The Science Behind the Importance of Professional House Cleaning

Professional cleaning offers many benefits, including improving your ability to keep a healthy home. In this article, we will look at the science behind the importance of professional house cleaning for a sparkling, safe household.

Proper Application of Professional Cleaning Products

Professional cleaners are trained to use specific cleaning products designed for different cleaning tasks throughout your home. This is essential to maintaining a healthy home because how the solution is used impacts how effective and safe it is.

Professional cleaning ensures that every surface of the home is treated with safe cleaning products adhering to recommended methods, including the following:

• Ensuring the right solution is used for each surface.
• Understanding the purpose of use; for example, to polish, sanitize, stain removal, etc.
• Special requirements include spot testing, proper rinsing, setting sanitizers, etc.

Avoiding Dangerous Chemical Reactions of Professional Cleaning Solutions

Professional cleaners avoid dangerous chemical reactions when using a wide variety of professional cleaning solutions. Chemical reactions can not only damage or stain various surfaces in the home, but also create dangerous gasses and solutions that can lead to injury.

Understanding how the chemicals in cleaning solutions react with each other avoids the following issues:

• Incompatibility such as oil-based and water-based solutions that can lead to damage to surfaces and materials.
• Toxicity caused by mixing certain ingredients found in cleaning solutions. 
• Creating chlorine gas from mixing bleach and vinegar that can harm the eyes and cause breathing issues.
• Creating chloramine produced by mixing bleach and ammonia that can cause chest pains and shortness of breath.
• Creating chloroform by mixing bleach and rubbing alcohol.
• Creating corrosive peracetic/peroxyacetic acid by mixing hydrogen peroxide and vinegar.
• Contributing to pollution by mixing incompatible oil and water-based solutions that won’t dissolve and safely rinse away.

Understanding How Professional Cleaning Processes Remove Dirt

The cleaning process might seem straightforward. However, science is involved in creating cleaning products to remove the many types of dirt, pollutants, germs, and bacteria found in the home. For example, while one cleaner is ideal for eliminating issues such as mould and mildew, another is required to tackle oil and fat.

Cleaning science is not only reliant on the source of the dirt, but the material you’re cleaning. For example, a grease or oil stain on your carpet requires a different cleaning process and solution than a leather couch.

The science behind professional cleaning ensures that the soap or cleaning solution used is designed to break down specific substances and effectively dissolve them. This ensures that stains, germs, and bacteria are safely removed without introducing harmful chemicals into the home.

The Science of Timing in Professional Cleaning

Timing impacts both the staining and cleaning processes. 

Timing for Stains

Stains occur based on the makeup of the stain, the surface, and how long the stain sets. Grease splatters, for example, aren’t so difficult to tackle when wiped up right away.

However, grease is finicky because over time it tends to become stickier and can start to yellow as elements of the grease evaporate. When this happens, grease adheres to surfaces and collects dust and other particulates, making it harder to clean.

Therefore, leaving grease on something like the range hood above the stove for too long makes removing it far more challenging than wiping it away when the splatter occurs.

Another example is greasy tomato pasta sauce. The natural dyes in tomato can penetrate porous surfaces, such as unsealed marble, and leave a stain.

Still, even grease that is less colourless, such as bacon fat, can cause a stain when it comes into contact with a white shirt or an area rug. This is because grease is not water-soluble. As a result, it clings to fibres, causing discolouration.

If we look at a different scenario, such as wine stains on a white carpet, this is a different challenge. Acting immediately greatly improves the results of stain removal. By sopping up most of the liquid, you remove most of the dye. You can then use soap and water to dilute the residue and lift it before it binds to the fabric.

Timing for Effective Cleaning

“Dwell time” is critical for professional house cleaning, as it allows the ingredients of a cleaner to react to the dirt or stain it is targeting. For example, some solvents, like those used to remove oil, need time to break down the molecules before the oil can be safely and effectively wiped away.

Another example is using the right timing and methods for many sanitizing cleaners, which often need about 10 minutes to kill germs and bacteria, depending on the solution used.

The Science Behind Stain Removal in Professional Cleaning

Staining can be complicated. It’s important for professional house cleaning teams to consider the type of stain, the material or surface impacted by the stain, and the proper cleaning solution required to most effectively remove the stain. The science behind stains is based on the following considerations:

• Is it water-soluble, oil-based, or more complex with a mix of both water and oil components?
• Is the surface porous, such as fabric, carpet, or untreated marble counters, or non-porous like metal or glass?
• Does the dirt contain molecules that will bond to the surface, such as natural chromogens that will stain?
• What is the composition of the stain or mess, such as blood that is complicated to remove because it coagulates?
• How long has the stain been left untreated?
• Are odours complicating the matter, such as pet stains?

From there, the professional house cleaning process is determined based on the type of cleaner required such as detergent to break down oil or lift dirt, enzymatic cleaners to remove odours, germ-killing cleaners to sanitize, or oxidizing agents to remove deep-coloured stains.

Call Maid4Condos for Professional House Cleaning

As you can see, professional house cleaning relies heavily on science to keep a healthy home, effectively tackle stains, and safely remove germs and bacteria. 
If you’d like to learn more about Maid4Condos’ professional house cleaning services, you can also call us at 647-822-0601 or contact us online.