Top Cleaning Tips From the Pros

Invest in Proper Tools

Professional cleaners don’t use gadgets. You’ll never find them toting specialized, one-use tools or gee-whiz gimcracks hawked on some television infomercial. Buy good tools, once, and use them, and you’ll be finished in record time.

Tote Your Tools

How does your cleaning session go? Is it fast and focused or more like this? Ooops! Forgot the powdered cleanser, so down the stairs you trot. The toilet brush? It’s in the kids’ bathroom down the hall. Run to the laundry room for more cleaning cloths, to the kitchen for a box of tissues. Where’s the vacuum? Did the teenager take the squeegee to wash the car?
Professional cleaners tote their tools with them, all their tools, cleansers, brushes and rags needed to finish the job are right there in the tote tray. Vacuum, mop and mini-vac wait in the doorway. A plastic bag for trash is tucked into a pocket, next to the waving lambswool duster. That’s why the pro has finished the entire bathroom before our amateur makes it back up the stairs with the powdered cleanser.

Simplify Supplies

There’s a reason the pros can tote all the products they need in one tray: They’ve simplified their cleaning products. Professional cleaners go to work carrying the Big Four:

• Light-duty evaporating cleaner (glass cleaner or multisurface cleaner)
  
• Heavy-duty degreasing cleaner
  
• Tile and bathroom cleaner
  
• Powdered abrasive cleanser
  

That’s it! No soap scum remover, no special counter spray, no single-use products designed to clean only blinds or fans or walls. The professionals know that with these four simple products they’ll be able to handle any ordinary cleaning chore.