There’s been a boom in the housing market in Canada recently. This has been driven by pent up demand and the exodus from urban to rural locations.
If you’re selling your home and concerned about being in a competitive market, there are ways to make your home stand out amongst the others. Having a clean, fresh, and neat home can add dollars to your selling price. Read on to learn 5 deep cleaning tips to help you sell your home.
1. Be Systematic
A key to cleaning efficiency and effectiveness is to be systematic.
Start by organizing your cleaning materials. Arrange your cleaning clothes, cleaning gloves and cleaning products including all-purpose cleaners and antibacterial cleaner.
Have a mop and bucket for hard floors and a vacuum cleaner for carpets and soft furnishings.
Work methodically from top to bottom to eliminate missing anything.
De-clutter, then clean and disinfect. You can do this one room at a time.
2. Be Tidy
Mess and clutter is a distraction for buyers. It can make rooms look smaller than they really are and suggests to the potential buyer that there is a shortage of storage space.
Having lots of things presents a cleaning challenge. The more objects you have on display, the more objects you need to clean and disinfect.
Clutter and mess tend to attract dust and grime. Piles of toys, papers, and belongings of all types can harbour germs.
Clearing clutter can be the first step to preparing your house to sell. There’s often a lot of clearing out to do before you move so start now. There’s no point in paying to move belongings that you no longer need.
So, start by tidying things away. It will reduce your cleaning time massively. Placed in boxes or bags and put away somewhere, clutter becomes a low hygiene risk and you can show off your home at its best.
3. High-touch Surfaces
The areas to pay special attention to, especially due to COVID-19, are high touch areas. These are the places and points in your home that you, your household members, or your visitors may touch during the course of their visit. Take a walk around your home and identify these areas.
The most obvious areas are door handles and light switches. Some less obvious areas include toilets, faucets, and the areas around your sinks. Tables, countertops, remote controls, and other electronic equipment such as phones.
Your refrigerator, washing machine, and dishwasher may also be high-touch surfaces. Kitchen and bathroom cabinets are also high-touch surfaces.
These areas get touched frequently so they are more likely to pass infection from person to person. Pay particular attention to cleaning these high-touch surfaces. Have more regular and more frequent cleaning routines for high-touch surfaces. This will reduce the rate of infection and make a deep clean more effective when you do it.
4. Cleaning
Use a damp cleaning cloth with the appropriate cleaning product for the surface. A damp cleaning cloth is better than a dry one because it stops dust particles from rising into the air carrying germs with them.
Systematically clean the area scrubbing any difficult to shift dirt. Lift difficult to shift stains by applying a suitable detergent and letting it soak for a few minutes. Complete the cleaning with a wipe clean and rinse.
Work through each room. You can leave cleaning jobs like vacuuming the whole house until you’ve completed the smaller cleaning jobs. Don’t vacuum first or you’ll probably have to do it again if you raise some dust with the smaller cleaning tasks.
5. Disinfecting
Disinfecting, unlike cleaning, actually kills germs. Covid-19 can be effectively treated on surfaces with disinfectant.
Follow the instructions on the disinfectant’s packaging. Some disinfectants work best if you cleaned the surface first and others, such as wipes, can clean and disinfect at the same time.
Use approved hard surface disinfectants on all the hard surfaces around your home. Pay special attention to high-touch surfaces. Alternatively use diluted bleach. You can use alcohol wipes on hard-surfaced electronics.
Take Care
Take care of your home, your visitors, and yourself by tidying, cleaning, and disinfecting. These deep cleaning tips might be an extra effort. In the present circumstances, it might make a good impression, it’s the right thing to do and may even add dollars to your sale price.
Contact us for a free market evaluation of your home right now.
