Photo credit to steelmore.

Beautiful stone floors can set the stage for an elegantly traditional or crisp contemporary home, setting off the beauty of your furnishings, right down to a monogram wall grille, abstract painting or other wall decor. While it may seem impervious to damage, natural stone actually does need to be carefully cared for to avoid stains and permanent damage. If you have flooring made of granite, calcite, marble or terrazzo tile, you need to treat it with special care to keep it looking new.

Proper Spill Cleanup
Clean up spills on porous stones as soon as possible. Always remember to blot a spill. Never wipe a spill, because that simply spreads it across a larger surface, and it actually makes the spill worse. Blot, beginning at the outside edge working towards the center. After absorbing as much of the spill as possible, use a clean, wet rag and a neutral cleaner to finish cleaning the stain.

Photo credit to robbiew.

Stain Removal
With a little luck, a little soap and water is all that you will need to clean up the spill, however in the event that the stain is a little more stubborn, you may need a chemical cleaner to remove it. If you are going to use a chemical to clean a stain, make sure that you have the right chemical for the right stain and surface.

Many times if you know how the stain came to be then you can easily select the right chemical for its removal. For example, if you know that a spill is coffee or tea, you can use hydrogen peroxide to remove the stain. Oxyclean® will lift many different types of stains like coffee, tea or even rust. If you have an oil based stain, ammonia or a de-greaser will do the trick. For oil based paints, mineral spirits will clean the stain nicely.

You can find many different cleaners on the market that claim to remove latex paint stains, but be sure to test the product in an obscure spot to make sure that it does not cause any damage to the stone surface. If a cleaning product is too harsh, it may allow erosion causing the marble surface to become permanently damaged.

When you are applying a chemical cleaner to a natural stone surface, you should apply it as a poultice. Use diatomaceous earth to fashion the poultice mixing two parts earth to one part chemical. Then add distilled water to make a thin paste. Spread the past on the entire area of the stain and even a little beyond. Cover the area with plastic wrap to trap in moisture and let it cure for 12 – 24 hours. At the end of that time, peel back the plastic and allow the poultice to continue drying. After it is completely dry, scrape it up and rinse with cold water.

If the stain is gone, great. If it has lightened, then you can repeat the process until the stain is gone.

Photo credit to rene_ehrhardt.

Sealing after Cleaning
If stains seem to soak into your stone surface too easily, you may need to reseal your stone surfaces. Floors need to be resealed periodically because constant foot traffic eventually wears down the layer of sealant on your floor. There many different products that work very well for sealing natural stone flooring. You can also find sealants at your local flooring store or hardware store.

To keep your floors looking great, use the same brand of sealer every time that you seal your floor. You may need to treat heavy traffic areas far more frequently than the rest of the floor. The sealant’s maker will offer guidelines for how often you should plan to seal you floor.

It really is an exercise in futility telling a child to clean his bedroom if it is not organized in the first place. By giving your child some help in arranging his or her bedroom and getting it organized, you at least give them a fighting chance at returning it to that condition when you ask them to tidy up their room.

Thinning Possessions

Usually a child’s bedroom is rather small, and often they have the share their bedroom with a brother or sister. Cramped spaces are even harder to keep clean than open spaces, especially if there are too many things shoehorned into the room to begin with. So work with your child to determine which things need to go and which things stay. Try to edit out anything that they do not currently use, which includes outgrown toys and off season clothes. While the clothes may return as the weather changes, the toys can be turned over to charity or a yard sale for another child to enjoy.

After clearing everything out of the room, you can determine what should be thrown away, donated to charity, put in a yard sale or kept. Some items that you keep may be stored in a room other than the child’s bedroom. For example, off season clothing could be stored in a trunk or hall closet and rotated back into the bedroom at an appropriate time. You can do the same thing with toys. You could also store these items in plastic bins under the bed for easy, yet out of the way, access.

Options for Storage

When you are adding storage to a child’s room, make sure that they can easily access it. If you decide to add floor to ceiling shelving in their room use the higher shelves for display or longer term storage; placing things they need to access on the lower shelves. By arranging the storage in this manner you will make it easy for your child to pick up and put away their own belongings. By adding bins to the shelves, a child can remove the bin and take it to whatever area he is playing in, and then when he is done he can replace his toys in the bin and return it to the shelf making cleanup quick and easy.

Sensible Shoe Box Storage

If your child has lots of tiny treasures, you can use clear plastic shoe boxes to store them so your child can see what is inside. These boxes can be stacked for efficient storage and you can label them for quick reference. If your child is not yet able to read, draw a picture label for the box. When you store items in boxes and bins, it encourages the child to replace a box before removing another one, whereas if everything is in one big box, they can easily end up with a huge mess simply to find one little toy.

Hammocks are for More than Napping

Another handy way to store items in a child’s bedroom is using a toy hammock. If you have a child who loves stuffed animals, the toy hammock can tame the mountain of toys very easily. You can install the net hammock on the wall over the bed or in the corner, and it will hold all of the stuffed animals close by yet out of the way.

Photo credit to ndawg.

Hang Wall Hook and a Bulletin Board

Wall hooks are indispensable for holding jackets, book bags, totes and ball caps. Choose a sturdy decorative style, such as a musical notes wall art or tropical metal art rack to complement the decor.

Another thing that adds a clutter to a child’s bedroom is paper. From schoolwork to artwork, taming the paper pile is always a challenge. One easy way to handle this mountain is by weeding out old work and displaying the rest on a bulletin board. Whether the board is cork, magnetic or a French style bulletin board, it will get the papers off of the floor and onto the wall.

After the room is organized and clean, it is reasonable to expect your child to keep it that way. So set up a daily time for bedroom cleanup, and you will get a clean room while your child develops good habits for a lifetime.

Your furniture and accessories, from tropical metal art to musical wall decor, can add a wealth of style and interest to any room. However, nothing will make a room look good when the carpets are dirty or stained. There are many different ways to go about cleaning a carpet, and some methods may simply may make your carpet look cleaner while actually adding more grimy residue to the fibers.

You have undoubtedly seen shampoo formulas that you apply wet and vacuum up after they dry. Well, these cleaning solutions are actually leaving behind a residue that attaches to the dirt so that it can be removed with a vacuum. Unfortunately, the net result is that the dirt get embedded even deeper into your carpet. While the cleaner may make your carpet initially look cleaner with brighteners that reflect light back into the room from the carpet, over time, the carpet will begin to develop a yellowish tinge from the grime remaining in the carpet.

Photo credit to mwichary.

Steam Cleaning Still the Best Choice

If you really want to clean a carpet, the only way to do it properly is to have it steam cleaned. Just about all carpet manufacturers recommend steam cleaning for the best results. Steam gets dirt that is buried deep in the nap of the carpet, and it breaks the dirt down and removes it. Steam cleaning a carpet can reach grime that has worked it way all the way down to the base of the carpet. Even though the process is called steam cleaning, the moniker is not quite accurate. Usually there is no steam actually used in steam cleaning. The process involves water and detergent being transmitted to the carpet surface in a fine spray. Then it is brushed into the carpet and removed with strong suction.

External extraction is the process that most companies use. They have powerful equipment mounted in a truck, which is much more powerful than either your vacuum or the steam cleaner that you rent at your local hardware store. All that comes into your home is the hose, while all of the machinery remains outside in the truck.

If you decide to rent a steam cleaner, make sure to mix the detergent correctly following the instructions for the proper strength. If you have too strong of a formulation, you will leave residue in your carpet causing it to get dirtier faster. Start with the grimiest areas on your carpet so the detergent can soak the area for a while. You can also repeat the process several times if your carpets are particularly dirty.

To get your carpets really clean you can rinse twice after cleaning. In essence you will repeat the entire cleaning process, however you will not use any detergent. The effect of the second cleaning is actually that of a thorough rinsing.

Maintaining a Clean Carpet

To help keep your carpets looking great in between steam cleanings, you can use powder freshening products. Powder formulas help your carpet stay smelling fresh, and they also absorb grime. However, before sprinkling powder on your carpet, make sure that your vacuum is powerful enough to suction the powder from your carpet, or you are just making a bad situation worse.

When you have stains on your carpet, spot treat them using your steam cleaning detergent. Rinse thoroughly and use a shop-vac to remove all of the water from the carpet. Then cover the area with a dry towel to absorb any remaining moisture. Keep foot traffic off of the area until the carpet is completely dry.