For relatively obvious reasons, the ceiling tends to be the most overlooked part of any room when it comes to cleaning. One the reasons being that it doesn’t tend to be a part of the room that you come into direct contact with very often. Nevertheless, it also has the potential to be one of the fastest parts of the room to accumulate dust, dirt grease and everyday grime.
Keeping tabs on health and hygiene means ensuring that ceilings are kept appropriately clean. The good news being that this doesn’t have to be a particularly difficult task, nor the threat to lie and limb some have a habit of making it.
So for anyone looking to give an interior space a comprehensive spruce-up from top to bottom, here’s a quick overview of how to go about cleaning ceilings the right way:
- Always make sure that the floor beneath is suitably protected using a drop cloth. In addition, you need to ensure that the drop cloth you use is non-slip in nature and isn’t going to present a hazard in its own right during the cleaning process.
- Move furniture and fixtures out of the way to the most practical possible extent, in order to eliminate obstacles and make it less likely that you will be tripping over things while cleaning the ceiling. In addition, you might want to think about covering any furniture or electrical items too.
- Even if you only intend to use comprehensively safe cleaning products, you still need to use the appropriate PPE including goggles and a mask of some description. After all, you don’t want to be dripping dirty water from the ceiling directly into your eyes, or breathing in all that dust and dirt.
- You might also want to think about wearing gloves, given the way in which any cleaning products or dirty water that find their way onto your hands will probably end up running down your arms and into whatever you’re wearing.
- As a simple rule of thumb, if you use a sponge or cloth to clean the ceiling and it drips as you use it, it is too wet. Only ever use cloths and sponges that are very slightly damp – excess moisture will only make things more difficult.
- If it is necessary to use a stepladder to clean the ceiling, ensure it is flawlessly secure and ideally only go about the job when there is someone else in the room at the same time.
- Avoid using anything particularly strong or harsh on the ceiling, given the way in which it is almost inevitable that you will end up getting it all over yourself in the process.
- If nothing more than dusting is needed, you might get away with using a vacuum cleaner. In fact, if you vacuum your ceilings on a regular basis, you may never need to go ahead with intensive cleaning.
- Never overlook the value and convenience of long-handled sponges, cloths and other cleaning tools you can use without having to scale a ladder.
- Pay close attention to the material your ceiling is made of and be extremely careful when cleaning materials that are in any way porous.
If in doubt, call in the experts!