You want to get the best out of your home when you put it up for sale, and we can help you do that. Homes often need a little help getting ready to go on the market.  Our Showcase service will help you get your home market-ready and looking fabulous while maximizing your home’s sale potential. Staging is a great way to put your best foot forward and to showcase your home to potential buyers, and we are passionate about helping you display your home’s potential!  We assess the areas you need help with, both inside and out, and get to work helping you get your home ready to show.  From house cleaning to decluttering, we make the inside of your home buyer ready. We can also help you maintain the outside of your home with lawn-mowing or snow removal services, and help fix up anything that needs a little sprucing up, from painting to re-attaching baseboards to repairing holes in your drywall. From inside to out, and anything in else that needs a little work, we’ll help you get your home ready to show and help maximize the value of your sale while minimizing headaches for you in the process!

Did you know that your bedroom can have a big impact on the quality of your sleep? It’s true! From how hot or cool it is, to your light sources, to where you put your electronics; it can all be affecting how well-rested you feel each morning!

Whether you’re looking to wake up feeling more alert, or simply want to turn your bedroom into a retreat for relaxation and sleep, these tips will help you make the most of your bedroom and turn it into a calming, welcoming oasis which is perfect for getting a good night’s rest!

Stay Cool

Did you know that those mornings when you wake up covered in sweat are actually indicative that you didn’t sleep well? You’re not crazy! In fact, being in a warm or too-hot room can drastically affect the quality of your sleep. In fact, the optimal temperature for the best rest is 15 to 22 degrees Celsius.

If you’re not comfortable with leaving your AC on all the time, invest in a can (ceiling fans are great for this, but a regular standing or desktop fan works well, too), or even open the windows a little to let some cool air in.

Keep Things Dark

Your internal clock is based on light signale which are fed to your brain through your eye’s optic nerves. When light is detected, even when you have your eyes closed, it can delay the melatonin release which brings sleep, so always turn off the lights when you’re ready for sleep.

If you have to keep your phone or electronics in your bedroom, keep them as far away from your bad as possible and keep them face-down. Studies have shown that exposure to electrical light before and during sleep suppresses melatonin, meaning that your phone could be disrupting your sleep cycle and making you tired!

If your windows let light in, or you tend to sleep in past sunrise, investing in heavy shades and light-obscuring blinds can also make a world of difference.

Is blocking light just not feasible? Consider buying a sleeping mask. No longer for glamour-pusses and old ladies, they come in a variety of cute styles with comfy strings or elastics to help you sleep better.

Keep Your Bedroom Quiet

Noises and disturbances can affect the quality of your sleep, so if you live in an environment which is particularly loud – maybe you live near or on a busy street, or your partner snores like crazy – investing in some earplugs can go a long way towards a restful night’s sleep.

If earplugs are uncomfortable or bothersome, you can also try investing in a white noise machine, or wave machine which can block out other, more unpleasant, sounds.

Keep the TV Out of Your Bedroom

It may feel relaxing to lounge around in bed and watch Netflix, research has shown that watching TV can negatively impact your sleep.

The motion, sound, and light from the TV all keep your mind stimulated, and in particular the light from the TV affects your internal clock, making it harder to fall asleep and to have the kind of sound sleep you need to feel rested and productive.

Additionally, research has shown that small kids and infants can experience sleep problems, such as resisting going to bed and increased anxiety, when exposed to TV right before sleep.

Upgrade Your Bedding

Make sure to have the right kind of bedding for optimal sleep. Fabrics like cotton, wool, silk, bamboo and linen absorb the moisture from your body and keep you comfortable, while fabrics like polyester trap moisture and can make you warmer

It’s not necessary to get the highest thread count available, but it is important to select bedding which feels nice against your skin, and doesn’t distract you while you’re lying in bed.

For those of us on the prairies, and in other places where we experience the full range of seasons, having separate sets of bedding for both winter and summer can go a long way to keeping you comfortable at night.

Invest in a Mattress

We spend 1/3 of our lives asleep, so it makes sense to be as comfortable as possible! Most people keep their mattresses for around 10 years, but the Better Sleep Council suggests that you begin looking for a new mattress every 5-7 years. However, if your mattress is showing signs of wear and tear such as deep impressions, or is causing you pain to sleep on it, it’s time to look at getting a replacement.

Additionally, if you’ve recently been having physical issues, are recovering from an injury, or experience chronic pain, speak to your doctor about the right kind of mattress to suit your needs.

Upgrade Your Pillows

Pillows should be replaced every 1-2 years, especially in the case of down or poly-filled pillows, which can lose their shape more easily. If a pillow is too flat, or too thick, it’s time to purchase a new one.

Also, don’t forget to regularly wash your pillowcases! While it’s important to regularly wash your bed linens, our pillowcases quickly pick up and trap all the grease, bacteria, dead skin, and other unpleasantness from our faces while we sleep and rub our hair and faces on it.

Want more tips on how to make your home a comfortable and welcoming place to be? Sign up for our newsletter!

If you’ve been thinking about “going green ” at home and in your life overall, but aren’t sure where to start, or are worried about maintaining it once the initial feel-good vibes wear off, there are a variety of apps out there to help you make this important lifestyle change. Living green and being eco-friendly isn’t just about saving the planet, it’s about living a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle which benefits everyone!

In this post we’ll share five of our favourite eco-friendly apps to help you get started on your sustainability journey:

1.Green Kitchen

Green kitchen is an app designed to help you make healthier meal choices. Banish those carps and fatty, processed food and explore a variety of organic, vegetarian (delicious!) sustainable dishes which require less energy consumption to make. It features hand-picked recipes which are easy to follow and beautiful photos which will have your mouth watering!

Available on: iOS

2. Green Genie

If you’re new to the idea of living sustainably, this is the app for you. Green Genie is developed by a slew of eco-friendly professionals and features a massive database of green living tips, sustainable projects to make your home more eco-friendly, and resources to help you make the right purchasing decisions.

Available on: iOS

3. Locavore

Locavore uses your phone’s GPS to find farmers market’s and farms close to you which sell in-season, local food. Locavore gives you profiles, directions, and lists of what’s in season, as well as a ton of delicious recipes to put that locally-grown food to good use. Yum!

Available on: iOS and Android

4. UNEP Carbon Calculator

The UNEP Carbon Calculator is an app designed to help you understand the impact of your emissions as you travel. As many of us know, greenhouse gasses have some of the worst effects on global climate change, and understanding and curbing those behaviours is one of the best ways we can work to be more eco-friendly. This handy calculator lets you calculate how much CO2 is given off when you travel.

Available on: iOS

GoodGuide

Are you the kind of person who wants to know which toothpaste is the greenest, or how “green” your makeup products are? Then this is the app for you!

GoodGuide is a terrific little app which allows you to scan the barcodes of more than 120,000 products to see if they’re safe to use or consume, healthy, socially responsible, and green. You can look up the ingredients, nutritional value,  impact on animal welfare and human rights, how energy-efficient the product is, and more!

Available on: iOS

Do you have any favourite green or eco-friendly apps? Tell us in the comments!

Many people don’t realize it, but white distilled vinegar is one of the best tools to have in your kitchen – both for cooking, and for cleaning! Vinegar has a variety of uses, from scrubbing scum away, to disinfecting your butcher blocks, and today we’re going to cover 10 great ways that you can use vinegar to naturally clean your kitchen.

1. Shine Your Stainless Steel Appliances

We love the look of stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, but they can easily show streaks, fingerprints, and hard water marks. Multiple months (or years!) of use, touching, and water stains can leave your stainless steel looking flat and dirty.

Luckily, adding some new life to your stove, fridge or dishwasher is easy! Just combine vinegar and olive oil in a spray bottle, mist your appliances, and wipe away with a soft cloth or paper towel.  This salad dressing-like mixture works wonders and will have your appliances gleaming in no time flat!

2. Soak Before Buffing Tarnished Silver

With Thanksgiving coming and Christmas just around the corner, many of us will be opening up those silverware drawers and polishing our best silver. Want an easy way to make your silver shine? Try out this easy project:

Use an aluminum or glass baking dish and line it with aluminum foil (shiny side up). Make sure the dish is deep enough that your silver can soak in the mixture we’re about to create. Next, combine 1 tablespoon of baking soda, 1 tablespoon of sea salt, 1/2 cup of vinegar and 1 cup of boiling water. Pour the mixture over your silver and allow the pieces to soak until the tarnish can be buffed away. Older, more tarnished pieces may need to sit longer.

3. Refresh Your Dishwasher

If your dishwasher is looking like it’s seen better days, empty it and run a cycle with 2 of cups of vinegar in the bottom of the dishwasher. By the time the cycle is complete the vinegar will have washed away hard water deposits, streaks and even odours! You can also use vinegar to clean around handles, scrub the utensil rack, and wipe off the exterior as well!

4. Wash the Dishes In the Dishwasher

If your current dishwasher soap doesn’t include a rinse aid, don’t worry about buying any; white vinegar works as an excellent rinse aid. Just fill the rise aid reservoir in your dishwasher with white vinegar and run as normal. The vinegar will leave your dishes sparkling!

5. Clean Your Coffee Carafe

Over time coffee carafes can become stained and unsightly, so use white vinegar to restore a clean, shiny look! Simply follow these steps:

After emptying out any old coffee grinds from your coffee maker, fill the carafe full with equal parts white vinegar and water. Fill the water reservoir with the mixture from the carafe and begin a regular brew cycle. Shut the cycle off halfway through and leave your pot to sit with the mixture for an hour. Once the hour is up, start a fresh brew cycle with enough water to fill your carafe. Do this 2-3 more times to ensure that all the vinegar is washed out, and you’re left with a sparking coffee carafe!

Looking for affordable, trustworthy house cleaners in Winnipeg to help you shorten your to-do list? Request a free estimate for our professional cleaning services!

For those of us in Canada Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and if you’re hosting a large meal for family and friends the laundry list of things to do before your guests arrive might seem overwhelming.

Luckily even if you haven’t had the chance to do a deep clean before guests start arriving, there are a few key things that you can do to instantly make your home feel cleaner and more inviting.

Below are our favourite ten ways to get your house ready for Thanksgiving:

• Clean the bathroom. Most guests will overlook dust on the TV, or lint on the couch, but dealing with a dirty bathroom is an unpleasant experience that your guests shouldn’t have to deal with during their visit. Wipe down the toilet and sink, spray and wipe down the bathroom mirror, empty the trash, make sure the toilet paper is stocked up, light a candle or incense, and put out fresh towels.
• Dust and tidy. Remove clutter from surfaces and give them a wipe before your guests come over. Some areas to focus on are coffee and side tables, electronics (which are usually dark and show dust easily) and low shelves.
• Fluff your pillows. Having fluffy, fresh-looking pillows instantly makes a room look more inviting. Plus, if you had a nap earlier your guests will be none the wiser!
• Wipe kitchen countertops. No doubt you’ve been busily preparing food for your guests, but wiping down your counters is an easy way to make your kitchen look (and feel!) less hectic than it’s likely been over the past few hours.
• Sweep the kitchen floor. Once you’ve wiped off the countertops, sweep the debris away and wipe up any drips or food splatters on the floor.
• Vacuum. Ran the vacuum in rooms where your guests will be spending most of their time: the front hallway, living room, dining room bathrooms, and any guest bedrooms for overnight visitors.
• Do the dishes. Wash, dry and put away any dishes you can before your guests arrive. If you’ve got a dishwasher, running a cycle in-between when your food is finished (or nearly finished) and after dinner can make a huge difference in the time that it takes to clean up.
• Create inviting lighting. Turning off the overhead lights and using lamps not only creates a cozy, more intimate feel for your guests, but it also helps draw attention away from areas which might not have been cleaned as thoroughly.
• Make room for coats and bags. Make space in your front closet or coat rack for your guests jackets, or choose a room like your bedroom or a guest bedroom with space for guests’ bags and jackets.
• Put on some music. Music instantly makes your home feel more inviting, and fills any pauses in conversation, which help guests feel more comfortable and relaxed.

Want to know how we can help ease the workload the next time you’re hosting an event or get-together? Request an estimate and see how easy hosting a get-together can be with a little extra cleaning help!

Getting your kids to clean up their bedrooms can be an exhausting challenge. Many kids will do just about anything to avoid cleaning up including whining, dawdling, getting distracted or trying to distract you, and outright refusal. In order to help you overcome and eventually avoid having this battle, here are some great tips:

Set a good example
Kids are far more responsive to what we do than what we say. Because of this, it is crucial to lead by example.

Respect their space
Children are more likely to want to keep their space tidy and organized if it feels like their own. Give them control over how the space looks and where things are kept.

Define cleanliness
You can tell your kids to clean up until you are blue in the face but it is never going to get done if you don’t tell them exactly what they need to do. Make a checklist to help them learn all of the steps involved in getting their room up to your standards of clean and don’t forget to include:

• Making the bed
• Put laundry in the hamper
• Putting away clean clothes
• All toys and sports equipment off the floor and in its place
• Dusting and Vacuuming

Do chores together
Armchair supervision is often less effective than active participation. Set aside a specific amount of time to work together getting their room spic and span and, once they have learned how to perform all of the necessary tasks, use the time to catch up on how their schoolwork is going and what is going on with their friends.

Set reasonable standards
Keep your expectations reasonable. Show them how to do something and then make them do it themselves or they will never learn. Proper cleaning up is essential to prevent illness and injury so establish strict rules about garbage, dirty dishes, laundry, broken glass, and scattered toys.

For more tips on cleaning and organizing, contact Take Time Home Cleaning & Lifestyle Services at 204-770-7103.

We had to face it. With two full time jobs, 2 children, a puppy (why do they seem like they can be more work than kids), and my extremely demanding career, we had a growing to-do list and just not enough time. Our house was a mess and falling apart.
We never could quite manage to wash the dishes, make the beds, clean the bathroom or vacuum, and have a few minutes of free time for ourselves. There were things which needed cleaning or fixing that we kept pushing off. Often, we’d settle for superficial cleaning just to get some peace of mind and time to wind down and take a breath. We’d worry about leaks every time it rained and water spewed off one of the broken gutters, but, honestly, neither of us had the heart nor the energy to tackle the problems at hand.

All that changed one day as a good friend of ours stopped by on her way back home from grocery shopping for a quick chat and a coffee. It was 2 p.m., I was still wearing my pyjama bottoms and Josh had decidedly suspicious brown stains speckled all over the front of his shirt. My hair was a mess and I hadn’t taken a shower in two days. My friend took one look at us, at the house, and, BLESS HER, said nothing.

It spurred me, though, and I decided to hire the help of a Winnipeg-based handyman and cleaning service. There are two reasons why we both feel this was worth our money.

One, hooking up with handyman and cleaning service in Winnipeg helped free-up our time. We were better rested and felt on top of things. I managed to find the time to immerse myself in my hobbies a few times a week. We both played with our girls and Josh taught our puppy, Casper, some new tricks. In return, he has given up chewing on our cushions.

Two, booking weekly time with a handyman and cleaning service in Winnipeg has actually allowed us to save money. That’s right. We were better rested. Josh booked some new clients at work and I was much more productive with my career. Also, making repairs quickly almost always costs less than waiting until they become bigger problems. For example, untreated wood rots, leaking faucets raise your water bill, un-caulked doors and windows waste energy, etc. Our handyman fixed our gutters in no time and also initiated a few other home improvement projects we can be proud of.

If you’re like us, you enjoy your home more when it is in tip-top shape. So what are you waiting for? Stop feeling guilty. Employ the help of a handyman and cleaning service in Winnipeg and invest in yourself and your home today.

Find out more about Take Time’s handyman services here.

The best order of operation is: De-clutter, Reorganize, Spring Clean. We’re going to look at the most efficient way to de-clutter your home. Follow each step as listed:

1. Find 4 boxes and label:

a) Toss it—items that are damaged, broken and not worth giving away

b) Sell or Give Away—seldom or never used but often have an emotional attachment; be hard on yourself and ask
“when did I last use it?” This can be the most difficult part of the entire project

c) Store It—useful and needed items but used infrequently

d) Put Away—used often; must have a designated place.

Work your way through each room depositing items appropriately into the boxes. To stay organized, finish one room before starting another. The feeling of accomplishment will energize you to continue on to the next room. Remember to include closets, cabinets, and storage areas. This may take a day or several depending on the circumstances.

2. Toss, Sell, Store and Put Away

When you’re finished, you can dispose of the Toss it items, put the Store It and Put Away items in their designated homes. Now…on to the difficult part.

We advise our clients to keep the Sell or Give Away box in the garage or basement for one week giving you time to accept or reject the idea of being without those “emotional” items. If you just can’t part with an item then you should retrieve it and find a place for it in your home. But…be hard on yourself.

Garage sales or charities are typical ways for dealing with the items in this category.

Take Time Home Cleaning & Lifestyle Services offers De-cluttering, Reorganizing and Spring Cleaning by experienced and certified professionals. For more information call our office at 204-770-7103 or send us an estimate request.

Whatever the reasoning, using our house cleaning services in Winnipeg does have benefits. Underneath are 5 reasons to consider using Take Time Home Cleaning. Often times, there are common misconceptions about house cleaning services that cause people not to use them. Either it’s the idea that these services are expensive or the notion that you should be able to manage your house. Conversely, home cleaning services are affordable and very reasonably priced. Sometimes life gets hectic and we just need a little bit of help.

Your Overwhelming Schedule

It’s difficult to balance life sometimes, between a career, family, and other obligations. Take Time Home Cleaning will take care of the house chores, allowing you to focus on other activities. You also have peace of mind knowing that the house is one less thing to fuss about.

Coming Home to Blissful Surroundings

Well, it’s not exactly bliss, since you still have responsibilities but returning from an exhausting day to a clean home is such a calming feeling. After all, your home is like an escape from work. Your home will also always appear in top shape, so don’t worry about surprise guest visits.

Convenient Regular-Cleaning Schedules

When using regular cleaning services, you are able to customize your own schedule. Home cleaning services allow you to determine when you want your home cleaned. Usually, most companies will send professional home cleaners to your home on a weekly or bi-weekly schedule.

Experience and Expertise

Although everyone can do it, cleaning, in fact, is a skilled trade. Hiring professional cleaners is beneficial because experienced cleaners will clean faster and better than you. Professional home cleaning services provide training to their employees, ensuring that they have the appropriate skills to clean efficiently.

Take Time Home Cleaning will also give you access to professional cleaning equipment. These companies may offer advice for choosing green products that are environmentally friendly. Not only will it be better for the environment, but will be healthier for your home.

Better Quality of Life

Apart from the obvious that your home will look nice, ensuring a clean environment improves your quality of life. Regular cleaning will regulate good hygiene, promoting a healthy environment for your family. A clean place is also better for focusing so you can get things done faster. Lastly, an organized house makes finding items easy, so you can manage your house efficiently.

One Stop Shop

Besides house cleaning, Take Time Home Cleaning also provides Handyman Services, Interior Exterior window cleaning, gutter cleaning, carpet and upholstery cleaning, tile and grout and resealing, hardwood preservation, mattress cleaning for allergy sufferers, year round property care, and market ready real estate services.