A Helpful Tip from a Customer's Home...Shower Doors

Shower doors...UGH! Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Well, I suppose you'd live but it might make showering awkward and sloppy:) It seems that even in the newest of new homes that we clean, shower doors all have soap scum, hard water spots, rusty/moldy caulking, etc. We admit, they are difficult to get clean!

So, we have a suggestion for those of you with showers that have doors as opposed to curtains. In one of the beautiful homes that we clean, the owner of the home hung a shower rod and curtain on the INSIDE of the shower door. That prevents the water from coming in contact with the door and it also looks really nice. The customer chose a pretty gold-colored curtain, so it gives a nice golden glow to the shower! Hey, it's worth the try, right? Another very helpful hint for showers is a daily shower spray. The only non-toxic type that comes to mind immediatly is Method's Daily shower spray in the scent of ylang ylang. Yum. Or you could be crafty and mix up your own with some H2O, white vinegar, a little lemon juice and maybe a few drops of tea tree oil.

And, just a side note on major shower cleaning issues: cut a lemon in half and rub it on hard water stains. Let it sit and then scrub like crazy! Lemon works wonders on hard water stains.

If anyone else has any tips (such as the shower-curtain-on-the-inside thing) you can leave them in the comments or email them to us at purelymaid@yahoo.com! You may get to see your tip in print!

Give me an "H" Give me an "E" Give me a "P" Give me an "A"

What's that spell? HEPA!

You've probably heard by now that a HEPA filter is a good thing to have in your vacuum cleaner. We at Purely Maid decided it was a great thing for all of our important customers with pets, with kids, with allergies, pretty much everyone! SO, we went out and bought the prettiest HEPA equipped vacuum we could find...The Dyson Animal DC 14 With Telescope Reach. We think its pretty special and we take it with us everywhere we go! Dyson's HEPA filters are guaranteed for the life of the vacuum with no need to do any maintenance to it.

If you're thinking of purchasing your own HEPA vacuum, here are a few tips. HEPA stands for High Efficiency Particulate Air. HEPA filters have a standard for the size of the particles they trap. If you are in the market for the best of the HEPAs, you'll want to look for the words sealed HEPA, or true HEPA and avoid things that say HEPA-like. You can also look for the labels to say something like, "an efficiency of 99.7% for microns .3 in size." This means that your HEPA is going to filter out the allergens like pollen and dust mite feces. The less feces you have in your home, the better!

Now, if you'd like the teeny feces out of your life, but you'd rather not buy a new vacuum, send us an email @ purelymaid@yahoo.com and we'll be right over with our pretty Dyson (and all our other great supplies) and we'll do much more than just vacuum!

Our best friend. Boyfriend. Lifesaver.

Ok, we admit it. We are having a love triangle with distilled white vinegar. He is just SO hard to resist! He is non-toxic, cheap, comes in many sizes, smells heavenly and can be used for just about anything! And, he's pretty cute in those dark shades. Rest assured, there will be many updates on our useage of vinegar in our quest to clean green.

Here is a sneak peak of things that our friend can be used for:

Killing unwanted weeds or grass, increasing the acidity of your soil (for plants that do well in more acidic homes), freshening and extending the life of cut flowers, cleaning fish bowls, detering ants, cleaning *gasp* animal urine out of carpet, keeping car windows from frosting over, cleaning rust from tools and bolts, polishing car chrome, soothing bee and/or jellyfish stings.

Now, that was just a little teaser! Make sure to check back for more reasons why we sometimes fight over the affections of Vinegar. (I like to call him "Vinnie") If you hurry, big jugs of Vinnie are on sale at HyVee this week!