Spring Cleaning and Home Repairs Made Easy

When we moved to New York last year, our furniture spent 3 months in transit on a container ship from New Zealand. We spent those 3 months in a fully furnished apartment anxiously awaiting for our stuff to arrive. I’m not particularly obsessed with material things, but somehow having our own bed, couches, TV and stored away clothes was something I was longing for by the end of our time in the Upper West Side.

We were so happy when we moved into our new permanent house and started unpacking all of our boxes. We hadn’t thought through the fact that every sheet, piece of clothing and carpet would be moldy and musty from being rolled up for 3 months swaying around out at sea.

We have 1 particular rug that has been through alot. It was the first rug we bought for our first home as a couple in Christchurch (New Zealand). We had friends over (who spilt red wine on it), we knocked over glasses of…red wine, their was a lot of wine! Oh, and this one particularly stubborn coffee stain. No matter how many times we sprayed that foamy stuff that you can buy at the supermarket, we could just not get out the stains. Since it has arrived in New York, we unrolled it and it looked like a hot mess – dusty, full of stains and the blue and grey colors looked very dingy. Ok, so the rug is 8 years old, but I think the transit displaced alot of dust and debris – the carpet looked yucky, was hard to the touch and not something I’d let either of my children play on. It has spent the last couple of weeks in the play room with a sheet over it so that the kids can play on the ground.

So, I was super excited when I was given the opportunity to have Clickandimprove.com come to our house to clean my rug. I was a little embarrassed when their cleaner showed up, the carpet was so dirty he must have wondered how we could possibly let the kids play on it. He asked if we had a vacuum, which I sheepishly had to reply ‘no. Don’t judge, we have hardwoord through the entire house, so I sweep and mop –  a lot!

He didn’t bat an eyelid at the state of the carpet and got to work at first prepping the carpet with a spray and even getting down on his knees with a scrubber. Uuugh, he was trying to work on that tough stain that he so correctly pointed out as coffee. He then got the wet vac going and within minutes I could see the dirt and dust lifting from the carpet.

Here’s the pictures to prove the difference.

This is the cleanest I have seen this carpet in a very long time. The deep rich blue stripes are bright again and the carpet feels nice and soft, not crunchy and dirty.

The best part is that the products he used were eco-friendly, so I actually feel okay with letting my littlie toddle around on it. The carpet looks and feels clean.

Pros to using Click and Improve

The Clickandimprove website takes you through a series of questions to help you figure out what services you need. The friendly customer specialist then confirms the project you need completed, and the pricing (as stated on the website when you check out) via telephone. After you’ve agreed on the service, and the date/time, they dispatch the service worker to your home to fix/repair/clean.

As their website states, it was ‘hassle free”. The serviceman knew exactly what he was here to do. Major kudos to him as well for having to put up with a bazillion questions from my 4 year old who ‘needed’ to understand the entire carpet cleaning process. He answered each one with a smile and rather than doing a rush job to get away from the chaos, he was determined to get rid of all the stains in the carpet. The stubborn coffee stain was cleaned up quite a bit, it can only be seen if you get down real close to the carpet. The other stains are all completely gone.

Nothing better than having someone in your house who is friendly and efficient. From start to finish 1 rug took 30 minutes to clean, and that was with giving the coffee stain a thorough working over.

If you are in New York and looking for house repairs, junk removal, cleaning or a host of other services to jump start your spring cleaning, I would highly recommend Click and Improve. If you want to double check what services they offer, head over to their Service and Repair page for a comprehensive list of the services they offer. As a bonus to Mama goes BAM readers, use the code BAM at checkout to receive 10% off your first service.

Head on over to their website or the Click and Improve Facebook page to find out how you can win a $500 American Express gift card. But hurry, giveaway ends April 8.