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With holidays (and guests) coming in the next few weeks, now is the  perfect time to start some de-cluttering.  Soon you will be adding to the chaos with decorations and new “stuff”.  So clearing some items now will make the next few months flow a little easier.

Not only does a cluttered house cause some panic at the thought of friends and family dropping by, but a cluttered and disorganized home is much more difficult to keep clean and healthy.  And I am not even talking about the ongoing stress of never being able to find what you need!  Cleaning is much harder – whether you are trying to keep on top of it yourself or have us coming in.  Clutter collects dust, pollen,  pet hair, and keeps us from getting everything totally clean.  And make sure you have a place for everything.  Ever tell your kids to put something away and they ask, “where do I put it?” – and you don’t have an answer???  That is how clutter starts!

According to my friend, Anne Fleming who owns OTAPTNIS, an organizing and decluttering company, the fall is a great time to get your home in order.  Cooler weather lets us get up in attics as well as make sure all our “treasures” can make the best use at many donation centers.  Her advice is to start slow.  Set some goals and make sure you commit to actually getting rid of things – not just moving to another area.  Focus on one area at a time and accept that it will get worse before it gets better.  She suggests starting in one corner and working your way around the room.    Here are some other quick decluttering ideas!

• Declutter for 15 minutes every day. It’s amazing how much you can get through if you just do it in small increments like this. Set a timer for 15  minutes and see what you can accomplish in that time.  Do this every day and watch the clutter start to disappear.  Send the kids to their rooms to do the same.  Just 15 mins.
• Pick one closet – empty completely.  Then decide what NEEDS to go back in.  Donate the rest. 
• Walk around your cluttered house with a decent sized box and determine to FILL IT with stuff you will donate to a charity (and then make sure you drop it off or arrange pick up right away!)
• Fill a garbage bag with items to discard. Don’t stop until it’s full.
• Create a mail center.  An “in-box” for your incoming mail ; bills to be paid, items that need actions, and things to be filed/shredded.
• Learn to file quickly. Paper clutter adds up very fast. Consider a scanner and switch as many bills/statements as possible to electronic files.  Keep the paper from coming into your house
• If you have “too many” special knick-knacks, choose a certain amount to display and rotate through your stash throughout the year. For example, every 2 months, switch them up!
• Clean the floor… the whole floor. This will force you to get everything up and off of it – the perfect reminder to put stuff away instead of putting it back down where it was.
• Dump everything out of the junk drawer and only put back in the things that truly need to go there. Put everything else away in the proper spot again.
• Sort through your medicine cabinet and dispose of all of the old medications, beauty products, and the other misc. that find their way in there.
• Write a basic menu for the next 2 weeks to use up the build-up in your pantry.
• Recycle the catalog pile. You can find what you need online. And they will send you another one next week J
• Have a place for everything.  Invest in more organizational and storage supplies so that everything truly does have a place.  I have some great totes, file holders, and organizers to create a functional and attractive room or closet on my other site (yes – we needed one more business.  This one specializes in keeping you organized so you can then keep your home cleaner).  You can personalize them so everyone knows what goes where. Check out my other site for totes and bins to simplify your life….
• Whenever you’re boiling water, watching the broiler, or making coffee (something that keeps you in the kitchen) , declutter. If the kitchen is tidy, tidy up the next room – it’s only 3 minutes but it keeps you on top of everything.
• Clothing rule: If you haven’t worn an item in 6 months, sell or donate it.
• Love this idea – The One-Year Box. Take all your items that you unsure about getting rid of (e.g. “I might need this someday…”), put them in a box, seal it and date it for 1 year in the future. When the date comes, and you still didn’t need to open it to get anything, donate the box WITHOUT OPENING IT. You probably won’t even remember what there was in the box.
• Declutter one room (including any closets, desks, cabinets, etc.) before starting on the next one. Spending time in that room will feel *so* good, and it will be so easy to keep clean, that it will motivate you to do more!
• Have someone else (who you trust!) help you go through things. They don’t have the (sometime’s irrational) emotional attachment that you might have, but can still recognize if something should be kept.  This might be when you want to call in an expert like Anne (410.221-0330).  She empties it all out, sorts out, then sees what you need to keep.  She will also discard items and take the rest to worthy donation sites.  Easy.
• Call us to have your house cleaned.  It is amazing how motivating that can be.  And a super clean home is a wonderful reward for all your hard work!

Visualize your clutter-free home room by room, and work hard so you can enjoy your home once again. You’ll never again have that panic feeling when you have people drop in unexpectedly, but instead will open wide the door and say “come on in” with pride!  And you will enjoy your home so much more.

The following was written by one of our customer’s for his blog – we have borrowed it!   Thanks Jim!

 Passing the Burnt Butterbean Test

By Jim Rhodes

Has this ever happened to you?

We were spending the weekend at our cabin on the river.  My wife and I were enjoying an adult beverage before dinner, which was cooking on the stove. It was a lovely evening, and we decided to take the dog for a quick walk.  The walk took a little longer than we had expected, and when we returned we found the house full of acrid black smoke, which originated from a saucepan on the stove, where the butterbeans had been simmering.  The butterbeans had turned to crispy critters and the pan was clearly beyond salvation.

The house was full of smoke and reeked of burnt butterbeans. We threw open the doors and windows and turned on fans to disperse the smoke.  After a few minutes, the smoke had cleared sufficiently for us to recognize each other’s facial features at ten paces.

But the smell?  Ugh!

Fortunately, a few months earlier we had installed a new central air and heat pump system.  Because of my wife’s allergies, we had also installed a Nautic Air NA20 air purifier at the same time.

I turned on the air conditioner and started closing all the doors and windows.  My wife was aghast.  “Why are you closing everything?  The smell is awful.”

“Just let the system do its magic,” I replied.

She looked at me in that way the wives look at their husbands when they say something totally boneheaded.  “Sure,” she said.

But, sure enough, within a few minutes, the burning smell began to dissipate, and by the time we sat down to dinner (sans butterbeans, unhappily), the odor was almost totally gone.  By bedtime, the inside air was clean, fresh and clear.

“You were right,” she said.

I could not immediately remember the last time I heard those three words from my wife’s lips, but I just nodded and mumbled something about how smart we had been to install that wonderful air-cleaning machine.

A little later she smiled and said, “We were right.” With more conviction.

Full disclosure…  The above is a shameless but unsolicited testimonial for a product made by one of my company’s occasional clients.  Nonetheless, the story is true, and I will leave it to my readers to draw their own conclusions.  All I can say is that it passed the Burnt Butterbean Test.

Over the past 26 years of cleaning boats, one thing stays constant.  Moisture.  Moisture issues arise when damp or wet areas are overlooked when your boat is put away.  In the winter, one of your most valuable assets gets hauled or stays in its slip and the cold weather sets in.  Most of us are busy with other priorities and tend to forget about what is happening inside our boats.

Moisture, whether it is damp indoor/outdoor carpet, isinglass and damp canvas thrown inside, life jackets, bilges or engine rooms with excess water, or just a moist interior caused by the changes in temperatures, becomes a huge issue when there is no air movement. Even during the winter, sunny days can warm up your boat enough to encourage mold growth.

Mold starts by having a moist environment followed combined with a food source (dust, food, dirt etc).  By making sure your boat is clean and dry mid-season, we can significantly reduce the likelihood of mold growth and an unhealthy environment in the spring.

My recommendation is to go back inside your boat and dry and clean the bilges, engine room, and any other areas that will hold moisture and dirt after your boat has been wrapped.    We will be happy to provide this service if you are not able to get down to your boat mid-winter.  Our intention is to perform this service in December and January.  When we clean these areas, a low VOC chemical is used to reduce harmful vapors.  Interior surfaces are cleaned with microfibers, green sealed certified chemicals and carpets vacuumed utilizing hepa filtration.  The cost will vary based on each individual job due to the level of effort needed.

Over the past few years, I have had more calls for mold remediation on boats than ever before and the result is so much more costly than doing a little preventative maintenance.  We want to help our customers save money in the long run by checking on their boats as well as making sure they stay clean and dry.  We want you to open up your boat and enjoy it!

There are a few basic services I would not skip and are listed below.  We can customize more services based on your needs and budget.

Necessity for winter

1. Clean all water from engine room
2. Clean all water from bilges inside and outside
3. Make sure interior is dry and clean
4. Make sure all contents inside are dry

Options you can add on for winter

1. Detail engines and engine room
2. Detail bilges inside and outside
3. Open and disinfect sump boxes
4. Steam clean your carpets
5. Paint your engine room
6. Paint your bilges
7. Redo any wood work inside

We look forward to helping you maintain your boat this Fall Season, and hope to hear from you soon!

So first the FB page, and now we have an official blog!  If you have noticed a few changes in our site, that is thanks to Jeff Weese at Joslex Design (www.joslex.com) – he has taken our award-winning design that looked great, but was not editable and reformatted the site so we can keep it fresh and current – as well as add some cool new features we have been dying to include – like our “Service Request Form“.  And now we officially launch our blog – have some great topics in mind – info on getting your boat ready, spring cleaning tips, cleaning products, cleaning solutions, etc. Our goal is to make this a very informative site for our customers and give you information to make keeping your life “clean” as painless as possible.

As much as we would all love to have daily maid service, for most of us, that is only a dream. So while SCHUMANS can make your life easier by taking care of the bulk of your cleaning, we know that keeping it clean in between our visits is something we could all use a little help with. And I will confess a little secret – I hate to clean. Now that is just me – thankfully God sent me a wonderful husband who not only enjoys cleaning, but has a passion for it. Seriously. Heath is the only person I know who looks forward to cleaning his garage (spent all day yesterday on that). By the time he finished, it was cleaner than most people’s kitchens!! That is just want he does – and explains why no other competitor matches us in quality and attention to detail.

But back to me – I really do like a clean house. And I love when our boat is spotless. But we have two dogs, two kids, lots of their friends, and I have a background in infection control and food service -so I know why things should be clean -I just don’t like to DO the cleaning. That is why opposites attract and we make a great team. Since I really don’t enjoy cleaning and he LOVES a clean house and the owners are like the shoemaker’s kids (you’d think a perk would be regular cleaning – not), I am always looking for new products that 1) make cleaning easier and 2) are quick and even fun to use. Why fun? With anything, if it is fun, you are more likely to do it. Cleaning is no different. And I am a sucker for all new cleaning gadgets – if it promises to make my cleaning easier, I try it.

So I do plan to use this blog to review new products as I try them – and let our customers know which are worth it and which to skip. One area I also want to focus on is green cleaning. It is a commitment SCHUMANs is making in all our divisions – its just healthier for everyone – our customers, our staff, pets, and the environment. We have found some excellent products and cleaning methods that work even better than some of the harsh, toxic ones. I’ll share those as well. Looking forward to these topics as well as sharing much of the experience and helpful solutions we have learned throughout our daughter’s battles with allergies. We are officially blogging now…..