Home Maintenance Tips For New Moms

No one ever has this home maintenance thing down from the beginning. There are lots to do and take care of, and the process can be overwhelming at times. However, these tips can help make the process of managing a home more comfortable.

Take care of squeaky floors

Hardly will anything annoy you in your own house like having squeaky floors. It’s especially disturbing when you have hardwood floors, although you can also have a bit of a squeak with carpets.

Squeaks on your floors are a sign that several things could be wrong. Your floors could be wearing out, or it could mean that you’re dealing with a bigger problem than you know. What everyone seems to agree on, however, is that it’s never a good sign.

If you want to get rid of this, you will need to get a stud finder to find any joist near the squeak. Then, drive in a trim screw through the carpet with a drill, right into the solid wood. If the noise continues, then push it in more.

If you’ve got a wooden floor, then it’s even easier. Simply get some talcum powder and sprinkle it on the cracks close to the squeak. Spread the powder around with a broom and make sure that you get into all the gaps. With this, the noises should reduce significantly.

Buff all scuffs

When hardwood floors get a lot of traffic, there’s no doubt that they’ll collect a lot of scuffs too. You could use a Roomba to save time when cleaning your floors, but there’s a novel way to clear out scuffs that could be a bit more effective.

Get a tennis ball. These balls have a felt-like surface that can take out any scuffs on your floor, as long as you rub them vigorously over the mark. However, if that will be too much work, then you could cut out a small “X” into one side of the ball and put a broom handle on it. This way, you can clean and not have to strain your back.

Clean the bathtub

No matter how clean it gets, a bathtub will always end up trapping a lot of dirt. The minerals in the water, as well as the dead skin cells and scum from your body that drop off when you have your bath, tend to stain the tub and make it look dingy after a few baths.

However, instead of getting chemicals, you can combine equal parts of cream of tartar and baking soda with some lemon juice. Let the combination form a paste, and apply the mixture to bathtub stains. Rub it in, then leave it there for about an hour before you go to rinse it off.

Clean any water stains

If you have leaks in your ceiling or roof, then you will eventually find streaks of brown water rings on your drywall.

Ideally, the solution that we all resort to is painting over these things. However, there could also be another solution that you’re missing. Get a mixture of 10 percent bleach and 90 percent water, and spray it over the brown water streak.

Wait for about a day, and you could find that the streak has disappeared. A lot of the time, you’ll find that this is a great way to clear up any stains on your ceiling –remember to protect your eyes and anything else that could be damaged by bleach when you’re applying the solution.

Also, you might find that the best way to treat problems like these will be to just fix the leaks; a simple search for roofing companies near me will provide an effective solution that will protect your home from further damage.

Close up wallpaper seams

If you’ve got a wallpaper seam that’s beginning to come apart, then you can make the paste around the gap functional again with a rag and some warm water.

Soak the rag in the water and hold it over the seam area for about two minutes. Then, open the gap a bit larger so that the sealer will have more room. Squeeze the seam sealer into the gap, then use a roller to place the wallpaper back on the wall. You can get a sponge to take care of the excess sealer.

Fix sub-optimal faucet flows

Eventually, you will find that faucet heads will begin to flow less and less. In some extreme cases, some of these faucets could even discharge water in an uneven spray and make your kitchen counter a mess whenever you put them on.

This phenomenon is caused by the accumulation of tiny sand grains, as well as other particles that block the aerator at the tip of the faucet.

So, get some tape and wrap it around the aerator to protect it, then twist it off. Wash out all the debris from the aerator and soak it in some vinegar for a while. Clean it off, then reassemble it again. It should work well as new.