HomeKeepr Blog

Have you experienced chronic ear, throat, or eye irritations, sneezing, coughing, dizziness, or headaches only while in your home and as soon as you use your HVAC system? It could be from poor air quality due to dirty air ducts. Even the American Lung Association recognizes indoor air quality as the catalyst for many allergy-related diseases. If you haven’t cleaned your ducts in 4 to 5 years, there will be an accumulation of contaminants such as dust, pollen, mold, bacteria, and other allergens recirculating by your HVAC system to the indoor air. Even new construction can pose a threat with its hazardous materials and drywall dust. Consequently, you breathe these particles in, leading to allergic and asthmatic symptoms. Indoor allergies are most prevalent during spring and summer when your HVAC starts moving air around, and any particles that have settled there through the winter will kick up and begin affecting your breathing.

Now that spring has sprung, you can kick the winter blues by getting outside to refresh and renew your home’s exterior. Whether it’s your siding, deck, garage, lawn, or other outer areas, plenty will keep you busy. It can be overwhelming, but tackling each section of your home and property in manageable increments can get much done without stress and strain. It's best to handle one area of your property at a time, starting with the most basic structures, such as your roof and shingles, to extensions of the house and then surrounding yard features. This helpful outdoor cleaning list of chores will help you organize yourself to make spring cleaning the outside of your home less of a hassle while you also enjoy the sunshine and fresh air.

Spring Cleaning Trends

Household clutter is typical for many of us who want to avoid facing the daunting task of sorting through our belongings to decide what goes and what stays. Instead, we keep adding to the stockpile hoping that one day we will decide what to retain and part with. Unfortunately, the longer we wait, the larger the collection grows and the harder it is to manage our living space. The more accumulation there is, the greater the amount of dirt, dust, mold, and other contaminants you will have to tackle to avoid a health issue. The new year is the best time to start fresh by surveying your inventory and getting cracking on paring down your possessions for a cleaner, healthier, and more orderly home. Need help figuring out where to start? You are in good company! Here are some tips and suggestions for building a more livable and organized space.

You can have a beautiful home while making it safe and comfortable for your pets, your family, and young children. Keeping a house clean, odor-free, and elegant can be difficult when you have a four-legged creature running around. However, with attention to your pet's comfort and making it easy on yourself, you can maintain a tidy and attractive home that serves both animal and human needs. Here are some ways you can make your home safe and accessible for pets while also protecting it from damage, dirt, and allergens.

There are a number of unpleasant smells that can occur in your home. Sometimes they’re temporary bouts of unpleasantness, and other times they stick around. A lot of smells and odors can seem manageable, since even lingering mustiness or other odors can kind of fade over time as you get used to them. Unfortunately, just because you’ve gone somewhat “nose blind” to those smells doesn’t mean that other people have, and that can be a major problem if you’re listing your home for sale.

Good siding can go a long way toward making your home look beautiful. For a lot of homeowners, they discover only one big drawback to having siding on their homes: it needs to be cleaned to keep it looking its best. Depending on the color of your siding, you may notice dirty streaks, dusty discoloration, and possibly even green tints from algae or mildew that will need to come off in order to restore your siding’s beauty.

After a long summer, it’s time to clean up around your home and get everything in good shape before the winter comes. Not only does this sort of fall cleaning help your home look nice after the rain and heat of summer, but it can also aid you in finding issues or damage that you might want to take care of as you winterize your home. Some areas that often needs particular attention during these cleanup periods are patios and decks.

Robotic vacuum cleaners such as iRobot’s Roomba and Shark’s Ion Robot Vacuum make cleaning up around the house a lot easier. In most cases, these robotic vacuums run without issue and (depending on the model) may even empty themselves once they’re full. But there are some problems that your new Roomba might run into if you aren’t careful.