With the Kids Back to School, Reclaim Your Home with Our Cleaning Checklist
For the first time in nearly four months, your house is silent.
Phew, you made it: summer is over.
The kids are officially back to school, and your house is still standing.
But with vacations, sports, and summer activities, keeping up with your normal cleaning routine is difficult. As you survey your house, you might notice that a few areas could use a good deep clean.
As participants in this universal experience, we made a simple back-to-school checklist packed with our best tips to help you fully restore your house to its pre-summer state. Put on some old clothes, and let’s get to work!
Decluttering
The first thing you’ll need to do is declutter your house. This can be intimidating, but we recommend you enlist your whole family to help you with this step by being responsible for picking up their own items. If you want to work on this while your family isn’t home, gather their belongings from the common areas and put them on their beds in a pile so they can’t miss the things they need to put away.
Once everyone’s items are out of the living space, you should only need to do a simple sort and straighten exercise with anything else that belongs in the living room.
Floors
Now, onto something easier: your floors. With little feet traipsing over them all day, every day in the summer, your floors experience a lot of wear and tear. Especially if your kids go barefoot all summer long, you’ll want to make sure you give them a good deep clean.
Depending on which type of floor you’re dealing with, you’ll need to take a different approach. We’ve broken it down for you below.
Maintenance for Different Flooring Types:
- Hardwood Floors: For hardwood, we recommend using a microfiber mop to sweep away loose dust and dirt. Then, use a hardwood floor-safe cleaner meant for your exact wood type. You can find this information, along with instructions for
use, on the bottle of the cleaner before you purchase. Always avoid excessive water or harsh chemicals that could damage the wood, and make sure to follow the instructions for your cleaner. Hardwood is finicky, and once the damage is done, it’s
hard to reverse.
If you’re looking for a cleaner, Stanley Steemer has our own hardwood floor cleaner for individual sale. You can also purchase our hardwood floor cleaner kit, which includes the cleaner and a microfiber mop for applying it. Visit our cleaning store to purchase. - Tile Floors: Like any other hard surface floor, sweep or vacuum your tile to collect loose dirt. Then, mop with a tile and grout cleaner, rinsing the mop frequently to avoid spreading dirt. If you need a tile and grout cleaner, Stanley
Steemer also has one for individual sale via our cleaning store.
If you need an even deeper clean, give 1-800-STEEMER a ring, or schedule online via the Quote Tool. We’ll bring our tile and grout cleaning machines and have your floor gleaming in no time. - Carpeted Floors: First, run the vacuum in every carpeted room, adjusting the vacuum’s suction power depending on the thickness of the carpet. If you notice small stains on your carpet, try using a spot cleaner suitable for your
carpet type.
Stanley Steemer has a carpet and upholstery spot cleaner and a carpet deodorizer that you can purchase from the cleaning store on our site. These resources will be extra advantageous for pet owners, especially for new pet owners who are potty-training puppies.
For tough spots our spot cleaner can’t tackle, call us at 1-800-STEEMER or schedule via the Quote Tool for a more thorough carpet cleaning. We’ll be at your door with our vans before you know it.
Area Rugs
Just like your carpets, your area rugs experience heavy foot traffic. First, vacuum to capture the loose dust, dirt, and crumbs. Then, note any spots, what caused them, and how long you think they’ve existed.
If you see a few mild spots that are new, you could try using our Stanley Steemer carpet stain remover to bring the stain out. For more intense spots, discoloration, or odor, call us at 1-800-STEEMER to have the professionals take over for you. We’ll either clean the rug in your home, or if available at your location, we’ll take it back with us to one of our offsite area rug cleaning facilities for the deepest cleaning.
Finally, to mitigate obvious signs of wear and tear on your rugs, rotate them once they’re clean. This allows a different section of rug to take the brunt of the damage from foot traffic. We recommend repeating this exercise about every six months for the lifetime of your rug.
Bathrooms
If you’re anything like us, you probably didn’t give all those small nooks and crannies in your bathroom the attention they needed in the hustle and bustle of summer. We recommend taking time now to deep clean your toilet, vanity, and shower, focusing on those small, hard-to-reach crevices.
Remember the tile and grout cleaner we mentioned earlier when we were talking about cleaning your floors? Good news: you can also use this solution on tile in your shower!
You can also call 1-800-STEEMER to schedule a shower tile cleaning if you feel like a deeper clean is necessary.
Windows
Summertime equals extra little hands and noses pressed against the glass of your windows and screen doors, making it impossible to keep up with cleaning smudges. And now’s your chance to get caught up!
Dust the window frame with a vacuum cleaner or soft cloth. If the material of your frame isn’t wood or another easily water-damaged material, you could lightly dampen the cloth.
Then, use a non-ammonia-based glass cleaner or a mixture of vinegar and water for the glass panes. Spray the cleaner onto a lint-free cloth or paper towel and wipe the glass in a circular motion to avoid streaks. Clean both the inside and outside of your windows to make sure no pollen or bug streaks smudge the outside of the window.
Kitchens
While dishes are a never-ending task, a few other things in your kitchen might need deep cleaning, as well. We suggest you target your counters, microwave, stove, and the area in and around your sink.
Here’s a list of small things to make sure you cover as you tackle these areas:
- The plate inside the microwave
- The buttons on your microwave
- The sponges and brushes you use to clean the dishes and/or sink (either put them in the dishwasher or throw them out and start with a new one)
- The sponge and brush holder (put in the dishwasher or wash by hand)
- The water faucet handle
- The neck of your water faucet
- The area right behind the kitchen sink
The outside of any organizational containers that are close enough to the stove to become greasy
If you have a tile backsplash, our tile and grout cleaner is also safe and effective for use on this surface.
School-Specific Cleaning Tips
In our last section, we’re switching things up a little bit. The team here at Steemer understands from personal experience how hard it is to keep your house clean, especially as school and sports ramp up. To help you find new ideas to keep your home clean, I polled the experts at our corporate office to get their best tips and tricks. Take a look below!
For Parents of Kids in K-12:
“Find a routine/schedule once school starts: will homework be after school or after a nap? Have a grab/go breakfast [for your kids]” – Madison Miller (And her mom!), Social Media Specialist
“Make lunches the night before. In the morning, it’s always chaos, so it’s best to just be able to grab and go. Pack sports equipment the night before as well.” –Trent Woods, National Area Rug Manager
“Wherever your kids do homework, keep it separate from where they play. If you can’t have a separate place in your house for homework and need to use a common area like the dining room table, make sure to clear the area of toys and snacks. Also, if your child has cleaning tasks at school, think of chores at home that use those same skills. I give my daughter a list of jobs to choose from each week.” –Ariana Synder, Marketing Director of Data Analytics & Strategy
"I live by, 'Never go to sleep with dirty dishes in the sink'. It helps contribute to a stress-free evening and hassle-free morning."– Mackenzie Cummings, Benefits Specialist
“My best back-to-school tips:
- Share a Google calendar with your partner
- Buy school supplies through the email the school sends at the end of the school year
- Have your kids clean out their bookbags, adding new supplies before the school year begins.
- Have an area in the house where they hang their book bags
- Print off the lunch menu and school calendar and hang them above the bookbags
- Add money to their school account
- Go through closets to take inventory of clothes, donating the old ones and making a list of what your kids will need for the new school year”
–Diana Fry, Operations Recruiting Manager
“Take care of small messes as they arise, and you will never have to worry about cleaning everything at one time.” —Zach Koesters, Benefits Specialist
For College Students or Parents of College Students:
“When moving back into school, I always label all of my items in boxes. For the cleanliness of my room, I always vacuum the carpet, as well as using Stanley Steemer Odor Out, and the Professional Carpet and Upholstery Spot remover.” – Bella Gillie, Marketing Intern
“For all of my laundry, I use Odor Out to ensure that my clothes come out fresh and clear of any smells. Especially since college washers are not always the best! I also love having the Spot remover in my laundry kit for all the stains I end up with on my clothes! I always try to dust my blinds and vents every other week to avoid dust build up. I also use an air purifier to ensure my air is filtered!” –Francesca DiVincenzo, Marketing Intern