Home Organizing Tips To Sell Your House Faster

Home organizing and decluttering your home can do wonders for preparing to put your house on the market for sale. In this article we’ll cover ten professional home organizer tips for decluttering to help you sell your house quicker!

1. Home Organizing with a touch of “Depersonalizing”.

When a potential buyer enters your home, it’s important for them to feel as if they can imagine their own belongings in it. Home stagers know all too well that creating the “home and decor” style magazine feel without personalizations is what sells. In order to give them this feel, pack all the family heirlooms and personal photos up and put them in a safe place.  Remove all of your fridge magnets and hide the tooth brushes.  Free up wall space to brighten up the room and let buyers imagine their own photos or paintings on your walls.

2. Declutter Your Closets and Storage.

De-clutter your closets and storage areas so potential buyers see room for their belongings. Renting a storage space could be helpful. This will also make your move easier, sorting out any closet items you don’t want to take with you.

3. Arrange the Kitchen like a Top Chef.

Any realtor or home organizer will tell you that the number one selling point in a home is the kitchen. Minimize, organize, and prioritize. Shining all of the appliances, organize the pantry, and sort the silverware like a showroom. Think home organizing magazine worthy!

4. Stage Your Furniture

Keeping to the plan to declutter and organize your house, move some of the miscellaneous furniture to your storage space to make your home feel more spacious.  This could include fetching staging furniture like the pros depending on your needs.

5. “Safe Keeping’ Your Favorite Items

To save ourselves from being at risk of our favorite pieces of furniture or anything that is precious to us getting manipulated in any way while home organizing or staging, remove them and store them in a safe place.

6. Make Small Repairs

Do a thorough walk through the house looking for any minor repairs that may stick out to buyers and repair them. This could mean fixing leaky faucets, patching small holes in walls, or touch up paint. Take a look at the light fixtures to see if any bulbs need to be replaced as well to brighten up your home

7. Neutralize the Colors

Keeping with the theme of making potential buyers feel at home, if you have any colorful rooms, consider making them neutral. Whether you need to remove decor or do some painting, attention to detail sells.

8. Make the House Feel Welcoming

One of the best home organizing tips to sell your home or apartment is to lighten up the house and make it feel welcoming and cozy. Thia can be achieved by adding a few selectively placed plants and candles. Remember to “wow” buyers when they first enter your home.

9. Clean and Decorate the Outside

First impressions are everything when selling a home. It starts with the outside before walking in the front door. One of the easiest ways to spiff up the outside is to take extra time in landscaping the property, if it applies, and add some colorful flowers. but not too many!  We don’t want them to think they can’t keep up with the property depending on the sale price.

10. Make Your House Sparkling Clean!

Last but certainly not least, make your house as clean as can be! One of the best ways to present a house is after it’s had a deep cleaning. As a professional house cleaning service and home organizer, our move out cleaning’s are meant to sell!

Holiday Cleaning for Thanksgiving

Holiday Cleaning Tips From QC Cleaning – Maid Service Pros

Holiday Cleaning can be hectic and time consuming if you don’t plan ahead!  Our already busy schedule are in overdrive for the holidays s0 cleaning becomes more and more difficult to fit in. Divide your holiday cleaning tasks up into small segments that can be accomplished in a short amount of time and won’t overwhelm. The goal would be to have all the heavy lifting done before the day of your event and then the day before or the day of the event, you would just have a few items to touch up.

You are in your house everyday, so looking at your house differently will help you clean better. Walk through your home as if you were a guest at a holiday party to look for items that you’d like to clean or put away.

Instead of trying to accomplish your holiday cleaning yourself, get some help. If your children are old enough or you have another helping hand, assign them some tasks that fit their ability levels and you can concentrate on the more involved tasks.

Some common items you’ll want to attend to:

  1. Wash Windows and Screens
  2. Mop or Wipe Baseboards
  3. Clean and Press Window and Shower Curtains
  4. Iron and Clean Bedspreads
  5. Deep Clean Bathrooms
  6. Straighten and Clean out Coat Closets
  7. Wash or steam clean rugs
  8. Clean Stove Top or Range
  9. Wipe Kitchen Cabinets
  10. Wipe down Small Appliances
  11. Clean out the Refrigerator
  12. Dust All Surfaces
  13. Clean the Kitchen Sink and disposal

Of course many of these items are included in our cleaning packages. But, if you are doing it yourself, hopefully this list will at least get you started.

Once you have all the large items done, keep them maintained until the event. The day of the event we have a 1 hour quick cleaning list to go through.

  1. Hang Fresh Hand Towels
  2. Fill up Soap Dispensers
  3. Sweep the Front Steps or Porch
  4. Clean any Front Door Glass
  5. Damp Mop Kitchen Floor
  6. Wipe Down Counter Tops
  7. Move all larger items to the back of the refrigerator
  8. Straighten Magazines and Books
  9. Straighten and Fluff Sofa
  10. Vacuum High Traffic Areas

For regular cleanings or a one time clean schedule an appointment with us today!

How Much Stress Can A Messy House Cause?

Clutter can play a significant role in how we feel day to day with a cloud following us around reminding us of our messy house! Messy homes and places of work leave us feeling anxious, helpless, and overwhelmed. Why does mess lead to so much stress?

1. Clutter bombards our minds with extra “to-dos” and distractions causing our senses to work overtime distracting us from what’s important!

2. A messy place makes it more difficult to relax, both physically and mentally, continuously reminding us out work is never done.

3. Clutter makes us anxious because we’re never sure what it’s going to take to get through to the bottom of the pile along with feelings of guilt if we prolong tackling it!

4. Clutter inhibits creativity and productivity by invading the open spaces that allow most people to think, brain storm, and problem solve – making our actual work outside of home more difficult in time.

5. Clutter frustrates us by preventing us from locating what we need quickly (e.g. files and paperwork lost in the “pile” or keys swallowed up by the clutter).

Fortunately, unlike other more commonly recognized sources of stress (e.g., our jobs, our relationships), clutter is one of the easiest life stressors to fix! Here are a few ideas:

Make it fun! While you’re de-cluttering in between professional cleaning and organizing services schedule a time for yourself to clear your mind, put on some music and have at it! The more up-beat, the better! Not only will you enjoy the tunes, the time will pass faster and you’ll probably work faster than you would without the music! Live stress free in your home today with a solid cleaning and organizing plan!

Home Organizing Products

5 Smart Home Organizing Products and Ideas

We at QC Cleaning have organized countless homes and have gotten to know the spaces, nooks, and crannies in residences from top to bottom! While our services have never required that homeowners purchase any products whatsoever for their home to be fantastically organized, we have certainly come across some spaces where a simple home organizing product would be ideal and here are our five smart home organizing products & ideas!

1. Clothing and Closet Storage – One of the most difficult to maintain areas of the home when it comes to organization is your closet storage area because we interact with it so often as we change clothes and do laundry day to day. But we’re here to help! The best way to manage closet and clothing storage is with simple and inexpensive products such as clothes hangers that store multiple pieces of clothing on one hanger and closet storage racks where folded clothes, shoes and purses can be stored neatly.

2. Kitchen Storage – When it comes to kitchens there are two main places that typically need most of the organizing and they are in the cabinets and on top of your counters. Often we have counters with little room left for good cooking because of too many appliances and utensils but products such as pot racks, coffee k-cup organizers and minimalist dish racks can save loads of space making for a great cooking area! There are also some really great cabinet organizers out there that

3. Laundry Storage & Organization – Laundry organization is right up there with our closet space because the two interact on a daily basis! Since we see these so often it’s easy to forget how important laundry baskets and hampers are. Consider updating your hamper to something neatly disguised as a decorative item for your room or hallway! You can also save space with foldable drying racks and door-mounted laundry baskets for the kids!

4. Office & Desk Organization – If you work from home, have kids in need of homework space or just like to have your own computer time in an office type of environment in your home then you know that the desktop can be a little hard to keep in check at times. Consider getting letter and file organizers if you tend to accumulate loose-leaf paper and files, you can also get desk supply organizers for pens, pencils, and other small items to keep them all in one place!

5. Garage Storage & Organization – Garages are our specialties! Garages and attics can be the most time consuming areas of the home to clean and organize due to the amount of stuff normally taking up the space! The best way to organize your garage and preserve space is to use vertical storage products. Bins and shelving that you can put up against the wall of your garage can save tons of space and keep a garage organized. Also consider getting racks for any broom, shovels or rakes your might store in your garage along with other yard tools!

And that does it, our top 5 smart products and ideas for home organizing!

Organizing & Cleaning Tips for Your Homes New Year’s Resolution

We can all breathe a sigh of relief now that the New Year has come and the craziness of the holidays has passed, allowing us to make or break resolutions we set for ourselves in 2016!

With the New Year come additions to our houses in the form of gifts and possibly new decorations that were added that we’ll be putting away if we haven’t already done so, needless to say we have more stuff around the house than any other time of the year.

Here are three quick organizing and cleaning tips your house will appreciate for your New Year resolution:

1. In with the new, out with the old. A good post holiday rule is that for every new item brought in, recycle or donate an old item that the new might be replacing to preserve space and keep from clutter.

2. Categorize and label. We recommend using a professional home organizing service like our own to straiten the home out but if this is something you try to take on yourself, label as many boxes and bins as you can for storage or easy access!

3. A cleaning schedule. Once all the clutter is taken care of after a good organizing, it’s much easier to maintain the cleanliness of a home. Hire a professional cleaning service to come every few weeks or mark on your calendar when you’d like to do touch-ups so dirt and dust doesn’t have a chance of taking over!

Keeping your home organized and clean will make the rest of your resolutions breeze by making for a stress free, enjoyable 2016!

Holiday House Cleaning

Holiday Cleaning – Getting Your Home Ready For Guests

It’s the time of year again when many of us will be preparing our homes for guests to celebrate the holidays with! So what should we focus on cleaning around the house in anticipation without going overboard?

The entryways of your home are the very first area your guests will see. Sometimes doors themselves can be forgotten so in addition to the doormat and walkway outside, wipe down the front door for a nice appearance! After outside is taken care of, come inside to get started on the area where guests will take their coats off and possible their shoes.

The next two main areas of focus will be the family or dining room, where the guests typically talk and eat with one another, the other is the kitchen. People gather around the kitchen a lot during the holiday so make sure your fridge and sink are looking nice! Be sure the dining room table is clean, chairs are available for guests and the floors look nice in the living room!

Don’t miss the bathrooms! Last but certainly not least, make sure you bathrooms are nice and clean when you have your guests over and there are adequate toiletries. Clear off the sink counter top or vanity, wipe down the floor, shine up the toilet and the shower or tub too if it’s exposed!

So that does it for our quick tip for the holidays when preparing to have guests over, have fun with family leading up to the New Year!

5 Insider Tips From Professional Organizers

Organizing your home can be a tenuous task, especially given our modern day schedules including having school in session and holidays around the corner. Here are 5 inside tips that we as professional organizers act on when decluttering and organizing a home!

Minimize The Paper

Sorting through loose leaf paper, envelopes, junk mail, bills, receipts, catalogs and magazines alike can take much more time than most people think. We have a number of high tech resources at our fingertips today to move closer to a paper free home.

Remove Clutter, But Don’t Add Storage Space

The goal in organizing your home should be to have a little clutter as possible without needing to add storage space such as bins and baskets to hold the things that are being organized. While this is great for creating a clutter free environment, it could lead to buying even more bins if we are cluttered again!

Donating Unwanted Household Items

When organizing a home, a fun and efficient way to add to the decluttering process is to designate a box to donations. Seek out organizations such as “The Purple Heart” where you can donate clothes for example.

Label Things Around The House

Lets face it, we have a whole lot of stuff in our homes and don’t always have designated places for things like shoes, clothes, kitchen panty items and cooking utensils. Adding small post-it sized notes in closet space could make the difference when putting things away in the spot you chose for them.

Get Dividers

Dividers for drawers, closet space and shelving can help separate making for an easier time putting things away around the house and finding them when the time comes. If you know the dimensions of a drawer, a nightstand or desk for example, you can buy assorted drawer divided bins and designate each one to a different item.

Cleaning with Baking Soda

10 Household Cleaning Supplies That Are Safe Around The House

It’s always a plus to find out exactly what your using as far as chemicals go when touching up your home after a professional cleaning or in between scheduled cleanings if the mood strikes you. In this article we’ll go over some of the cleaning supplies you can keep around the house without having to worry about them being harmful.

1. Vinegar – Vinegar is one of, if not the best, solutions for a wide array of cleaning purposes around the house. The acidity in vinegar makes for a great natural cleaning product that’s capable of handling hard stains even while still being safe and tasty too if you like salt and vinegar chips!

2. Baking Soda – Baking soda is another solution that we can find in most of our kitchens that is highly effect for more than just cooking! When you mix baking soda with water it creates an easy to mix cleaning supply.

3. Salt – As a scrubbing agent, salt is great for removing stains from stubborn surfaces when mixed with water such as tea stained cups and even brass or copper, covering a wide spectrum! Salt is also a great solution for soaking up stains in carpets when they are still damp after soaking up as much liquid as possible.

4. Lemon – The natural acidity in lemons create a great, safe cleaning product that can take on similar tasks to vinegar for cleaning yet while leaving a fantastic fresh scent! One great way to clean windows is to add a little lemon juice to water and wipe the window glass down with it followed by drying it off for a clear finish.

5. Natural Soap – While natural soap is not one of the many items on the list that can be found in our kitchens, it is very safe and can also come as a detergent.

6. Soft Sponges – Rather than using rough sponges if you happen to have them around the house, get some soft sponges so there is no risk of the harsh ones falling into the wrong hands.

7. Mild Cleaners – Even though there are enough natural cleaning products to touch up your home without getting any “real cleaning supplies”, it’s important that if you do to watch for the chemicals used and educate yourself on what might be harmful such as phosphate or chlorine.

8. Eco Friendly Floor Cleaners – It’s important to use eco friendly floor cleaners if you have pets and children around that might put something in their mouth or even lick the floor!

9. Essential Oil as an Air Freshener – Instead of using normal air fresheners, there are natural solutions out there that you can be sure will be safe in your home such as “oil diffuser” that sends natural oil scents into the air for a fresh smell or even scented candles.

10. Anti-Bacterial Cleaners – Last but not least and as stated with the use of mild cleaners, when purchasing anti-bacterial cleaners, which are important for keeping a home germ free, be careful and pay attention to the chemicals used!

That concludes our list of 10 cleaning supplies that are safe around the home!

Tile and Grout Cleaning

How To Clean Tile Floors and Grout

It’s summer time! For most of us this undoubtedly means lots of outdoor activity for ourselves, others at home as well as our guests. What it also means is we’ll travel in and out of the house more that any other time of year and while our salty shoes after a snow storm in the winter can dirty our floors, there is no better time than half way through summer to touch them up with the tracking of dirt in and out of the house! Lets uncover the dirt on cleaning tiled floors and the grout holding them together!

Grout and tiles are easy to maintain and keep looking as good as new with just a little upkeep using simple supplies from around the house. To clean your tiles like a pro all you’ll need is a pair of rubber gloves, some white vinegar and/or bleach, dish soap, a spray bottle and an old toothbrush!

Step 1: Mix the vinegar and dish soap in a spray bottle and give the bottle a shake to blend the two.

Step 2: Spray the grout areas you would like to clean and let the cleaning solution soak in for 15 minutes.

Step 3: Wearing your rubber gloves, use the old toothbrush to give the grout a light scrubbing in the areas that need cleaning. Be sure not to scrub too hard because the cleaning solution will lift up the dirt itself.

Step 4: Fill the spray bottle with water and give the floor a thorough spraying and wiping down. Good as new!

And that’s it! Now you can enjoy the rest of the summer weather in-and-out of the house activity knowing your floors have a fresh cleaning!

Home Organizing

Study Finds Clean and Organized Homes Reduce Stress

The popular online blog and news network best known as ‘The Huffington Post’ conducted a nationwide survey that included one thousand participants not long ago to find out what some of the most stressful things are that everyday Americans face at home. We at QC Cleaning were surprised to find something directly related to our services in the top five stress triggers, lets take a look at what they are:

The top of the list of what people are most stressed over at home won’t come as much of a surprise to most with the busy schedules we face today. At number one 66% of people stressed over not getting enough sleep, 56% percent worried about their weight, 51% of people in the survey were stressed over not being able to pay their bills and the fourth most stressful applied to 48% of the people surveyed which was the feeling of guilt over not being productive enough at home. Now the kicker, coming in at number five on the list, 47% of the of people surveyed said that worrying about their home not being clean or organized is a stress trigger for them at home. This is nearly half of the people that participated in the study.

Is it fair to assume that most everyone in the stressed category regarding home cleaning and organization does not take advantages of services like ours? We think so! Having a professional organizer not only makes your home easier to navigate, it does the same thing for your brain in relieving stress and the same goes for a well done house cleaning!

photo credit: Helene Mayer