How To Quickly And Easily Clean Tough Surfaces In Your Home

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Very few people actually enjoy spending the hours required to clean their homes, but it is a necessity. Challenging surfaces, such as carpets and upholstery or marble floors, though, make the task even more difficult.

If you have not been able to catch and remove stains in time, you really have your work cut out for you. Thankfully, though, by tackling these problems with the right tools and strategies in mind, you can quickly and easily get everything clean.

Carpeted Floors

For stains on carpets, you have to act fast. The first step is to always blot the spill with a paper towel. Then you can either try an enzymatic cleaner that is specifically designed for use on carpets or you can instead use just a little bit of soda water in order to help lift the stain before it penetrates too deeply.

If you want, you can follow this up with a spot cleaner for carpets or you can go a more natural route and mix some dishwashing detergent in water and scrub that into the carpet fibers.

Hardwood Floors

For hardwood floors that have a polyurethane finish, use mineral spirits to get rid of scuff marks.

For other stains, simply use a scrubbing pad along with a floor cleaner specially designed for use on hardwood floors with this type of finish to prevent damaging the wood.

Upholstery

The tricky part of cleaning upholstery properly is ensuring that you do not overuse too much cleaning solution, as this can actually leave a larger stain than the one you were attempting to remove.

No matter what, check the furniture's label in order to determine what type of care is required. For example, should you spot-treat or use a water-based cleaning solution? This is the best way to ensure that you will be cleaning your upholstery as it should be cleaned, but a lot of people don't even know that the care label is on the furniture in the first place.

Solid Countertops

Solid countertops in your kitchen can be cleaned effectively with dishwashing detergent or even a stronger cleaning powder if the stains are really difficult to remove.

On semi-gloss surfaces, make sure you use a mildly abrasive cleaner, or opt instead to combine bleach and water and then cut through stains with a scrubbing pad.

Marble Floors

The marble floors in your home are tough to maintain because they are porous and susceptible to absorbing anything that spills on them. As long as you wipe up spills right away, you can prevent damage.

But if you find that your marble is no longer looking as good as it should, you should call in professional marble cleaners to get the job done for you quickly and at a reasonable rate.

When it comes to cleaning the various surfaces of your home, you need to have a variety of tools and cleaning solutions in place. Knowing how to clean difficult surfaces will prevent damage and keep them looking like new.

Featured images:

•  License: Creative Commons
•  License: Creative Commons
•  License: Creative Commons
•  License: Creative Commons
•  License: Creative Commons

This post has been authored by Steve Broad, a marketing professional working for LoveMarble.com which offers marble restoration services in New York City. He enjoys sailing in his leisure time.