to a halt, as is most of the bandwidth. There’s no reason why you can’t get things done at home, however. It just takes a clever use of commercial breaks. Every March Madness has a Cinderella Story, and
House Cleaning Games: How to Get Lucky on St. Patrick’s Day
It seems to be the dynamic of every relationship: One person does most of the cleaning, the other…doesn’t. Sometimes it’s because they don’t do it well (and have been told as much). Sometimes it’s because they don’t want to. Sometimes it’s because they just don’t see
Our Spring Cleaning Checklist: Cleaning Tips For What Not To Clean
The interwebs are full of spring-cleaning tips and websites touting the best spring-cleaning checklist. We at The Maids don’t believe an ultimate list exists; in fact, we believe the best spring cleaning tips we could share are ultimately ones everyone should use all
Best Organizing Blogs of 2015 (Besides Ours)
If you’ve been reading our blog, you know we are on one heck of a decluttering kick. And who could blame us? Once you get a taste of a pristine desk and the ability to find exactly what you are looking for, you want to keep cleaning it forward! As we were researching
10 Decluttering Tips That Take 5 Minutes or Less
If you have five minutes, you have the ability to take back your home from the clutter that threatens to take it over. Just five minutes a day—or whenever you can spare it—will help you feel better about the space you live in, giving you more room to breathe and
These Clutter Statistics Will Shock You.
There’s an epidemic sweeping our nation’s households. More pervasive than mold and more time-consuming than binge-watching Scandal episodes, this epidemic is negatively impacting our productivity, budgets, time and health. It’s the “Epidemic of Clutter.”
The Maids Heat Things Up In The Kitchen
We’ve written a lot about kitchen cleaning in the years this blog has been published, so we thought we’d take a moment to consolidate our favorite and most popular posts and present them in one handy place. If you find yourself snowed in or cabin-fevered, use these
10 Colors Your Walls Can’t Wait To Wear in 2015
Even on the most limited budget, nothing completely transforms a room the way a few hours and a can of paint can. Adding color to walls can instantly make a house feel like a home, one room at a time. The hardest part of the painting process often isn’t the taping or
6 Ways to Trick Kids (and Some Adults) Into Cleaning
We get it. Cleaning is a chore. If it were always awesome and fun and easy, we wouldn’t get so many chances to do what we do. That being said, cleaning isn’t really an optional thing; after all, dishes must get done, laundry must get washed (and dried, folded and put
Don’t be a Loser: 10 Ways to Find What You Need in 2015
We all know that January is Resolution Month, and this time we are refusing to put “lose weight” at the top of our list. Let’s strike the word “lose” from this year’s vocabulary. Let 2015 be the Year of Found Things. May you find whatever you are looking for, whether
5 Things the Flu Virus Hopes You Never Do
The flu virus is an unwelcome houseguest that would love nothing more than to take up residence and make your life—and the lives of everyone in your home—absolutely miserable. Kick the flu to the curb with these helpful tips. And if you need a visually stimulating
4 Cleaning Mistakes We Know You’ve Made In The Last 3 Months
Mistakes are a part of life. It’s how you learn from them that matter. And if it makes housework easier, everyone wins! More product is not better. It’s just more. Today’s detergents and cleaning agents are so concentrated that using more than the recommended amount
10 Ways To Prevent Your Doorbell From Catching You Off Guard
There are two sounds that occur in my life that nearly always send me over the edge. The microwave beep that keeps reminding me the cold coffee I tried to reheat has now, in fact, gone cold again. The doorbell. For really any reason. While the microwave is like a
5 Cleaning Tasks Your Holiday Guests Will Only Notice If You Don’t Do.
Fill in the blank: When a guest steps into your home, they ask, “What’s that _____________ smell?” A. Delicious B. Clean C. Musty D. No adjective, just an uncomfortable pause. If you are hosting guests this holiday season, no doubt your cleaning efforts have
Get Undone in the Bedroom: 7 Ways to Take Clutter Out and Put Awesome In
Dropped socks, forgotten books, unmade beds–it’s easy to pick up messes in the bedroom, but when was the last time you really cleaned it? For a room that sees you more asleep than awake, it’s easy for bedroom grime and dust to sneak up on you. Take a couple of
5 Scandalous Cleaning Tasks That Will Have You Cleaning More Often
There are some that would argue that there is nothing sexier than a clean home. (Men, take note: The majority would argue there’s nothing sexier than when you do it without asking). Defrocked closets, lovely pantries, fresh food, and an inviting bed all hit the sweet
5 Ways To Keep Football Season From Driving You Crazy
An article from the International Business Times claims that Fantasy Football will reduce productivity of the American workforce by $13 billion this football season. And while that number is astounding, if not unbelievable, there are many people who would agree that