Five Essential Summer Cleaning Tips

Just about everyone is familiar with the concept of spring cleaning. It’s where homeowners and renters alike go through their homes and clean, re-organize, and prepare to emerge to the outdoors after several long, cold winter months.

But what many fail to realize is that using the summer months to clean your exterior is just as important, if not moreso. When you’re considering cleaning your home’s exterior, the summer months are the perfect time to do so. And we’re here to provide you with some helpful tips as you make your home look as good as new from now through next spring.

Window Cleaning

The best part of summer is all the abundant sunshine. But if you have grimy, dirty windows, you’re missing out on a golden opportunity to fill your home with warm, natural lights. And if you think cleaning windows is only something that can be done professionally, you’d be surprised—with a little hard work and the right supplies, you can easily clean your windows on your own.

The key to remember here is to ensure that you clean both the outside and the inside of your windows. While it’s best to clean the outside of your windows during a warm summer day, and the inside of your windows can be cleaned at any point, if you truly want sparkling clean windows that truly shine, you want to make sure both are cleaned around the same time.

Ideally, you would clean your windows with a squeegee to ensure a streak-free finish, but any window cleaning solution and a rag will suffice. Just make sure to clean off any dust from the inside of the windows, as well as any dirt or other natural elements from the outside of your window. Once all your windows have been thoroughly cleaned, sunshine will no longer be forced to pass through smudges and grime, leaving the inside of your home bright and airy.

Gutter Cleaning

Summer is the perfect time to take the leap and clean your gutters. Spring and summer usually means storms, and storms lead to sticks, branches, and leaves clogging your gutters. That’s why you should take advantage of the warm, clear, sunny summer weather to unclog your gutters before the weather changes again, and you’re left with icy, leaf-filled gutters.

While you can clean your gutters yourself (and here’s a handy guide we’ve created for you on that topic) it’s very important to stay safe in the process.  If you are not familiar with ladder and roof safety requirements, hiring a professional is your best option. In order to clean your gutters, first sweep any debris off your roof, using a rake or a leaf blower if you have one. If you skip this step, these sticks and leaves will eventually slide into your gutters, and clog them again.

Once the roof has been cleared, climb up your ladder, wearing gloves and taking a bucket or bag with you, and manually reach into the gutter to clear out any debris, which you then place in your receptacle.

Keep your body between the rungs of the ladder and avoid reaching—reaching may cause your ladder to slip out and could cause injury or death. When finished, move your ladder to the next spot and repeat this process until you’ve cleared the entire gutter of large items.

Finally, you’ll want to take a hose, hopefully with an attachment that allows the water to spray at a higher pressure, and rinse out any smaller debris.  Once that’s done, you’re all set!

Pressure Cleaning

Pressure cleaning, also known as power washing, is a task best performed by more seasoned summer cleaners. If you don’t have the proper tools and equipment, it might serve your interests to reach out to a professional.

If you do have the equipment however, or wish to purchase it, pressure cleaning is a fantastic way to remove grime, dirt, loose paint, dust, mud, or even chewing gum from just about any outdoor surface. It doesn’t even require any sort of soap or chemicals, the powerful jets of water are all it takes to clean any surface.

Home Washing

While pressure cleaning is powerful, it sometimes can be too powerful, stripping paint or loose materials from materials a bit less resilient than, say, stone or brick. When you’re looking to clean your roof or the exterior of your home, without potentially damaging any windows, siding, or softer porous material like stucco, you’re better off employing a soft wash, or a process that removes unhealthy and unwanted mold and mildew, while leaving your paint and siding relatively unharmed.

For those looking to soft-wash their own home, you’ll likely need an electrical agricultural sprayer, where you can mix water and bleach to your spray in order to safely remove any bacteria, irritants, or natural stains.  With any cleaning agent, you’ll need to make sure to rinse down any plants that come in contact with the spray with clean water before and after using any cleaning agent. Failure to do so could result in damaging or killing your plants altogether.

In a pinch, you can scrub your walls with a similar solution, and spray it off with a garden hose, but, like pressure cleaning, the best home washing is done by the professionals.

Cleaning Fans and Other High Indoor Spots

We’ve discussed four ways to spruce up the outside of your home, but summer cleaning can also happen inside. Specifically, we think that there’s no time like July and August to grab the ladder, climb on up, and take care of the dust that’s accumulated in some of your higher, harder-to-reach spaces.

Before you go about dusting and cleaning anywhere, you should go straight to your ceiling fans. The tops of fans routinely collect impressive amounts of dust after months of not being used in winter. When you start using these fans in the summer, it’ll take these dust particles and spread them around your house, potentially exacerbating allergies, and having a negative impact on your air quality.

If you’d rather not climb up on a ladder, you’re still in luck. There are dozens of relatively inexpensive products you can purchase and use to reach those hard-to-reach spots, and remove that pesky dust. Or, if you don’t mind heights, you can climb on up and clean these spots with a swiffer pad, or even just a damp rag.

You can take the same approach to help clean and clear dust from high ledges, tops of bookshelves, or even chandeliers. Any space that’s too high for you to routinely reach should get special focus at least once a year. And we recommend that time be now, the summertime.

After all, there’s no time like the summer to make sure your house is as clean as it can be—both inside, and out.

About Woodard Cleaning & Restoration

Woodard was founded in 1946 by Earl and Nancy Woodard. Today, their grandson, Justin Woodard, is the third-generation president and CEO. Located in St. Louis, Missouri, Woodard began as a cleaning company and expanded to offer fire and water mitigation, mold remediation and reconstruction, as well as board-up, smoke restoration and hard surface cleaning. Woodard has the most capable employees in the industry! With a mission of Helping People Get Back to Their Lives, Woodard serves both residential and commercial clients in the greater metro area. Woodard takes pride in investing in their employees and is recognized by the St. Louis Post Dispatch as a Top Workplace. For information or questions submit a form online or call us at (314) 227-3932.

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Updated 5/10/2022