3 Green DIY Cleaning Tips In Your Home

No doubt there are cleaning products that are perfectly environmentally friendly but one of the biggest reasons we are harming the environment is production and consumption. So if there are ways we can clean our homes by recycling other products that we are done using, it’s a win-win! Add the fact that it saves you money and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be making your own cleaning products.

Let’s take a look at how you can use everyday items to give your house or apartment a good clean.

Cleaning Burnt Pans

 

There’s nothing harder to clean than the burnt remnants of egg, meat or whatever else you were cooking on a frying pan. If you have a bad case, you’ll probably need to soak it for a couple of hours and then scrub until you’re blue in the face.

The good news is you can take care of the problem with a few simple ingredients you already have in your kitchen. All you need is vinegar, water (which is usually fairly easy to come by) and baking soda. Just put a level of water in the pot or pan, add a cup of vinegar and set it on your stove to boil.

Once it’s boiled for a few minutes and is starting to look cleaner, add some baker soda and you’ll see it fizz up. After that scrub for a minute or so and you should be looking at a clean fry pan!

Polishing Furniture

 

Let’s face it, you don’t use wood polish often at all. If this is the case, do you really need to always have a bottle taking up space? There are easier ways to go about it, and all you really need is a lemon and olive oil!

First, you’ll want to get all the juice from the lemon and pour it into a jar or even a cocktail mixer if you have one handy. Make sure it’s pure lemon juice and doesn’t have pulp or pips. From there, add a tablespoon of water and another tablespoon of olive oil to the concoction. Seal the container and shake it for 30 seconds or so. Once that’s done, you’re good to go - just grab a clean rag, dip it in and you’re ready to polish.

A Substitute For Fabric Softener

 

There are many that claim that fabric softener is overrated and does very little to change the way your clothes feel after a wash. We’re not completely sure about that, but they certainly leave them smelling fresh and clean, which is half the point of washing them! If you want to skip the softener, there’s a good way to give your clothes that fresh odour.

Get your jar out again and mix up a cup of baking soda, a cup of white vinegar, a half cup of borax, and a tablespoon of lemon juice and you’re in business. You just have to add this solution to your laundry detergent and you’re sure to have amazing smelling clothes after the wash!

Keep an eye on our blog, because we’ll have plenty more tips in the articles that follow. There are many different ways to go about your home cleaning with kitchen ingredients and products and we want you to know how!

These days you are surely busy enough cleaning your home to arrange a party for the upcoming Christmas! Thus we hope our tips will help you to beautify your home to get ready for the Christmas 2015! Merry Christmas!

How To Clean Your House After A Party

We’ve all been there, the day after a huge party that felt like it would never end, but you’ve woken up the next morning to find a spectacular mess in your house or garden that looks like it needs a team of professional cleaners to take care of it. Cleaning up after a party can be a nightmare, but there are simple things you can do to prevent the mess in the first place.

One of the best ways to prevent your party getting out of control is by clearing out the room beforehand. Fewer things in the room mean fewer things that can fall over get broken or end up in the wrong place. Set aside one room in your home that is off limits and moves any breakables into that room. Move pointy furniture and other valuables out of the way and you are well on your way to having a cleaner party.

 

Provide Plenty of Rubbish Bins

A great way to ensure that your party doesn’t end up in rubbish heaps is to provide plenty of ways your guests can dispose of their rubbish themselves. Provide bins and baskets for your guests to use, and provide them with disposable glasses, cutlery and even paper plates if need be. At the end of the night, simply wrap up your disposable tablecloth and plates and take is straight to the bin for a trouble-free cleanup.

If you are having a party in your garden or at an outdoor function event, ensure bins are placed in easy to reach areas, and if you can, make sure the food and drinks you provide have as little wrapping, plastic packaging or items that can be dropped on the floor or the grass.

Have a beer opening station situated in a prominent location and place a bin underneath it to allow easier collection of beer bottle tops after your party.

 

Consider Hiring a Cleaning Service

After your party is over, even with the preventative measures you have taken, you still could find yourself facing a large mess you need to clean up. The party is over, now the hard work begins! If you are averse to cleaning up a huge mess, you could always hire a professional cleaning service to help you out, they offer a great service for reasonable prices and will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.

 

Enlist a Friend, or Three!

If your party was of legendary status, you may have enough rubbish to require a skip bin to remove what is left over. If you have damaged furniture or household goods, don’t overlook the availability of a residential skip bin to help you out of a pickle. Get your friends to help you out loading the skip and then have the skip bin company simply take it away.

In the end, the party was probably worth all of the effort, and your preventative measures may have played a huge role in giving you less work to tackle after the party. But don’t forget to call in a friend or two to help with the clear up, so next time the party can be held at their place!

Tips on Getting Rid of Stuffs You don’t Need!

We all have plenty of stuff in our homes that we bought at one time thinking there would be a great use for it, only for it to be retired to the cupboard or garage to collect dust for months or years. Getting rid of items that have piled up for many years is a hard thing to do, as we are all hoarders to some extent. Making sure you get rid of your items properly and planning how to get rid of stuff you don’t need is the best way to start.

Make a List!

Simply put, by making a list of the things you could do without is a great place to start de-cluttering your home. Go through all of your stuff and see just how much you don’t need, starting with the largest items you have collected over the years. Listing the largest items first will give you an idea of how you will dispose of it, as well as the space you will be saving when it’s finally gone!

Once you have listed all of your items for removal, place them into separate piles so that you can deal with your stuff properly, those piles should be similar to the following:

•   Sellable items
•   Reusable items
•   Recyclable items
•   Broken items and rubbish

When separating out these objects, you can always choose an undecided option to help you arrange your items better at a later date. So if you have things that you actually do need, you can find a place for them after you have got rid of the stuff you don’t need anymore.

Storing Your Household Items

Storage units are a great idea if you have large pieces of furniture that you need at a later date or simply just can’t part company with. This also goes for family momentums and keepsakes that you don’t have room for in your home, but wish to put somewhere safe to pass on to other members or your family or friends.

You may find out that you have many items such as exercise equipment, old guitars and games that you could turn a profit on if you sold them on. There are multiple ways of doing this such as selling them on auction websites, taking a large number of items to a physical auction house, having a yard sale or selling them in the local classified ads.

Give to Local Charitable Services

Reusable items, as well as clothing, are great to gift friends and family, as well as those in need. If you like to collect old clothing that you end up never wearing again, why not wash them and take them to your local charity shop to help out your community. The same goes for other unwanted items such as furniture and games that whilst you may not need anymore, other people can find enjoyment in without them being added to the waste dump.

Hire a Professional Skip Company

For broken items and rubbish, dumping large items such as those you may have built up for many years may seem daunting at first. Many local dump sites only allow single car journeys and taking multiple van trips to disposal centres could see you rack up heavy charges or fees for commercial level activity. Hiring a skip, in this case, is one of the best ways to remove rubbish and broken items from your home all in a single easy process.

Skip hire is relatively cheap for what it provides - getting a skip delivered directly to your home, the allowance of a single day or a week to allow you to fill the skip up and then taken away at your request is a great service that many people require in this situation.

If you have mountains of rubbish and unwanted items and you simply must get rid of all of the stuff you don’t need in a single load, then hiring a bin or skip from your local bin hire company is the best way to cheaply, quickly and efficiently get rid of all the stuff you don’t need at your own personal convenience. Click here to hire skip bin today.

Images: 1, 2, 3, 4

The Top 5 Benefits of Hiring Skip Bins

If you or your company is in the process of having a spring clean, renovating or taking on a building project in the near future, there are many huge benefits in using the services of a skip hire company for your waste disposal. Not only will you have a simple solution to getting rid of your unwanted items, you can also save time, money and effort.

1. Help To Protect The Environment

Hiring a skip bin from one of the many different skip hire companies is one of the best ways to help save the environment by discarding of your waste or unwanted items in a professionally managed way. Skip hire companies often have the option of taking your waste to a sorting centre to sort the waste from the recyclable items for you instead of simply dumping all of your waste in a large landfill site.

Not only do some skip hire companies to offer a sorting service, they may also allow you to hire a skip based on the type of items you need disposing of. Be that glass, metal, electronics or household waste - even commercial waste and industrial waste can be catered for, safe in the knowledge that the waste will be taken care of professionally, ethically and in an environmentally friendly manner.

2. Saves You Time, Money And Effort

Not only does employing the services of a skip hire company help you save money on travelling to a disposal site and having to pay for the disposal of commercial or building work costs, but a skip hire company usually has a single base rate for which they charge. This often saves money on an individual basis, as a large waste management will get a better deal than a single individual.

You will save time and effort in making the trip to your local waste disposal site, and plenty of effort if you need to sort your waste yourself. Hiring a bin for building materials, household waste and other items will help you save plenty of time and effort in simply sorting your waste as you throw it away.

3. Ensuring Safety At Home and Work

Enlisting the services of a bin hire company will help secure the safety and good working environment for you and your colleagues or family. Having a single space to dispose of your waste is a great way in which to work, as there will not be piles of waste building up around the site. This is also true for families and homes where a simple renovation or restoration work is taking place in which you will be living around the work taking place.

In terms of domestic use, nothing beats the safety of having a large bin delivered to your door to place all of your unwanted items in. It is a safer option than loading your car with household items and taking them to the waste disposal site yourself.

4. Convenience

One of the biggest benefits to hiring a skip bin is the convenience of having the bin delivered to your door for use when you need it most. Deliveries can be scheduled on a regular basis on commercial sites as well as domestic properties, and pickup scheduled for when you need it, or at a fixed time.

It is easier than ever to find the best bin hire service in Melbourne that offers delivery and pick up at home or work site whenever you need it most.

5. Cost Effective Skip Bin Hire

One of the biggest benefits of hiring a skip bin company in Melbourne is the cost effectiveness in doing so. Many companies offer an up-front fee for a skip to be used for a set amount of time, such as 24hrs to a week and allow you to budget precisely the costs involved.

This is a great way to factor in the costs of waste management in your commercial project or building work and an even better way for those wishing to do renovation work to their home, as there will be no hidden costs involved.

Top 10 Cleanest Cities in the World 2016

Everyone loves to live in a nice neighbourhood, free of crime and graffiti, with an assortment of great local schools, shopping and hospitals, but cleanliness is one of the best examples of how when a city transforms its streets into clean and friendly neighbourhoods, the whole city benefits and reaps the rewards. We have compiled a list of the top 10 cleanest cities in the world for 2016, you may be surprised at what we found!

10. Oslo, Norway 

  

Norway is home to one of the most expensive cities in the world, let alone cleanest, but it is the local councils’ insistence on creating outdoor activity areas, clean parks and public highways that impress the most. With clean streets, parks and recreation areas, the city is able to enjoy more outside than most cities. With large teams of street cleaners and people responsible for garbage disposal, Oslo is one city that is sure to impress any visitor to the land of the Norse gods.

9. Stockholm, Sweden

Source: Lyfe Traveler

Just a stones’ throw away from its Nordic neighbour, Sweden is often seen a modern, clean-living and stylish country to live in, possibly thanks to its infamous Ikea stores, but Stockholm has come a long way in recent years to lower its levels of pollution, carbon footprint and target the natural beauty that many tourists keep coming back for.

Once a medieval town that Vikings set sail from, the modern Stockholm is a highly modernised city, yet still, retains its ancient charm.

8. Vienna, Austria

 

Source: Lonely Planet

This culturally rich city in the heart of Europe has made it its mission to clean up the streets and allow for an injection of cash from tourists to start the ball rolling. A superbly classic city that was home to Mozart and Beethoven not so long ago revels in its rich history of music, culture and art.

Schoenbrunn Palace

Known for its imperial palaces and art galleries, Vienna has made great efforts in recent times to introduce cleaner power sources, as well as help clean up the Danube River which runs through the ancient part of the city. With its clean streets and friendly locals, Vienna is now a top holiday destination.

7. Kobe, Japan

Himeji Castle

Kobe, which is located in Osaka Bay in central japan is famous for many things, such as Kobe beef and tragically the Large Earthquake that rocked the city a few years ago. Since then, the city has done its very best to rebuild and remake one of the cleanest cities on the planet in terms of emissions, waste and cleanliness of the streets.

With dedicated sewage treatment laws, large-scale garbage collection and a clean recycling plant that offers some of the best returns on recycled material in the world, Kobe must even smell impressive!

6. Freiburg, Germany

Freiburg in Germany may not be as famous as some of the other entries on this list, but when you find out that the town is known as “Flower City”, you might get an idea of where this is going. Filled with evergreen trees and flowers in the fields, the city is known to produce a large swathe of flora and fauna and is indeed one of the greenest cities in the world.

Source: PlanetWare

The city is big on being eco-friendly and offers a range of large parks and gardens for the locals to enjoy. Perfect as a location for holiday makers, you might be hearing more of this wonderfully clean city in the coming years.

5. Singapore

 

Singapore has long been one of the many jewels in the crown of Asia for many years, with its insistence on creating beautiful parks, gardens and recreational areas around the ancient city. With rubbish collections performed with almost military precision, recycling within homes is incredibly high compared with other cities or even countries.

Source: Singapore Airlines

Singapore keeps its streets clean and its public areas spotless - many has the old adage gone that you can be put in prison for dropping chewing gum on the floor, but the reality is that chewing gum has caused such a great problem for those cleaning it up that the government banned the sale of it in 1992. As well as the reasonably helpful laws of banning spitting in public and a fine for those who do not flush a public toilet.

4. Adelaide, Australia

Source: Lonely Planet

Adelaide is well known to be one of the best places to visit for a vacation, no matter if you are OCD about cleanliness. Situated with the backdrop of the beautiful Mount Lofty ranges, this pure city has a waste management system that works like clockwork, a local population that takes rubbish seriously and a recycling system that is impressively efficient.

The waste management and recycling system in Adelaide recycles an incredible 85% of waste, making it one of the very few cities in the world to be able to achieve this on a large scale. For such a large city, Adelaide continues to push the boundaries of what cleanliness means for a city, making many other towns and cities frantically trying to keep up.

3. The City of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

The city of Luxembourg is one of the old cities at the heart of Europe that benefits from a wealth of history as well as a modern city that deals in finance and banking. The city is much smaller than many of the other cities listed here, so maintaining the city in good condition could be said to be a breeze.

Being a large tourist destination, Luxembourg prides itself on its clean streets and shining museums and is a true gem for anyone who loves to spend time in an old city to take in the culture.

2. Zurich, Switzerland

Source: Darwin Airlines

Zurich is another European city that takes pride in its cleanliness, with a large population that understands the importance of keeping the streets clean, recycling and using less power, water and waste products. Keeping waste to a minimum and using clean energy is where Zurich hits the mark, with the second highest recycling rate amongst its inhabitants, Zurich will continue to offer a pristine holiday destination!

1. Calgary, Canada

Ranking in the top three places of the world’s cleanest city for the past ten years, Calgary has done it again, so something has got to be special about this city. The city focuses on several different areas of cleanliness, from waste management, recycling to population education and even fines for those who flout the law. Fines for dropping a single cigarette butt in a public space range from $500 to $1,000, so the locals know to look out for the streets.

Each home is given a blue bin that itself is recycled, and allows its residents to use for recycling aluminium, plastics and even glass. With every person in on the project, Calgary is set to win next year’s competition if they keep it up.

Now let's pay some tribute to our city! Melbourne is one of the best places to stay in when it comes to quality of living in Australia. Now, it has begun the journey to turning it into one of cleanest cities in the world as well. Metropolitan Bin Hire is playing a major role in the attempt to turn that vision into reality.

The Top Interesting Facts about Waste Management

With environmental concerns facing people’s lives the world over, it is little wonder that so many governments, companies and individuals are turning to more environmentally friendly approaches to their waste. As landfill sites become mountains in their own right, there are many things people can do to help save the environment, local wildlife and even the money in their pockets. Here are some interesting facts about waste management that may change your opinion on going green.

  

Each person in Europe on average creates over 3.5 tonnes of waste per year - this equates to over 1.8 billion tonnes of waste in Europe each year in total.

With more and more people using their recycling bins to dispose of their own personal waste, thankfully this figure should come down in the future. But where does all this waste go? Many landfill sites are chock-full of rubbish, creating no-go zones in many rural areas across Europe.

Many of these land-fill areas of the past have been turned into residential areas that have to be specially piped to ease off some of the marsh gas that is released by the rubbish that has been dumped underneath the city’s suburban areas.

In 2010, Americans recycled 85 million tonnes of waste, accounting for a 34.1% recycling rate.

Recycling rates in western countries are on the rise, but with many third-world countries coming up to speed when it comes to industrialisation and modernization, the world recycling rate is set to fall as more of these nations grow and use more items to turn into waste.

More has to be done to combat the problem of landfills, but more can and is being done to combat the problem in different ways. Biodegradable food packaging is one area of interest for ethical food manufacturers as we move into an era of green living, with many companies being set up that offer edible food packaging or package-free items readily available in many modern supermarkets.

Over 40,000 tonnes of plastic waste is dumped into the world’s oceans each year

This shocking statistic not only says a lot about the way we recycle plastics around the globe, but it also says a lot about how we treat the environment around us. Having already filled many land-fill sites in many countries, we now pollute the seas which have devastating effects on marine life. In the video, there's an example of the effects of dumped plastic waste into the ocean in marine life.

The plastic that is dumped into the seas is having a terrible effect on the mating cycles of many animals, with particular chemicals in the plastics affecting different species in tragic ways. A recent study showed that certain fish have changed their mating habits due to higher than average toxins in the seas, thought to be caused by the chemicals contained in some plastic packaging.

Each year, over 24 million tonnes of grass clippings and leaves are disposed of and not recycled.

By changing the way we use packaging, paper, and even grass clippings we can have a drastic beneficial effect on our environment. Interesting facts about waste management like this show that if the grass clippings alone were to be composted rather than thrown in a landfill, major areas in land-fill space could be conserved, and we would be able to recycle and compost even more than we do presently.

Waste management is an important aspect of modern life that none of us can afford to ignore. We can save the environment, save on our shopping bills and not have to rely on old methods of burying our problems in the sand for future generations to discover.