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Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016
Hooker Furniture’s Skyline Collection: Don’t miss on cleaning the mattress and its cover during spring.
This is the season to clean your pruners and take the gardening gloves out of the storage cabinet. Spring is once again here, bringing with it longer days, the freshest flowers and green leaves and, of course, garden chores. Your spring itinerary waits –
It’s Gardening Time
This is that time when the early bulbs come out and wildflowers show up in the Pacific Southwest and Northwest. It is best to plant vegetables and herbs in Texas, not forgetting the companion plants as you do so. Try something that you have not done before – plant something exotic – and keep a garden of the local wildlife. Get more herbs and veggies into the ground such as collards, chard, eggplant, summer squash, cucumbers, tomatillos, tomatoes, and endive. Plant more of rosemary, sage, mint, lemongrass, chives, thyme, santolina, sorrel and artemesia.
Century Furniture Living Room Adira Sectional 11-Sectional: Include the throws and cushions during spring cleaning.
In the Northwest, be sure to prune the apple trees so that they will be able to produce more fruit. March is the last month that you can prune the fruit trees so better get to it.
When you are from California, March is the month to plant bougainvilleas in pots. You should be able to enjoy an amazing display of this flower plant by midsummer. Look for the compact varieties like Singapore Pink, Purple Queen or the Temple Fire. When you plant, though, make sure that you do not break the root ball since plants don’t want that.
Citrus plants are best planted in the Southwest regions. March is also the time of the year when you can add a lovely citrus tree in your garden. Pruning this tree is also best done during this month.
Those from the Rocky Mountains should plant more tomatoes, parsley, carrots, onions, marigolds, and nasturtiums.
Century Furniture Living Room Adira Sectional 11-Sectional: Include the throws and cushions during spring cleaning.
Sprucing Up the Indoors
Is there also a way that you can prepare your home for the spring season? Cleaning is not just limited to your garden. March is also the month to best clean windows, carpets, mattresses, and upholstery.
Begin with the rugs and carpets. High traffic zones should be prioritized as these have the tendency to bug you more when the time comes. Clean up the play spaces, entryways, and other high traffic zones. Vacuum these areas for no less than 30 seconds. Do the top of the area rugs first then go to the underside to clean them up, too.
Apply some degreaser on stains then use a hair dryer on the wet spots. Open the windows once you’re done vacuuming.
The windows are your next priority. Dust builds up here so take that whisk broom, a hose, window cleaner, and a bucket.
Close the screens and windows before you begin cleaning. Brush away the debris on the screens and the tracks. Hose down the windows from about five feet away. The hose’s power should be able to easily reach your second floor windows without the use of a ladder.
You can either hose down or use a bucket of soapy water to do this window cleaning project.
Next, there’s the curtain. As you have hosed down the windows and are waiting for them to dry, you should also get to the curtains. Use a steamer to clean it up. Once you’ve cleaned per section, open the windows to dry the curtains.
This task should take no more than 10 minutes for every panel.
Lastly, there’s your mattress. All you’ll need is a carton of baking soda, a sieve, stain remover, and some dryer sheets complete with essential oils.
The mattress cover can be laundered in a regular manner. As for the mattress, just pour baking soda to the sieve. Dust all parts of the mattress with soda. You will soon notice dirt and moisture clinging to the powder. This should eliminate any bad odors.
Remake the bed and make sure to vacuum the soda once you change the sheets the next time. Tuck the dryer sheets with essential oils under your mattress cover so you’ll smell the fresh scent as you sleep.
Ain’t spring cleaning great? This may just be an annual task but it’s one that you shouldn’t miss if you want to have a clean, fresh-smelling home once more.
Tags: gardening, McCreerys, McCreerys Home Furnishings, plant art, spring, spring interior design, spring interiors, spring season
Posted in Interior Design 101, Outdoors Style, Spring Season | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2016
Check inside the drawers and shelves for pieces of paper that are no longer needed. Featured desk is the Winners Only Home Office Sofa Table/Writing Desk AZL100S.
Have you ever felt powerless when you arrive home and find clutter strewn all over the floor? Doesn’t this feeling escalate when you find that all the other rooms show the exact amount of clutter throughout? Here are some tips that you can follow as you go about with your spring decluttering –
Begin to Declutter
Decide to make this change now – start to declutter your room. Focus on what you need to clean first. Instead of wandering without purpose or cleaning just a bit each time, you can break down the cleaning to phases or to different rooms.
There might be just a little or a lot of decluttering tasks to do but no matter, you still need to stay motivated to finish the task. Throwing paper clutter can be time consuming especially when you haven’t cleaned your desk drawers or shelves for a whole year or so.
Maitland-Smith Kitchen Island 5130-649 is a great organizer inside the busiest room in your home.
Total Declutter
There are some tasks that can affect your entire home but many homeowners find it more effective to walk from room to room then decluttering from there. Rather than being stuck in just a small area, it is best to get about and start cleaning.
So go ahead, pick up that broom and mop and let’s clean up that mess – whether you have a small or a big home.
First, look for those crumpled sheets of paper, those useless tourist brochures or leaflets, and many other printed materials. Those that are no longer needful should be thrown away.
A good mindset to develop if you ever want to declutter your home a hundred-percent this spring is to let go of things that you no longer have a use for. Else, you would just be hoarding a huge amount of garbage that you won’t end up using anyway.
Check out any coupons that you might have collected in the past. See if the dates are already expired and if they still aren’t, ask yourself if you really are ever going to use such coupons. If not, then it’s time to say goodbye to them, too.
Next, it’s time to clean your office space. Dust off from ceiling to the floor. Be sure to clean the desk drawers, coffee table, chairs (especially the upholstered ones), mirrors and many more.
Should you consider keeping a few brochures, then be sure to add a vision board or keeping a household file.
Next to the home office, you could go to the bathroom. This can also be a room for clutter if you do not have the right storage solution installed. If you want to achieve a semblance of order in your bathroom, then be sure to organize items in there.
Decluttering the bathroom can take just 10 minutes. Begin by putting a trash bin right by the bathroom door. Next, toss any of the dirty towels or face cloths into the hamper. Replace them with fresh ones coming from your linen closet.
If you find any laundry items on the floor, remove them and place them inside the hamper as well. Recycle items such as used tissue papers, empty rolls, shampoo bottles, etc.
Decluttering the bedroom can take less than 15 minutes. Begin by dusting the night tables and tossing garbage to the right bins. Put used linen in the hamper and clean up the rest of the dressers. Sweep the bureau’s or dresser’s top part and see if there is also clutter there.
Cleaning the kitchen is paramount because this is the place where foods are prepared. Sweep the countertops, Kitchen Island and the rest of the kitchen floor. The key to a clean room is to put things back to their proper place. Find the right storage space for every little thing that keeps ending up somewhere where it shouldn’t be.
You see, spring decluttering can also be fun. Do this task with your family and observe how the hours slip more quickly.
Tags: clutter-free home, decluttering, decluttering advice, home maintenance, McCreerys, McCreerys Home Furnishings, spring cleaning, spring season
Posted in Spring Season | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 1st, 2016
Consider livening up the color of your living room by adding colors from nature. Here, touches of orange and yellow give life to the neutral backdrop. (Featured set is from the Belaire Living Room Collection of Jonathan Louis)
So it’s spring once more! We’re pretty certain that you’re ready to freshen up your crib and update your furniture. Spring cleaning does not have to spell a sore body or burnt skin. This may be the case for some but you can make a difference by knowing which chemicals contain questionable ingredients. Just a brief warning, here are some of such cleaning agents –
Danger: Corrosive
To begin with, ammonium chloride is often found in deodorizers and toilet bowl cleaners. These can cause permanent damage to your skin when not handled correctly. It is also highly corrosive to the eyes.
Aliphatic petroleum solvent which is an ingredient in most carpet cleaners can damage the nervous system while crystalline silica (also a popular ingredient in many cleaners) is also filled with carcinogen which can irritate the skin, eyes and lungs.
Lastly, tripropylene glycol monomethyl ether which is found in waxes, floor cleaners and polishes are known to have caused kidney failure and narcosis in some people.
Spring Cleaning Must-Haves
Instead of resorting to those chemical cleaners mentioned above, it is best to have these safe and natural household cleaners.
Spring Cleaning Can Be FUN
Who says spring cleaning has to be a drag? Fun begins when you play some upbeat music. This will keep you energized as you do all those scrubbing and sweeping and wiping. You can also engage the kids to clean up by having pizza after everyone finishes his or her chore.
If the weather is nice, go ahead and open your doors and windows to let in that fresh air. This, of course, will also increase your positive energy.
It is also important to pace yourself as you clean up your home. Most home will not be cleaned up in just one go (at least this is the case if you want some deep cleaning to happen).
Create a checklist to break down the different rooms into sections during the week. You should also break down sections of the room per person along with an estimation of the time it would take to finish each task.
Sort and declutter in major rooms first. Sort out those items that you would like to say goodbye to and those that you can still donate or sell.
Be sure to cover upholstered, especially white furniture, when dusting off surfaces. Featured here is the Huntington House Dining Room Banquette 2403-41.
Spring Cleaning from the Top Down
This is one of the most important tips in spring cleaning. The last thing that you would like to do is to keep sweeping the floor all because you have not properly segregated the cleanup. For instance, it is advisable to clean the air conditioning units and the ceiling first before you even begin to dust the furniture.
Working from the top down will save you a lot of time, resources, and energy.
To this rule there is, of course, an exception. In the case of walls, it is best to have it cleaned from the bottom up and then back down again. Those grimy soap suds would be a lot harder to clean when found on clean walls. The only way to remove them is to work your way up again to remove prior drips.
Another important rule is to dry clean everything before you even begin to wet clean. Remove the dirt so that it won’t result into a muddy mess. This means you must sweep before you mop, dusting all fan blades before you wash them, and vacuuming windows before you wipe them with wet rags.
Spring cleaning also means checking those overlooked surfaces such as door frames and baseboards; search the dirtiest places in your home, and freshen everything up even your furniture.
Tags: home maintenance, McCreerys, McCreerys Home Furnishings, spring, spring cleaning, spring furniture shopping, spring season, spring shopping
Posted in Spring Season | No Comments »
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