Different Types of House Cleaning Services

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Clean Bathroom

Selecting the right cleaning service for your home can be a daunting task. Our article breaks down the different types of cleaning services available to make the task easier and remove the stress.

Most homeowners are finding it difficult to maintain the cleanliness of their homes with their busy work schedules. For this reason, they are thinking of hiring the services of a house cleaning company. This way, they do not only save time and energy, but they can also be sure that their house is spic and span. Even after a long and tiring day at work, they can relax in a clean environment. At present, more homeowners are investing on house cleaning services that would meet their needs and budget.

House cleaning companies offer a variety of flexible schedules. You can opt to hire house cleaners on a day-to-day or weekly basis. Hiring one to clean your house everyday will keep it cleaner while hiring a house cleaner on a weekly basis is the cheapest alternative that is available.

Aside from a house cleaning company in Austin, you can also hire the services of private or even office cleaners. They also provide the services given by the companies but at reduced costs. Basically, there are three main types of house cleaning services. You can choose from any of these, depending on your needs and preferences. The services provided by all three are similar. Homeowners will just have to base their choice on quality and costs involved.

House Cleaning Services

• Freelancer

This term refers to individuals who are not insured or licensed but perform a lot of private cleaning jobs. There are several employed and unemployed individuals that are part-time freelancers. By hiring freelancing professionals, you can have the advantage of getting the cleaning job accomplished on a time, which suits you best. In addition to this, it will be a lot easier to negotiate with individuals that are not connected to commercial organizations.

• Mother’s helper

This refers to a house helper that gives different kinds of household services. The homeowner usually pays an hourly rate.

• Maid service company

This is the most preferred provider of house cleaning services since it makes sure that there is no compromise when it comes to the quality of work. You can rely on these companies since they are certified and insured. They provide services on a daily or weekly basis. While the fees charged by a maid service company are a bit higher than that of a freelancer or a mother’s helper, the rates are affordable to many.

Why Choose House Cleaning Services?

There are some differences between choosing companies that offer house cleaning services and an individual maid. You are likely to receive personalized attention from a maid. However, there is a limit to the type of services that they usually perform. On the other hand, while a cleaning service costs more, it will take care of social security payments and taxes, which you are responsible for when hiring an individual maid. Moreover, the company pays for the compensation of workers. This means that if any cleaner gets hurt while providing cleaning services in your home, you are not liable. In addition to this, a cleaning company is more reliable. In case one of the cleaners is sick, the company will send someone else to clean your place so the cleaning goes right on schedule.

Overview

Household chores are no longer a problem for busy homeowners. They can always opt for house cleaning services, whether it is a freelancer, mother’s helper or a maid service company. They are available in hourly, daily and weekly rates. They offer similar cleaning services that meet the needs of homeowners. They just vary in quality and costs.

This post is a contribution from AustinMaidService.com, the premier maid and cleaning service in the greater Austin area.

Austin Maid Service
2882 Barton Skyway #222
Austin, TX 78746
512-861-6444

http://www.austinmaidservice.com

How to Find More Time for Hobbies and Knitting

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Enjoying a hobby is a chance to get away from the stress and frustrations of work and life. The problem is that a busy work week combined with household chores, cooking and other responsibilities often get in the way of personal time. It is important to take time for a hobby, which means finding creative ways to save time when the workday is complete.

Get Cleaning Out of the Way

Cleaning can be an enormous job and an incredible bore (especially when you’re thinking of other things that are more fun), or it can be something that you do as you go along. Picking up after yourself, putting your clothes away after you wear them, doing laundry regularly before it builds up, and washing the dishes as you use them are all ways to keep time spent cleaning to a minimum. If you do happen to get behind, here are some spring cleaning tips from our favorite Round Rock maid service tips to help you catch up.

Schedule the Day

Creating a schedule is about improving time management skills. It keeps the daily tasks on track, avoids procrastination that leads to wasted time and ultimately makes the day more productive. It also sets aside a little time each day for that hobby.

Plan a time for the hobby, even if that means getting up half an hour earlier to enjoy time with a good book or knitting a sweater. The schedule makes it easier to find more time that is often wasted in trying to determine what needs to get done that day.

Watch Less Television

say no to tvMany individuals do not realize how much time is wasted watching news, favorite shows and even infomercials throughout the day. Turn off the television for a day and it is likely that at least half an hour of time clears up. Even just working on a hobby during the commercial breaks will make a little extra personal time for that relaxing hobby.

Plan Meals in Advance

Planning and cooking meals can waste hours of time at the end of the week. By taking a few minutes to plan meals each weekend and making a large amount of a meal at one time, it is possible to ensure the house has leftovers for a few days.

Cooking meals at home is a healthy lifestyle habit, but it is also a time-consuming part of any day. By planning ahead to ensure the house has appropriate food items and cooking larger amounts at the beginning of the week for leftovers at lunch or dinner the next day, it is easier to save more time by the end of the day for a special hobby.

Finding time for hobbies starts with determining how much time is necessary for a single day and then working to incorporate a little extra time into the routine. A few simple tricks, like working on the hobby between commercial breaks or planning meals in advance, will ultimately result in more personal time enjoying an activity that is enjoyable. Hobbies are vital to stress reduction, overall health and enjoying time away from work.

Traditional Knitting in North America

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For most of this century two groups of handknitters in the North Atlantic region have interacted: “in-hand knitters,” who receive the directions for knitted articles almost entirely from other knitters in person, and “print knitters,” who receive and present information about knitted articles in the form of published patterns. Both groups usually learn basic knitting skills in person.

Because there has been no previous study of handknitting, pains have been taken to define and analyze the subject at length in historical, economic, and sociocultural terms, as well as to assess the value of earlier historical and non-academic works on knitting.

Beginning in the late 1800s, a movement began among print dependent knitters to wear, and also to knit, garments traditionally associated with the peasant and fishermen of various northern European countries. In the 1950s a resurgence of interest in handwork joined an interest in “ethnic” clothing to make profitable the publication of collections of knitting patterns, primarily of British and Irish fishermen’s jerseys, Fair Isle and other Shetland sweaters, and Norwegian motif-patterned garments, generally caps, mittens and pullovers. The writers/collectors of the British patterns included ethnographic accounts and travel information on many of the sources of the knitted garments. Scandinavian knitting writers, often art historians, prefaced many works with histories based on archeological and art history artifacts. During the 1980s, serious ethnographic and historico/archeological work onknitting was begun on both sides of the Atlantic, primarily by knitters who were also scholars or who came to their scholarship through knitting or other fiber handcrafts.

A model of the knitting traditionbearing community presented here shows among other things a steady and rapid movement of ethnic, regional, and occupation designs and techniques by means of published knitting patterns from the in-hand knitters to the garment industry. This movement depends primarily on the choice of knitting”antiquarians” to preserve the techniques and processes rather than artifacts and on the ready adaptability of hand-knitting instructions to machine knitting production.

Knitting in the US at the Turn of the Century

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Research into patent literature confirms that the foundations of the modern knitting industry were laid in the 19th and early twentieth centuries. This is especially true in the case of the domestic machine, either the circular or Lamb type. These machines encouraged a new labor supply, the growth of new products and perfection of the old, and the growth of the factory industry. They were available to all, they were more than adequate in performance of their function and they were not so complex that the intricacies of their working were known only to few.

The necessary refinements for the change from the older stocking frame to the domestic machine are reflected in patents. Patents in and of themselves are important documents and are a valuable tool for the researcher of technology. Quite often a patent will offer a detailed description of why an improvement has been made and patented. From that the difficulties that inspired the patent may be discerned. Since patents are self serving, one should exercise caution in their interpretation. One should not however, ignore the internal evidence presented in patents.

Relatively simple mechanisms changed the knitting industry. Discussion of the development of several of the essential parts of the knitting machine will show how those separate inventions led to the development of the machines we know today. The parts that proved to be indispensable were the knitting needle, especially the latch hook needle, the stop motion, the take up mechanism and the yarn supply. While the latter did not occasion a lot of patents on its own, it did feature in many patents. The addition of those simple mechanisms promoted faster, more efficient and less labor intensive workings.

The United States knitting industry grew and prospered. From its infancy, when it used wooden framed knitting machines capable of flat fabrics with tedious hand manipulated shaping, to the outbreak of World War I, when it could knit tubular, shaped fabrics or flat full-fashioned garments almost automatically, is a large step. Some important technological advances occurred that allowed this step.

Go Be Nice

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My fellow Kansan blogger and uber garden gal, A Homesteading Neophyte, is participating in Blogathon 2007.  She is raising money for FarmAid and blogging nonstop for the next 24 hours.  She focusing on food and recipes, so go check her out!  NOW! I’m not kidding!  And, if you like a recipe, or want to try one of her great tips, or you’re feeling generous (or cheap, or tired, or crafty or whatever), pledge her some money.

I mean it, GO NOW!

Local Food Challenge

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Well, I promised more about our local eating efforts, and look(!) in just happens to be Local Food Month sponsored by my favorite Crunchy Chicken.  (By the way, while you are there check out the Diva Cup information.  I got mine,…LOVE IT.  Beware, click that link only if you’re of the female persuasion. If you’re male and get squeamish during a tampon commercial…stay far away…w-a-a-a-y TMI!).

We have been trying the local eating thing for a couple of months now.  And it’s been a challenge for sure!  I’ve decided to buy local or if I can’t, than organic (preferably both).  Of course, the limiting factor to eating locally is what you can find.  Now, I live in Kansas.  You would think eating locally out here on the so called fruitful (or is it fruited?) plain would be easy.  We’re lousy with farmers and ranchers.  Overalls and grain elevator caps are de rigeur at the local greasy spoon.  However, these farmers raise feed…for cattle…milo, corn, soybeans.  And they also raise the cattle…to sell at the livestock sales.  We had way more local produce in the Upstate New York area of my previous life.  There you had farm stands on every available corner.  Come August people had boxes of tomatoes and zucchini at the end of their driveways with signs that said TAKE SOME FREE… PLEASE!!!!  I’ve planted vegetables and fruit this year.  Some in a formal vegetable garden, all in neat rows and little hillocks, but most randomly placed in with the flowers in a cottage garden sort of way.  I love my flowers with all my little heart, and take good care of them.  So, hiding vegetables amongst them is the best way to ensure the veggies survival when it gets ridiculously hot and I try to reverse hibernate.  (In six years I’ve come a long way to adapting to the Kansas summer, but sometimes even walking outside makes me feel like I’m wading through nearly solid waves of heat!  Why did those settlers stop here?).

Our local farmer’s market is about 20 miles away.  So I have the using gas/causing emissions issues when going there.  Of course, that is also where all the shopping is, so I try to do everything in one trip so I don’t feel so guilty.  And just because food is at the farmer’s market does not mean that it is organic or even locally produced.  Always ask!

Also, eating locally means eating what is in season.  The upside is soon as you are getting more than sick of spinach and broccoli, you get to move on to corn and yellow squash.  And of course, there is always freezing and canning to carry over some things into the winter.  I’ve got the technique of freezing using the microwave to blanch vegetables down pat.  However, I am a canning neophyte and need to hitch up my pants and take the plunge.  It’s only the fear of giving my children botulism that’s keeping me back.

My biggest challenge has been meat.  We do get beef, a quarter at a time, from a friend of ours.  They are pasture raised and we know his farming practices.  He also has buffalo, which is low fat and yummy…but pricey.  The farmer’s market also has beef and pork.  What I can’t find is poultry.  Yes, I know we have chickens ourselves.  Yes, I know that is where those frozen, skinless breasts come from…but our chickens are our friends.  And friends don’t eat friends unless you’re all trapped in an avalanche for six weeks.  Plus, I’m not sure I’m up to all that bleeding and plucking (although I deeply admire and respect people who are!).  Of course that doesn’t keep us from eating their babies (well, their eggs anyways). Our health food store (20 miles away again) has locally grown, organic chicken, but it costs about $11 for two breasts. NOT within my budget.  I have been purchasing whole organic chickens at the supermarket as a compromise.

On the topic of food budgets and the cost of organic foods, check out this great article at Mother Earth News.  (While your there check out the article on grocery store meat.  Eeeew!)  Barbara Kingsolver (who spent a year eating sustainably and wrote a book about it that I’m waiting to get it from the library…hopefully it’s shorter than The Poisonwood Bible.) suggests that we have the wrong priorities when approaching our food budgets.  And in the grand scheme of things, can we really afford not to eat sustainably?

SO, are you going to join us?  It’s kind of like detective work to find local food, but definitely worth it.  I suggest starting your search at Localharvest.org.  There you can find lists of local farmers and farmer’s markets in your area.  Good luck…and if you find a great way to get your kids to eat whatever vegetables are currently in season with out complaint, please let me know!

Rainy Day Blues

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Yay!  It’s been raining, which means no late evening, mosquito infested watering…but it also means I have no good excuse not to clean my house.  Now we don’t live like P-I-G pigs, but I ain’t no Martha Stewart either.  And Settlers Farm is no suburban dream home.  It is an authentic farmhouse, with doors that won’t shut all the way, mismatched floors, and apparently a flashing, neon, fly-sized sign that reads “COME ON IN, WE’RE OPEN!”.  But we do our best,… as time allows,… with somewhat cheerful faces …and armed to the teeth with fly swatters.

One day, in church, during our “Sharing of Joys and Concerns”, a small, tweedy woman stood up and encouraged us all to check out Flylady.com because it changed her life.  Changed her life!  Now, we are Unitarians (Yes, recycling is actually part of my religion, how cool is that?!), and we are used to people standing up and sharing the most amazing things, like “We have just returned from a year in Guatemala teaching villagers how to make goat cheese AND we adopted four teenage orphans!” or “Feel free to call me Linda now, and please wish me good luck on my surgery”.  So of course I had to check out FlyLady.

Oh_my_God(dess, …insert Deity/Being of choice…I AM a Unitarian).  Apparently, unknown to me, my house is Filthy, Cluttered and…gasp…Unorganized!  Who knew you were supposed to launder your bathroom curtains once a month (in case company stops by) let alone scrub your kitchen sink with your toothbrush?  Meanwhile you are to throw out 37 of your things once a week (Do NOT sell them or have a garage sale, it takes too much time …clutter the landfill instead!) until your house is empty of all personal effects.  It will then be a joy to clean with your big, purple, $50 (plus shipping) feather duster that makes you feel like a princess!  (Which princess exactly…pre-bibbitybobbity Cinderella?).  And don’t forget to record it all in your Control Journal!  (Type A anyone?)

And this is how you “Finally Love Yourself”!  (F.L.Y,.. get it? Clever!)

If that is how one learns to love oneself, I need some serious therapy!  Not that I am fundamentally against clean organized homes.  I just think children, sheep, chickens, spinning, knitting, gardening and kissing my husband come first …and not necessarily in that order!  I love myself most when I’m scratching a woolly neck, finishing a project or rubbing my cheek on silky baby hair.  When I have a clean house?  Not so much.

So are you curious what my home must look like?  Check out Kristin Nicholas.  She’s an incredible designer and has an old house with chutzpah!  My house looks just like that…just with a lot more books, children, dogs, spinning wheels, wool, pet hair, half finished knitting projects, and dust.

Yah, right.  Please excuse me, I have to go put some curtains in the wash…

Which Jane Austin character are YOU?

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Oooh, oooh!  I found this fun quiz here.  I just love Jane Austin!  I know all the feminists’ complaints about the novels being about women only working on their Mrs. Degree.  But I think they are a very interesting look at the role of women at the time, AND each heroine must come true to herself to end up happy at the end.  A very important skill women are still trying to acquire today.  Plus they are very funny.  Anyhoo… I am conflicted over my result.  Although I adore Kate Winslet, I think this character is rather flighty and romantic to the point of silly.  However, she does end up with Alan Rickman (who..shh..I’m secretly in love with), and who’s character is just the sort of man I fall for.

Which Jane Austin character are YOU?

We’re Going Green Baby

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We have been trying to reduce our carbon footprint dramatically and are feeling pleased with ourselves (though we still have a way to go).  We replaced all our light bulbs with the CFLs.  You know, those funky, coiled ones that cost about 6 times more than the regular ones.  And guess what!?  They are so worth it!!!  They last like 5 years and our energy usage has been cut in half (although Whirled Son #1′s slight boredom with the Xbox may also have something to do with it..).  We also recycle nearly everything.  All the basics, …plus Mr. Whirled revels in taking most larger things apart into their recyclable components.  I really just need to get him a blowtorch and let him make us some yard sculpture.    We’ve started a compost pile for kitchen waste (we already have “Manure Mountain” on the back forty) closer to the house so that it is not a major, tick-filled chore to take it out.  I’m weaning myself off the dryer (clothes line drying takes a little advanced planning…not my strong point).  We never use hot water for clothes washing and I never heat dry the dishes.  We have also started trying to eat organically and locally.  I will be posting more on that issue as it can take quite a bit of detective work to find local food sources.  A wonderful resource is LocalHarvest.org.

We still have a long way to go.  We are participating in the Low Impact Week Challenge and have quite a few areas to work on.  Especially water usage (I have just got to turn that faucet off when I brush…I am so lazy!) And what to do about cars when you live 5 miles from town (or 15 miles from work) and there is no public transport to speak of and can’t afford a lovely new hybrid? (I really, really want a hybrid, sigh).  And there is plenty more.  So please join us, if we can do it, so can you (believe me)!  It’s fun, saves you money and makes you feel really good.

Of School and Wool

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Well, I’m back…I hope.  What a spring!  My website has been sitting empty while the rest of my life has whirled like mad!  First, since mid-February, I have been homeschooling my eldest.  He is a fantastic, sensitive and wicked smart kid who just could not deal with third grade.  He said he felt “uncomfortable” and cried every day.  He had a hard time sleeping, acted like reading was a chore and was cranky and fussy with everyone at home.  I never in my wildest dreams imagined me homeschooling (okay, maybe when my son was 8 hours old and I was not going to let anyone else touch him, let alone send him to kindergarten in five years!).  We had a blast…an absolute blast.  And I learned so much!  Plus he could sleep again, he played and had fun again, and read like a maniac. Of course, I got nothing, nada, zip of anything else done.  But now school is over, he has his 2 best friends in his class for next year and life can get back to normal ….yah…right.

Remember my pathetically coiffed sheep?

Well I have been scouring, scouring, scouring and picking, picking, picking and carding, carding, carding.  Then I start all over again.  (I could really be flying through this if other people in my house didn’t need to eat and wear clean clothes.)  I’ve been thinking about doing up a scouring tutorial since I do it all a little different than everyone else…we’ll see.

We have also decided to become a little more self sufficient here at Settlers Farm and be committed to reducing our footprint as much as possible.  I will post more on that soon.

I recently (as of yesterday) finished two sweater projects that have me so happy!  First is Simply Marilyn from an old issue of IK.  Of course I didn’t use the same yarn (Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Bulky) I used good old Lamb’s Pride Bulky.  I couldn’t get the same gauge, so I adjusted that.  I also thought their measurements were huge, so I made it much smaller. Despite all that, it came out looking just like the picture!  And I love it!  And the weather turned all nasty so I could wear it!  Joy, joy, joy!

I also finished this one from the same IK.  It was really quick and easy.  It called for Berroco Zen, but I had Colinette Giotto.  So I adjusted for gauge again.  It came out awesome…not so cute lying on the table…but very cute on.  Bring on the miserable spring weather!