image 50361345

What is it about slime? And how to clean it!

What is it about slime? Why is it that at a certain age, usually around 6 or 7 or so, kids become obsessed with the stuff? First, they want you to buy it, then they want you to make it, then they spill it over everything. They seem to love it so much that you can’t say no to slime without leaving them forlorn, broken-hearted and seemingly and dramatically impacted for life.

So what to do when that slime spills onto your lovely beige rug?

Or when it finds its way onto your favourite shirt, or worse, accidentally falls smack bang in the middle of your brand new sofa? Fear not, because as bad as a slime stain looks on first appearance, it is not always definitely permanent, particularly if you can get to it sooner rather than later.

In my own case, I endured the slime phase on three separate and distinct occasions with three daughters. How can a dad say no to those cute little faces? I remember at one point incrementally spending $120 to try and save money on a $15 jar of slime. Craziness. Anyway, no matter how many promises were made or how many precautions we took, the slime would invariably end up anywhere it shouldn’t; on carpet, on clothes and my personal favourite, in hair! Now we have fluorescent slime and even more colourful emotional meltdowns all bundled together in the one perfect home spun symphony!

So, when you scour the net you will find many different tactics for waging war with the aftermath of an errant slime party. For me the caveat on all of these remedies is are they toxic? Aesthetics are an important consideration in removing slime for sure, but even more important is to make sure the cure is no worse than the disease. That means non-toxic remedies are the only ones that we will be considering here.

After all, it’s the ongoing health and well-being of our little angels that matters the most. They will be bringing joy into our world for many years after the thought of a slime stain has faded into ancient forgotten repressed memory.

My favourite, and in my experience one of the most effective ways to deal with fresh slime is the humble ice cube. As soon as you see that slime stain, get a piece of ice onto it. You may want to use gloves with this one because it can get cold rubbing that ice cube into the slime stain, but after about 10 – 15 minutes it should be sufficiently frozen that you can scrape it off in frozen chunks, and vacuum it up before it melts again.

This has remarkable results when the slime is not acidic, but if you have any ingredients in the slime that are caustic or on the extreme side of the PH scale, you may find that there are no remedies as a stain is a stain. Looking deeper it’s all about whether or not the molecular structure of the affected fibre in question has been damaged. If it’s permanently damaged in this way, it’s like trying to wash away a scratch on a car, and only a magic wand can work such wonders.

Another non-caustic method that I recommend is a mixture of vinegar and water. Mix one part warm water with two parts vinegar and get scrubbing. Spray this mix onto the stain, and then scrub at it with a soft brush really working the fibres from all angles in small circles. Do this for a little while before drying it with absorbent paper.

Another method is dish soap. I recommend a plant-based dye free dish soap, which works wonders with warm water. After the initial clean or two with dish soap does the trick, it’s a good idea to rinse it with straight water to remove the final residue the dish soap will leave behind. I like to work this one with a nice big thick old rag. I keep dunking the rag and transferring the muck from the carpet onto the rag and then from the rag into the water and then cleaning the water and starting again. Follow this procedure until the water remains clear and then you know you’ve got it all. That section of carpet may now look a little weird as it is so clean compared to the surrounding carpet. At night it glows!

The final thing to note is that the most important thing is to get to that slime quickly, as it is considerably easier to deal with it when it’s fresh. It’s important to appreciate that when your kids go through their slime phase, it is practically impossible to guarantee you won’t get some slime on something. So if it happens, and it probably will, be prepared and try to show your kids how when stuff goes wrong it’s not the end of the world. People are much more important than things.

We breathe, we deal with it and we get on to enjoy the day with a loving energy. After all, this is the true gift that slime offers to a family. Quality time together and precious memories of parents who love and laugh and care.

About the author ~ Michael Sweet has over 30 years of professional cleaning experience and is the founder of 1800 CLEANER.

jess bailey cvUIv9j5wDg unsplash

7 Home Organising Tips For Modern Busy Bees

As a residential cleaning company operator with over 40,000 cleans completed, we’ve seen the following process work wonders in the lives of hundreds of Australian households. We’d like to share the secrets to clearing your house of clutter, cleaning it better with less effort and living the full and happy life you and your family so deserve.

Being well organised is so important to living a full life. It allows us to declutter our mind and to be present more often to the beauty that surrounds us on this magical planet. Even more important is to be present and in a positive state of mind for those precious moments with loved ones. Being organised in our lives not only helps us to enjoy these moments more, but more importantly to ensure we have more such moments such as these to enjoy.

Here are our 7 top tips for organising your home 

1. De-cluttering

With modern life keeping us so busy it’s important to be organised so as to have things run smoothly. It’s easy to run on adrenalin and to rush busily from one task to the next. In the meantime things accumulate around us for sorting out “later”. Until later comes, we have found that putting all the loose items around your home into clear clutter boxes is the best first step. Decluttering has several simultaneous advantages in that it quickly clears the space of clutter; provides a clear window to easily discern where the item we seek is, and it energetically motivates us to take on the clutter in bite sized pieces over time as opposed to never starting it due to the overwhelm that confronts us when dreading such a herculean task. A journey of a million miles starts with the first step.
Take it!

2. Cleaning the house

Once the clutter is in clutter boxes, you will find your energy will slowly start to return and now is the time to clean the house. You can hire a cleaning service or do it yourself. Either way your focus needs to be on removing as much of the fine microscopic dust as you can in one fell swoop. If you hire a cleaning service make sure you get a list and that the cleaner you use is one that comes recommended by someone you know and don’t necessarily trust online reviews, these are easy to fake. If you decide to do it yourself remember to breathe and just do one task at a time. Learn all about dust-free living in order to cut down on cleaning time by removing fine particle dust from your home with an annual spring clean. Wait for a windy day when you can create a through-draft to carry the fine particle dust out. Start with the dusting, then the wet areas, then the wiping, then the vacuuming and then the mopping. Nice and easy. A clean house will make you feel better and energise you for the tasks ahead. Pat yourself on the back. You’ve already done the heavy lifting so feel good about it and be happy with yourself.

You’re awesome!

3. A spot for the keys

Often in the mad rush to lurch from one thing to the next, it is not uncommon to put the keys down here, and our wallet down there and then when we are rushing to get out of the door to find they seem to have disappeared into a black hole. When we are in the process of implementing these sequential organisational steps it’s important to arrange a clear space that we get in the habit of putting important items into so they don’t get lost and we can start to move in and out of the house more seamlessly with less stress. This will ensure we are rarely late and we will increasingly feel great about things which is perhaps the most important part of all of these tips; to generate higher and higher levels of self-love. In the later stages of this process when your house is habitually clean and de cluttered the keys and the wallet will stand out on the open surfaces wherever you choose to put them, but until then we need to work with where we are at in the process and this step is important at this stage.

You’re halfway there!

4. Use the space

Vertical space in the home is an opportunity to create more space on the ground. Open areas are not only easier to keep clean and de cluttered but they also provide a lovely open feeling of space which translates into more space in our lives. This can be achieved by creating, using and utilising wall space to neatly stack these items that bring us joy. Solid wall wardrobes are great for putting our de-clutter boxes into so they’re out of sight and mind until we find the time and space to rationalise, categorise and arrange them later in this process. This can take years so be patient and just take on the whole pie with small mouth sized pieces over time. This way you can actually enjoy the process. Throwing away things we don’t need and treasuring those items we decide to keep by folding, collating and neatly stacking them is a beautiful process when we’re present and not in a rush.
And boy it looks good when you survey the fruits of your labours.
Enjoy the process!

5. Organise one thing at a time

It’s a psychological truism that when we look at the entire mountain we can get stuck in inertia and fail to take that crucial first step. This is why the climb to Everest is best started with the walk to base camp. Just get to base camp, then reassess and decide where to go and what to do from there. Organising your home is not a sprint, it’s a marathon so start easy. Pick one corner and start. Then pick one clutter box and rationalise it. Throw some things out. Collate items into sections and then start to enjoy the sorting process. As things become clearer everything becomes clearer including the choices of what to put where. From little things big things grow and after a while your home and the energy inside of it will start to transform. You will start to experience more stillness, less stress and magically you will seemingly have more time. That’s actually happening because we are wasting less time and are becoming more efficient as the organising process takes root in our lives and repetition forms healthy habits. We feel less stressed and our immune systems also improve. We sleep better. It is a self-generating loop and the more energy we stop wasting the more energy we have to create more energy.

Form the habit!

6. Stack, store and label

Once your storage system starts to find momentum and becomes more sophisticated you will find that in the act of stacking the clear storage boxes out of sight you can label them in categories so as to be able to find what you need quickly and effortlessly. The great thing is that once you find the bulk of items in your house are now in their right place you can start to look ever more closely at the items in your boxes and start on the road to minimalism. The central question to ask is do we really need all that stuff? Are these things called possessions because they can actually possess us? The heart of the matter is that when we start to live more simply and to see clearly the societal trend towards orchestrated consumerism and the freedom that we enjoy when focusing on nature and family and life; the less unnecessary items we have cluttering our homes and our lives the better. And the best part is that a minimalist home is much easier to clean and to keep clean and there’s less places for dust to hide.

Make it fun!

7. Time to relax ~ Me time

Now that the vast majority of hard work is done and you feel like you’ve got more time and energy, it’s the point where you focus on the most important thing. Yourself. It is easy to confuse selfishness with self-love and there really is a big difference. As Dr Jordan Peterson says “treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping”. So what is it you like? What makes you feel good? Is it a warm Epsom salt bath with lavender oil on a lazy winter’s afternoon? Or is it an early night and a great sleep to kick off the new day? Perhaps you love to watch the sun rise over the ocean or to take a romantic stroll along the beach with your favourite person. Whatever it is, it’s very important. As part of the process put yourself as a priority and love your life.

Life’s so precious!

Michael Sweet is the founder of 1800 CLEANER, contact us today if you need help organising your home. 

Recommendations for Coronavirus

1800 CLEANERS recommendations regarding the Coronavirus

Taking care of ourselves, our homes and our loved ones.

As Australia transcends into lockdown following the precedents set by many other countries around the world, it’s important to keep our cool and take good care of ourselves.

So how can we boost our immune system?

Before looking into the many ways we can boost our immune system, we need to firstly eliminate as best we can, those things that are harmful to our bodies, and which have a negative impact on our resilience in the face of microscopic viruses.

We spend most of our time in our homes and now we will be spending extended periods there. So the first step is to make our home as healthy as we can, and this means removing the dust, contaminants and impurities that have accumulated for many years.

Read more

Dermatophagoides Pteronyssinus - Dust Mite

How many little monsters are you going to bed with tonight?

I introduce you to the not so humble dust mite Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus. Cute isn’t she?

In her prime she will stretch no longer than half a millimetre, but that doesn’t mean she can’t do serious damage to us Human Beings. And she’s a breeder; reproducing at a rate of 60 new little dust mites every month.

Dr Matt Colloff from the CSIRO’s entomology department says they cause “Allergic asthma, rhinitis, atopic dermatitis – a skin disease” and that “approximately 100 million people at a conservative estimate worldwide may suffer from those conditions due to dust mites”. I’m not sure where he gets those figures from but as a layman who visits dozens of Sydney homes every week dust mites appear to affect a very high proportion of the population. He goes on to say that “the coastal fringe of Australia provides perfect conditions for hundreds of thousands of millions of mites per mattress”. Eeew.

Read more


How those things we can’t see can hurt us…and what to do about it

I want to invite you into the world of the microscopic. Where those things that we can’t normally see can be at once both beautiful and terrifying.

Take the humble dust particle for example. We don’t normally give dust much thought, perhaps because a particle of dust is imperceptible to the naked human eye. Except perhaps when it dances in front of a shaft of sunlight. Have you ever wondered why it floats?

Or how so much dust can accumulate on top of ceiling fans and high ledges? Or why it’s so difficult, well-nigh impossible, to get rid of fine particle dust? If we zoom right in, what precisely comprises a dust particle and how does it impact human health and wellbeing?

Read more