Busy family’s guide to dealing with “pick ups”

In a perfect word, everyone would have a fabulously clean home, perfectly organized and arranged. The truth of the matter, however, is that many people are not the world’s greatest house keepers, which is why companies such as UpperCrust Maids exists. We understand that people have jobs and other responsibilities and that is where we come in.

One thing that we have noticed is that some people have a difficult time dealing with what cleaning companies refer to as “pick ups”. Pick ups can be children’s toys, animal toys, clothing items, shoes, newspapers, magazines, or just general clutter that has accumulated and has ended up on the floor or in the way of the cleaning tech.

For example, we sometimes service homes where there are clothes all over the place, on floors, on furniture and all throughout the house. The clothes may be clean or dirty. In any event, they are on the floor.

My advice to people who find that their clothes are finding their way to floors:

a. IF the clothes are clean, they won’t stay that way for long on the floor. Soooooo……take a trip to Target or Walmart and invest in some good hangers. Hang as many of them up as possible.
b. IF the clothes are no longer being worn, collect them and take them to Good Will or the Salvation Army for charity.
c. IF the clothes are in fact dirty, don’t allow them to lay around the house on the floor.

Do this. Purchase several laundry bins and place them in strategic places around the house. Put the dirty clothes in the bins until you have the time to wash the clothes. Here are some samples of nice, sturdy laundry bins which can be put in bedrooms, bathrooms or basement laundry areas:

Each of the baskets above would be appropriate and large enough to hold a good deal of clothing items.

We also notice that in some homes, families don’t have time to wash dishes before they go to work. Like most cleaning companies, we will wash a few dishes, but we charge extra for full sink loads. Dish washing adds to the time in the house. Also, sometimes we cannot load the dishwasher because there are clean dishes in there. So, what to do with the dirty dishes?

Again, my advice to families that don’t have time to do the dishes but who have a cleaning company coming in is as follows:

a. Clear the clean dishes from your dishwasher and put them in cabinets so that the cleaning company can stack the dirty dishes that are in the sink, in the dishwasher.

b. OR……..if you are too busy to do that, invest in a basket. Cleaning companies do not mind stacking dishes in a basket, but we need to have a place to put the dishes. Why not put them on the counter? Well, the cleaning company needs to clean the counters and would rather not put dirty dishes on a clean counter.

Below is an example of a nice sized basket that families can purchase:

Yes, it’s large, but remember—-the basket needs to be large enough to hold a full sink load of dishes and/or pans. And then when the family arrives home, they can go ahead and wash their dishes.

The same holds true with toys. Invest in some toy boxes and make it a family rule that toys must be stored there before bed time. Children’s and animals’ toys can go in toy boxes. Some samples are below:
Give UpperCrust Maids a call today and we will get you on schedule ASAP to help take some of the stress of cleaning off your plate. We understand that you are busy and we will work with you!