When I had my first child five years ago, I was extremely concerned about ensuring that he had a healthy home to grow up in. The home, of course, had to include the flooring. My son, I knew, would spend about the first four years of his life practically living on the floor. Before he arrived, I had my mother come over to help me figure out how to “baby-proof” my home. My mother, having raised four kids on her own, knew something about how to make homes appropriate for children.
The first thing we did was sterilize all of the floors. This meant that we went into every floor that had a smooth surface (like the tile kitchen and wooden hallway) and we did a deep clean. My dad suggested that we have all of the floors refinished so that they would have a smooth coat of protectant, but we didn’t have the time to remove all of the furniture and stay away from the house for long enough to refinish the floors.
To sterilize the floors, all we did was vacuum and sweep them totally clean. From there, we wiped them down with an alcohol-based cleaning agent and let it sit for a few hours. Afterwards, we applied a protective coat of gloss. The protective coat not only made it easier and less porous to clean up, but it will protect the floors from future stains. We figured that our little one will probably have a ton of spills and accidents, so having the protective layer is really very beneficial.
In the rooms that we have carpet, we hired a professional carpet cleaner to come in for a few afternoons and totally get all of the dust and dirt out of the carpet. He recommended that we have the service twice a year, and the rates were not that bad, considering it means a cleaner and healthier home, so we signed up for him to come once in the summer and once in the winter.
We also Scotch guarded all of the carpets, meaning we put a protective layer of cleaning agent on top of the carpet so that when food and other items are spilled, the will not cling to the fibers in the carpet.
For on-going cleaning, we developed a routine that we will be able to stick to after our baby comes. The routine involves regularly around simple and deep cleaning of our floors. Like I said before, we now regularly clean the carpets with a professional cleaning service that involves a company coming out to our home. This is an expense that we never had before, but now take advantage of regularly.
We also regularly have a professional house keeping service now come to our home every other week at well. While they are they, they focus on cleaning everything, from dusting to the floors, mopping and vacuuming. With our baby, it makes cleaning so much easier on me to have someone else help me out several days a month. By having professional cleaning, it’s also easier to clean on an on-going basis.