Introduction
Crafting, decorating, pranking, and going trick-or-treating with your kids are important Halloween traditions. However, these traditions come with their fair share of messes. After Halloween, you can search for “home cleaning services near me” and hire professionals to take care of that mess. Otherwise, you can follow the following tips and tricks to resolve the dirtiest of Halloween fun.
Tips & Tricks
- Prevention – The best way to clean up a mess is to prevent it from happening. Spending just a few minutes on prevention before you start off with your Halloween projects is the best way to manage a dirty mess. One of the biggest issues when cleaning Halloween messes is dealing with the messes that existed before you started decorating. Take a few minutes to clean up the area of dust, dirt, clutter, and other things that may spiral into a bigger mess later on.
If you’re doing crafts with glitter, paint, spider webs, or other such messy items, they can turn into a cleanup nightmare if spilled over the wrong things. Take the time to put up plastic sheets or other barriers to protect floors, furniture, and other surfaces to make cleanup a breeze. Finally, if you’re preparing treats or using the kitchen for your projects, empty out the counters and sink of mess and clutter. Use a powerful all-purpose cleaner to wipe down sticky messes that are already present.
- Pumpkin residues – A Jack-o-lantern is the universal symbol of Halloween that can’t be separated from this tradition. However, a big mess is left over from creating it. Children love to carve pumpkins during Halloween and that means you’ll end up with plenty of pumpkin innards on the table, carpets, and floors. You can use newspapers or large sheets to cover those spaces before the children start carving pumpkins.
Once the pumpkins are carved, you can throw everything including the sheets into the trash. If you compost at home and use newspapers for controlling the mess, you can throw everything directly into the compost bin. Whatever little bit of mess is left on the carpet or floor can be cleaned easily with a sponge, some liquid dish soap, and water.
- Fake blood stains – During Halloween, fake blood stains are the worst kind of filth you need to deal with. It’s a common item that is used for both decoration and makeup. While removing it from your face and body may be easy, it’s difficult to remove it from household surfaces. Usually, fake blood available in the market is made from red dye and corn syrup. Both those things are a challenge to clean up.
If you get fake blood stains on the carpet or furniture upholstery, dab the spot with a kitchen towel or rag as soon as possible. After that, apply rubbing alcohol on the stain and work it in. Next, use more kitchen towels and keep dabbing the dissolved stain. If you get fake blood stains on other soft surfaces of your home, you can also use baking soda to clean it up. For hard surfaces, a solution of liquid soap, vinegar, and water should do the trick.
- Crushed and sticky candy – Expect to see half-eaten chocolates, crushed candies, and caramels on the floor if you have kids at home. Those treats would leave a sticky, stubborn, and sugary mess after the Halloween celebration. Scrubbing and scraping is the last thing you want to do. In some cases, it may cause more damage.
You need to avoid abrasive scrubbers while dealing with sticky sugary messes. Just soak a clean rag in hot water and wring it out. Place the rag on the sticky mess and let it sit there for free seconds. Next, repeat the entire process till heat and humidity loosens the stickiness of the residue. When that happens, you can simply wipe off the sticky residue.
- Remove grease paint and make-up stains – Make-up stains and grease paint are some of the toughest things to clean from household surfaces. Sometimes, they can be even tougher to remove than fake blood stains. If you notice any make-up stains on the carpet or upholstery, blot out most of the color with a clean kitchen towel. Apply liquid detergent and water to the spot and keep blotting the spot till the stain disappears for good.
If the stain is on the wall or floor, you’ll need to use a degreaser. Apply it on the stain and allow it to work on the stain for a few minutes before wiping it all down. If the stains are spread out quite extensively, you may need the help of a professional who uses modern and powerful cleaning tools with effective cleansing agents.
- Candle wax – If you decorate your home with a lot of candles during Halloween, you’ll need to deal with a lot of candle wax. There’s no shortcut to removing wax drips. You’ll need to scrub them off with mild detergents. However, if the wax is on a solid surface, you can easily scrape it off with a paint scraper or a dull knife. Be careful while doing this so that you don’t leave a scratch or damage the expensive tile or wooden surface.
After most of the wax is scraped off of counters, furniture and floors, use a non-abrasive cleanser to clean off the residue. To remove waxy residue from fabrics, carpets, and other such soft surfaces, you’ll need to melt the wax. Put several layers of paper towels on the waxy residue and put a hot iron over it. After that, you can dab the rest of the candle wax from the soft surface with rubbing alcohol.
Conclusion
Halloween is a time of celebration and fun. However, after the fun, comes the cleaning. The above-mentioned tricks should help to ease the process. If things get too overwhelming, you can search for “home cleaning services near me” and hire professionals to clean the Halloween mess for you.