The kitchen is the part of your home that probably demands the most daily attention and cleaning. It is one of the most highly trafficked areas of most peoples’ homes, and naturally attracts the most mess day in and day out.

Of course you want to be friendly to the earth when you clean and hire a junk removal service, but that can be tricky with all of those cleaning products out there that are designed to clean kitchen surfaces and utensils by using harsh and abrasive cleaning chemicals. You may want to go more eco-friendly by trying cleaning products with fewer chemicals and toxins, but you also don’t want to sacrifice hygiene.

Never fear! There are some really great options out there to help you tackle the grease and mess in the kitchen in a hygienic but more eco-friendly way.

The following are some great eco-cleaning products and brands that are available for the kitchen.

Great Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products for the Kitchen

Ecover Cream Cleaner

This cleaner is excellent for the bath and sink. It is biodegradable thanks to its chalk dust and plant-based ingredients, and the containers are 100% recyclable as well. It leaves surfaces clean and shiny after you rinse it clean, so just be sure to give it a good rinsing and you will like the results. Mother Earth will like it too.

Simple Green All Purpose Cleaner

This cleaner is eco friendly from start to finish because since it comes in concentrated form that you mix yourself, so you are saving the environment from extra unneeded packaging and transport. It contains no phosphates, and even without bleach or ammonia, if you leave it on for a few seconds it leaves surfaces clean. A bonus: this all purpose cleaner does not require any rinsing.

Soda Crystals

Available at supermarkets, soda crystals are awesome for breaking down things like grease in the deep bowels of your sink or even a blocked bathroom sink (follow it with a pot of boiling water). It can be used in lieu of bleach in these situations, which is considerably more eco friendly than a cupful of bleach. Plus, if you’ve ever had to combat grease buildup or smells wafting from the garbage disposal of your sink, now you can take care of those issues in an eco-friendly way. Pour half a cup of the soda crystals and hot water down the sink every few weeks and you’re covered.

Great Eco-Friendly Cleaning Product Brands and Manufacturers for the Kitchen and Beyond

Method products

Method produces a whole line of eco friendly products and is certainly one of the most popular brands for eco conscious cleaning. They are popular with even the less hardcore eco-concerned because they are easily found in many large retail stores, plus they are safe to use on just about every surface. They are especially popular with eco-friendly cleaners because they come in biodegradable containers and do not have as bad an impact on the earth as other household cleaners.

Seventh Generation products

Seventh Generation is another one of the most widespread and popular eco-friendly product manufacturers. They have an entire product line devoted to eco-friendly cleaning supplies such as dish soaps, general household all purpose cleaners, and laundry soaps. For parents, the eco-conscious folks will love their baby products which are not only organic and have no toxins, but are biodegradable as well.

Hoarding isn’t just a matter of having a larger than usual stamp collection or a closet full of beanie babies. It is a serious condition and it affects many people across the country. Hoarding can often increase in severity over time to the point that it becomes extremely disruptive to peoples’ lives or even downright dangerous if left unchecked.

There was a famous case in New York City that involved two brothers who died in 1947 due to hoarding. Apparently their home had so many thousands of unused books, pieces of wood, fruit and vegetable scraps and the like that it had become a serious hazard. Both brothers were found dead in the home, one of them buried under what had been a mountainous stack of old newspapers. There were so many newspapers that the weight of them appeared to have crushed and killed him. The brother who had been killed was the caretaker of the other brother, and medical experts think the second one then died of starvation a few days later.

There are different degrees of hoarding. The beginning symptoms may include getting so behind in basic household chores that the person is embarrassed when they have friends and family over. Things are getting a bit more serious when there is so much junk that it is actually beginning to restrict movement through the home. If this is beginning to sound like you or a friend or family member, it’s time to take action before things get worse.

A trusted adviser who can help the person determine what items are no longer necessary to keep around the house should be brought in to assist with sorting, then a junk removal service should be called in to haul away the items that are no longer necessary. Junk removal services can take almost anything and often times it is not even necessary to set it out for them because they can just come and remove the junk from where it is. The junk removal company can then take items to be donated or disposed of properly, as appropriate.

If hoarding continues unchecked into the more advanced stages, then the piles of junk that were just getting in the way may build up bigger and bigger until they become a falling hazard like it was for the brothers in New York City. Furthermore, as the piles grow, often there will be food items that end up on top of the piles or behind or under them, and things begin rotting. This leads to terribly unhygienic living conditions.

If you or someone you care about might be exhibiting tendencies that could lead to potentially hazardous conditions for you or them, it is important not to let conditions worsen. Sometimes deeper counseling and rehabilitation is necessary. But getting help from a friend or family and a good junk removal service company is a good start.

Recognizing the signs and symptoms of hoarding and keeping all the “stuff” in check is key to preventing a tragedy for hoarders.

We all loved those mini just add water sponges that came in capsules and popped up into dinosaur shapes when we were kids. Now you can have the fun all over again as an adult who has dishes to wash and kitchens to clean!

As eco cleaning and eco-friendly junk removal increases in popularity, new fun and useful trends keep popping up in the market to help you keep cleaning in innovative earth friendly ways. One of the newest eco-friendly trends to hit the shelves is the fantastic pop-up sponge.

These eco sponges are earth friendly in several ways. For one, they are made from natural products and are biodegradable. Because of their incredibly compact size, there is considerably much less packaging required to bundle them together for sale. Because more sponges can fit together in a shipment, a larger quantity can go on fewer trucks, planes, ships, etc. Plus these sponges are very durable and will last a long time so you will go through fewer of them.

These are some of the top picks of these awesome pop-up sponges. Get your hands on a stack of them and try them out for yourself:

1. Trader Joe’s

Trader Joe’s sells a pack of pop-up sponges made from natural vegetable cellulose. It comes in a small pack that amazingly holds 12 sponges. They are 100% biodegradable, but make sure you rinse the soap out before you throw them in the rubbish bin unless you are also using them with 100% biodegradable dish soap (even better!). The sponges from Trader Joe’s get good reviews for being absorbent, sturdy, and lathering well. They are also well-appreciated by their users for not getting food bits stuck in the holes and crevices, as well as for not getting a mildew smell over time.

1. Twist Sponge Blossoms

The Twist Sponge Blossoms come in a fun bundle of four sponges connected by a little rope threaded through a hole so the four sponges rather resemble dog tags. Perhaps a fun gift for a service member or a military wife, husband, mom or dad!

1. Caldrea French Pop-Up Sponges

Caldrea French Pop-Up Sponges are made from natural cellulose and cotton. Some people like to use Caldrea’s pop-up sponges as a complement to their Caldrea Dish Soap Liquid. They are durable and very absorbent. Great to use on your many pots and pans after a big dinner party. These are especially popular with people because they don’t stiffen and shred or crumble, even after lots of use. They are also very thin and easy to store.

1. Williams-Sonoma

A perennial favorite, these very absorbent pop-up sponges found at Williams-Sonoma have been a popular product with customers since Chuck Williams discovered them while traveling in Europe. Customers like the selection of the small size which is a good fit for a hand and easy to squeeze out with just one hand, as well as the oversized bigger ones that some say clean even better than normal sizes. Dedicated fans swear by them and have turned many others into addicts by giving them as gifts for years.

After the fall in the economy when many houses went into foreclosure or repossession, the need for property preservation and junk removal services spiked. Many people suddenly needed to pay even closer attention than usual to these two things.

Property preservation is very important because property is of course, a huge investment of money, time and energy. Leaking roofs or weak foundations can directly affect the structural integrity of the building and the value of your property. It is important to be acutely aware of the state of your property and immediately tend to any problems that crop up. And problems will inevitably come up; that is just part of being a home owner or a business owner. The trick to being a good home or business owner is simply to stay on top of these problems and rectify them right away.

One thing that will save you a lot of time and headache now and in the future is utilizing a Mississauga junk removal company to help you clean up your property. These companies can haul away all the big appliances that are no longer working or efficient, big piles of junk that have accumulated over time or were not yours to begin with but were perhaps an old tenant’s or employee’s belongings, and other things that could pose potential risks and hazards to your property.

If you have piles of stuff scattered and stacked everywhere unnecessarily, those piles and stacks could well be covering up major issues that need to be addressed. A crack in the foundation, for example, buried behind stacks of old newspapers or unused filing cabinets could become catastrophic later with age or environmental force such as a hurricane or earthquake.

Or for another example, if you have an old washing machine or clothes dryer that does not work properly anymore but you keep it in use because you don’t want to have to deal with hauling it away, eventually the wires could start sparking without you knowing it and cause a devastating fire.

Such hazards can also extend to the outside landscaping. If you have an old tree that is not in top shape or is already dead and rotting but still towers over your house, this is a recipe for disaster. The last thing you want is a tree crashing through your roof and damaging your house or worse, hurting your family.

Big piles of dead leaves can also be a hazard if they are near your house and catch fire. The fire can spread to the house and destroy it in minutes. Junk removal companies often also take care of landscape debris. They can cart away everything from big things like dead trees to those irritating piles of leaves that blow everywhere but into the bag when you try to gather them yourself. Get a junk removal company and just have someone else do it and be done with it!

Good property preservation is vital and you must always consider these sorts of potential problems and hazards. Junk removal companies can be your best friend to make that easier and safer for you to take care of so be sure to utilize their services as you make your way through all the things that need to be done to keep your property preserved safely and efficiently.

Your carbon footprint is probably something you’ve been hearing about lately and likely will hear increasingly more of in the coming years. These are some good things to know about carbon footprints.

Your primary carbon footprint is something you have direct control over, as it is the measure of direct carbon dioxide emissions from what you do such as taking a car or plane trip. Your secondary carbon footprint refers to the indirect emissions from the lifecycle of the products that are used in your daily life, from the manufacture to the breakdown of the product. It’s not quite as under our control, however in a less direct way, we can still effect how much of a secondary footprint we leave by consuming less so that less emissions are caused on our behalf overall.

Here are some other tips to reduce your carbon footprint and help the environment.

1. Buy organic food
Organic food is more likely to have been grown in an environmentally friendly manner, with fewer or no harmful chemical pesticides for fruits and vegetables.

2. Buy local food
Instead of buying imported food and goods, try to buy locally-produced items. Farmer’s markets are a great way to purchase locally grown fruits, vegetables and other food products. These items did not have as far to travel and so less carbon emissions went into getting them to you.

3. Turn off and/or unplug appliances when they are not in use
Save energy consumption and carbon emissions by switching off items that are not in use. Even better, when possible unplug the appliance altogether as often even in “standby” mode, a considerable amount of electricity is used, generating more emissions even when completely unnecessary.

4. Don’t buy bottled water
From the shipping to the biodegradation of the small plastic bottles and the space they take up in landfills (or gutters, parks, oceans, etc.), bottled water contributes a lot to carbon footprints and general environmental harm. All the worse when these bottled waters are imported from across the globe. Use a reusable waterbottle and use water refill stations instead.

5. Use an eco-friendly junk removal company for your spring cleaning
Many times when we partake in our annual spring cleaning, we’ll have a lot of items that could probably be recycled or donated but just end up at the dump instead. Usually this is simply because we are overwhelmed with the junk and don’t have time to sort it out. When the major cleaning attack is over, we just want it gone. A more responsible way to take care of this junk is using a junk removal company locally, like Brampton junk removal services. They will take care of the hard work for you and make sure it is sorted in the proper way and disposed of with considerably less of a carbon footprint.

6. Think about the packaging
Some products (including food products in restaurants, especially fast food joints) are notorious for being overpackaged in many layers of cellophane, paper, cardboard and more. Try to buy products with minimal packaging, say no to bags you don’t need, and at fast food places try to get just the sandwich without all the excess wrapping.

Follow these tips and you’ll be on your way to a smaller carbon footprint. The earth will thank you for it.

There many reasons choosing a junk removal company may be right for you

1.  Save valuable time

Anyone who has done a major bout of spring cleaning in their home or office knows how time consuming thorough cleaning is. Hours and hours of precious free time are devoted to the shuffling around of major furniture, boxes of files, knick knacks, racks of clothes, etc. in order to clean under all those ledges, in those dark corners and in every nook and cranny you can find to clean. After a few hours and days of standing on your head cleaning, the last thing you will want to do is then have to haul away all the junk you have left over. Instead of spending another several sweaty, dusty hours loading up all that junk into a car and having to haul it off yourself, save yourself some valuable rest and recuperation time and hire a junk removal company to do it for you

2.  Dispose of your junk environmentally and responsibly

All those massive piles of junk that we manage to clear out of our homes or offices every year often goes right into the landfills – or worse! – because people simply do not know how to properly dispose of their junk on their own. Most people just want the junk gone as soon as they have dealt with it. This is certainly understandable, but a much more earth friendly way to get rid of the junk is to use a junk removal company to clear away your piles instead of doing it yourself. Junk removal services know the proper disposal techniques for all kinds of junk, from broken refrigerators and clothes washing machines to batteries and bio-hazardous materials.

3.  Deal with less stress

It’s simple. The less you have to do, the less you have to worry and stress about. Major cleaning projects are stressful and energy-sapping enough. Give yourself a break and let someone else haul away the aftermath for you.

4.  Take the chance to upgrade your appliances and your life

Junk removal companies open up another door to your spring cleaning that would be much more difficult to fit through without them! Instead of just cleaning out simple piles of old newspapers and dust bunnies under the bed, if you use a junk removal company you can easily also get rid of your old and outdated appliances with no muss or fuss. This gives you the opportune chance to upgrade your appliances and utilities – say the refrigerator, the dishwasher, washing machine or dryer, etc. – to a newer and more efficient model. A great chance to save money on more efficient energy consumption and reduce your carbon footprint too!

5.  Reduce or eliminate major safety hazards in and around your home

We’ve all been guilty of it. Letting too much stuff pile up in or around the house that we no longer want or need, simply because the trouble of getting rid of it is too much or something we haven’t gotten around to. Don’t let another day go by with this stuff piled up though, hire someone to take it away for you and have it over and done with. Piled up junk in and around the house is a hazard for falling on someone, catching fire, or various other potential problems. Save yourself a possible catastrophe with a simple phone call to a junk removal company and breathe easier.

Is there anything better than going through your house or your apartment and getting rid of unwanted junk? Not only does cleaning up physical clutter make your home neater, it quite often helps clean up mental clutter, also. When things are neat and tidy we tend to thrive and be able to live better and easier. We let go of old things and memories and clear the way for the future. But, unfortunately, the act of purging can in and of itself be stressful. Where should you start? How do you decide what’s junk and what isn’t. And, once you have your junk all sorted, what do you do with it? There are a few things that you should keep in mind to help making the process easier.

Just start

Sometimes it’s the thought of starting something, not the actual act of starting that can be stressful. So, if you’ve decided to go through your belongings and get rid of some stuff, just do it! Start in one room. Start in one corner. Just start. You’ll find once you do, it’s a lot easier from there. If you find that you tend to waiver when it comes to getting rid of junk, ask a friend or family member to come help you. Sometimes just having another person around to ask “Do you really need that?” can help.

What’s junk?

While it will vary a bit from person to person, junk is basically anything that is broken or decrepit to the point that you can’t use it. But, using a wider definition, junk can be perfectly good, in pristine condition, but it’s something you will never use again.  Be honest with yourself: if that waffle maker has been in your closet for two years, odds are you don’t need it. And are you really ever going to get around to fixing that 20 year old TV?

Divide and conquer

With that being said, remember one thing: one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. Just because it’s junk to you doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable to someone else. So, when going through your “junk”, separate the stuff into three piles: throw-out, donate, sell.

If it’s completely useless, like a computer monitor that’s smashed or a pair of jeans with a huge hole in them, just chuck it out.  Clothes you’ve outgrown, dishes you no longer use and books that you’ve already read can be donated to a local homeless or women’s shelter. Other items, such as that unused waffle maker or older model TV can be sold through the want ads. Even if you have something that is broken, like a washer, you may be able to sell it for the parts. Just be honest in your ad about the condition of the item.

Hire someone to haul the junk

Once you have given away your donated items and sold your waffle maker, you still need to get rid of the junk that you have left. While you can cart it off to the dump yourself, it may be easier to hire a company to come and take the stuff away, especially if you have a lot or if some of the items are heavy. For a small amount of money a company will come and take care of hauling away your unwanted junk. If you’re in the greater Toronto area give us a call, we’re a Toronto junk removal servicing throughout the greater Toronto area.

Don’t replace with more junk

Once you clean out your unwanted junk, you may be tempted to go out and buy more stuff. Resist the urge to fill your newly empty space. Thinking carefully about each thing you bring into your house means that later on down the road you won’t have to come up with a plan to get rid of your junk, because you won’t have any.

For most of us, this time of the year brings shorter days and colder temperatures. It signals the beginning of the school year and the countdown to the Christmas season. Our thoughts turn from beaches to mittens, ice cream to hot chocolate. As the season shifts from summer to fall, there are some things that you can to do make the transition easier. Organizing your house for fall will ensure that you’re all ready for chilly fall nights and fun day-time activities.

Throughout the summer you no doubt had a slew of items that you used, whether it be the BBQ, beach toys or something larger like a canoe or Sea doo. As the weather turns colder, odds are you don’t need to have these items on hand anymore.  Rather than simply leaving them laying around the house or shoved in a closet, organizing them in storage will save you space and a huge head ache when you go to find the items come spring. Using clear totes will let you see what’s being stored. If you use colored totes, a label will help you know where everything is. It’s also a good idea to store summer clothes. This will clear up closet space for your fall and winter clothes. It’s a lot easier to pick out an outfit if you don’t have to paw through swimsuits, shorts and tanks that you won’t be wearing for several months anyway.

On the flip side, it’s much easier to get your fall and even your winter clothes out of storage and cleaned all at once at the beginning of fall, rather than picking through totes searching for items as you need them. Also, it’s easier to evaluate your wardrobe and see if there is anything that needs replacing. There is nothing worse than trying to buy a winter jacket or heavy fall overcoat at the end of the season.

Fall’s cooler weather usually means extra blankets on the beds at night. Don’t wait until you are freezing at 3 am in the morning to go searching through closets for your favorite fleece blanket.  Take stock of your fall linens to make sure that you have everything that you need. And since it’s all been in storage for several months, wash it all to make sure that it will be ready when the nights start to get cold.

For many, fall means canning and pickling season. Before you go out and buy your supplies, check your pantry and see what you already have. If you still have 20 bottles of beets, odds are you don’t need to make anymore. Also check the seals on any bottled goods. Those 20 bottles of beets may not be edible if the seal has broken on them. Once you know what you have and what you will need, make room in your pantry for your new supplies. If your canned and bottled goods are well organized, then you may not run into an overflow of beets.

A lot of the fall organizing that you do for your home has to do with keeping you and your family warm. This includes checking out the seals on your doors and windows to make sure that they’ll keep the cold out and the warm in. Buying new seals or plastic covers for your windows will keep your house warm and cut down on your heating bill. You can also change your curtains, switching out light, summery drapes for heavier window covers that can also keep the heat in.

Don’t forget, when you’re organizing your home if you need a junk removal company you know where to look! Call us at 888-Iam-Junk today!

Are you ready for fall?

A lot of people hold on to things for various reasons – for sentimental value, because they think it might be useful someday even if it isn’t useful or needed right now, for future generations to have and use, because  they are storing it for family, a friend or neighbor and it is not theirs to get rid of, or any other variety of reasons. Most of the time this stuff ends up in an attic, locked away for storage and oftentimes it’s forgotten about for a long time. But many people don’t realize the treasures they may have in their attic.

Here are some examples of items that may be hidden away in your attic that could be considered very valuable items. Some of them may surprise you!

Barbara Testa was a librarian in Hollywood who in 1961 inherited several trunks from her grandfather who died in 1895. Thirty years later she came across 665 pages of handwritten manuscript. Turns out it was the first half of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

Paintings that seem not too terribly valuable can sometimes be a surprise. One family left an oil painting as junk with the house they sold because they couldn’t be bothered to take the worthless stuff in the attic with them. It ended up fetching almost double what the buyer put as a down payment on the house.

An old child’s toy that doesn’t seem to be anything special can bring in as much as $150 as one family found out.

False teeth can even be extremely valuable as the descendants of a dentist found out decades later. When the family got tired of having assorted sizes of old metal teeth around, they decided to get rid of them. Fortunately a friend suggested to them that they take them to a jeweler to see what kind of metal the teeth were made of. Turns out they were almost solid platinum which used to be extremely cheap. The teeth were worth about $300 per pair and all the ones they had brought in almost $8,000!

Almost everything from the past may well be worth some money so it always pays to ask. Old buttons, matchboxes, glass jars, sewing machines, irons, staplers, alcohol bottles, old currency, even handcuffs could bring in much more than you would think they’re worth.

Furniture is another biggie that can be as worthless as it looks or possibly worth more than you could ever imagine. A lowboy in a southern home brought in an amazing $32,000.

Old books are sometimes worth getting appraised too. Early editions are sometimes worth a good payout, and first editions of classics can be worth even more. Pamphlets count too. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue was originally published as a pamphlet and a good copy of it fetched the owner $25,000.

These are some key items to keep your eye out for next time you head up to your old cluttered attic. But don’t get carried away; most of your old junk really is just old junk and probably warrants little more than an unceremonious garbage removal. For those items, just make it easy on yourself and call up your local junk removal company. Let them be the ones to have to go up those impossibly narrow stairs and fumble around in the dust to deal with your junk!

It’s that time again. Time to clean out the garage. One of most homeowners’ biggest needs is to optimize the space in their garage. The garage often acts as a catch-all for homeowners and their families: it houses the car, the recreation activities like basketballs, bicycles, all terrain vehicles, jetskis, seasonal decorations, old tax paperwork, and who knows what else. Suffice it to say, there is a lot that needs to fit into a limited space.

Here are some tips to make sure that you are getting the most out of the space you have in your garage.

Sort

Haul everything out of the garage and start putting it into one of four piles: keep, sell, donate, trash. By putting it all on the driveway at once you’ll be forced to do something with it all right now. Touch each item and if it’s not useful or wanted, put it in the donate, sell, or get rid of pile accordingly.

Get rid of the junk

Once you have your four piles, get rid of the things that are going away immediately. There is no reason to drag them back into the garage. Right here, right now, get rid of it. Arrange with a junk removal company to be at your house at a certain time on the day you are doing your sorting. This will ensure that you have a deadline you have to stick to so you don’t put it off or work lazily during your sort. The junk removal company can then arrive as you finish and haul away your items for donation as well as take care of the garbage removal for the pile that is just trash. Then you’re halfway through your piles already.

Label

For the items to sell, either delegate someone else to do it or do it yourself, but while the items are out, label them for sale. Then draw up enough signs and posters to attract people to your garage sale and pile them with all the stuff that you will be selling. Once you’ve done this, set these items to the side.

Organize

For the items you have left that you are keeping, it’s time to organize them and put them in their new homes. Group like things together, such as tools, sports equipment, things for storage, camping gear, etc. Utilize bins that can be stacked for large items and label them, putting the heaviest ones on the bottom and not stacking higher than is easily accessible.

Utilize the ceiling

An alternative to stacking bins or an idea that can be used in conjunction with them is getting a ceiling storage rack. The rack can be used for the bins, for loose items that need to be kept out for whatever reason (like a spare tire or something like that), or for items that are too big for the bins.

Also, hanging racks are very useful for things like bicycles or some sports equipment, etc. to keep it off the floor and clear up floor space that can be used for more storage or simply better maneuverability around the garage.

What’s a surprising way you’ve cleared out space in your garage?