Oh, winter. The season of beautiful snow, crisp fresh air, and footprints tracked in on the floors! Cleaning a bustling home or office area can be tricky, even in the best conditions. So when winter approaches, we are tested to keep floors clean from wet footprints, salt, and debris that gets tracked inside.
Consider Investing in Professional Cleaning Services
While keeping your floors clean during the winter might be tough, no challenge is too great for the professional cleaning staff at Clean Heart Maids. In between professional cleanings, here are some suggestions to help keep floors clean and safe throughout the winter.
Ensure the Outdoor Elements Remain Outdoors
If you have snow and muck on your driveway, parking lot, walkway, porch, or in your backyard, someone will inevitably track it inside of your home or office. The question is, who the culprit will be. Will it be your family pet, a family member, employee or customer?
Be sure to keep areas where people and pets walk clean of snow buildup thoroughly before it melts or becomes a nasty sludge that can create havoc on your floors and carpets. This will help to decrease the quantity of dirt that ends up on your floors.
Keep Your Floors Clean by Using Entry Mats
Whether your flooring is wood, tile, laminate, or carpet, entry mats are a great tool to help keep your floors clean during winter, and every other season. These mats, also known as scraper or wiper entry mats, generally have a rubber or vinyl backing to keep the mat in place and prevent water from seeping through to the floor below.
Entrance mats help absorb and retain moisture and dirt from dirty shoes and boots, preventing them from being tracked farther into your home or business, or at least minimizing it. They also serve as a reminder and an excellent area for people to stomp and scrape the snow, water, sand, and road salt off their shoes or boots, as their alternate name, scraper or wiper mat, implies.
Purchase Boot Trays
If your home or business is in a region where snow is common throughout the winter, consider placing a boot tray at your entryways. These handy trays, frequently constructed of durable plastic, or rubber are vital to help keep floors dry and clean.
Encourage the Use of Indoor Shoes
Another technique to prevent water and grime from being tracked inside your home or office from shoes worn outside is to encourage the adoption of an indoor shoe policy. One such policy is that staff members or family members either change into a pair of clean, dry, indoor shoes or slippers upon entering.
At home, this occurs naturally, and in many workplaces, since employees do not want to wear their winter boots all day. But if this is not the norm, a bit of encouragement may go a long way toward saving on cleaning time to keep floors clean.
Before and After Winter, Shampoo the Carpets
You should start the season with freshly shampooed carpets before the winter grime hits. Even though the carpets may not appear to be dirty during the summer months, if you don’t start with a clean slate heading into winter, the additional winter dirt may become more visible quickly.
When winter is gone and the temperatures outside increase, you’ll want to clean your carpets again to eliminate any leftover grime and salt that might damage your flooring over time. Of course, depending on foot traffic and pets, you may want to clean the carpets more regularly, but you should do it at a minimum before and after winter to keep floors clean.
Vacuum Often to Eliminate Salt and Sand
Wet shoes at home or the workplace are one thing; bringing in mud and road salt is quite another.
Shoes and winter boots may leave stains on carpets, and the deeper it penetrates into the carpet, the more difficult it is to remove. While winter dirt is less destructive to hard flooring, it doesn’t take much to make them seem dirty, which no one wants to see, and it can add to slip risks if too much accumulates in one location.
Road salt is especially damaging to carpets. Because of its high alkaline content, road salt is corrosive, which means it can not only discolor but also harm carpets over time. Vacuuming often is the best way to preserve and keep your floors clean from winter debris and road salt. This reduces the amount of time a stain may set in and eliminates dirt before it becomes embedded deeper in the carpet pile.
Stay on Top of Dirty Paws
Our pets are family and we love them, dirty paws, slobber, dander and all the messes that come with being a pet owner. For many pet owners, their beloved furry friends live a life of luxury, being spoiled and pampered. However, to keep floors clean during the winter months, you may need to limit their access to certain areas. As great as our pets are, they necessitate some extra cleaning in our homes and offices. Pets are infamous for tracking in everything they step in outside. To reduce the bacteria, dander, and germs, consider restricting your pets from entering particular sections of your home or office. Also, wipe off dirty paws whenever your pet comes in from outside with a warm wet cloth, and dry them afterwards.
Keep Cleaning Supplies Handy
How often have you tracked in snow or muddy footprints and vowed to clean the mess immediately, only to return later to realize the muck tracked in has become a cakey dried up mess?
Keeping cleaning products near entryways is a great reminder to clean up any mess you track in immediately to facilitate speedy cleanups. Keep a bottle of natural cleaner, broom and dustpan, and a mop on hand.
Clean High-Traffic Areas Often
If you clean your floors once a week, consider cleaning areas that are high-traffic twice a week, or more if the weather is bad. Areas in your home and at the office that are considered heavy traffic areas are a challenge to maintain, regardless of the time of year. You may want to consider hiring a professional cleaning service to keep floors clean and your home looking its best best all year long.
The Effects of Cold Weather on Hardwood Floors
Keeping your floors clean during winter means staying on top of even minor messes before they become more significant. It is important to remember that when temperatures outside begin to drop, humidity levels outside and indoors also drop.
Reduced humidity means less moisture in your home or business, and if you have wood flooring, it can cause the wood to shrink. As the temperature drops and the days grow shorter, you may notice gaps between the planks of your wood flooring.
Fortunately, this is natural, and your flooring will revert to normal as the weather becomes warmer. If you’re worried about the gaps, you may always use a humidifier to put moisture back into the air.
Keep Floors Clean and Safe Throughout the Winter
Prevention is the best approach to keep floors clean and avoid accidents such as slips and falls. Aside from keeping the floors dry, regular cleaning will reduce the chance of slippery flooring from wet shoes and puddles of water from melting snow. Mopping will also assist in removing residue from road salt, which may cause unattractive stains and damage to flooring over time.
Floors may need to be spot-cleaned multiple times each day, depending on the amount of traffic in and out of your home or workplace. There’s no denying that keeping floors clean in cold and snowy weather may be difficult. However, using our tips above, you can keep winter outdoors and your floors clean and safe for everyone. Do you need help maintaining your home? Clean Heart Maids is here to help. Contact us today to schedule a consultation to clean your home or business.