TEACHING OUR KIDS TO DO THEIR CHORES

House chores must be shared with the whole family,  sometimes they are left just for mom or dad to do them;  that was a mistake we usually saw in the past;   dads used to rest for the whole weekend, and moms were in charge of the load of chores from Sunday to Sunday.  Then, moms saw that she had a huge team to help them in the houses, a lot of kids who were useful to do part of the job..  The only thing is that moms made some MISTAKES, about the way they made kids to help; here are some ones:

-Ask kids to do chores when mom was mad, there was no planning, then at the time kids were going to do something fun, mom requested them to work at the house, ask kids to do  chores as part of a punishment because they did not do their homework, complain everyday about the things they need to do at the house to keep it clean, there was not recognition of the work done because they assumed they had to do it.

For this reason, we need to change our mind and try at least to do simple things like:

GIVE CHORES TO OUR KIDS AT LEAST WHEN THEY ARE 3 YEARS OLD.

It’s better to start early teaching our kids to do their chores at home,  do it as a funny activity which is recognized, encouraging them to follow helping mom on a daily basis. They will fill as part of a project which has a beginning and a happy ending.

DO CHORES TOGETHER, INVOLVE ALL FAMILY MEMBERS.

When kids see that everybody work at home on a project to keep it clean and organized, they will feel that is more rewarding than working by themselves.  Remember that the example is the best way to teach our children, then if they see their parents working they will be motivated to do the same.

CHORES ARE PART OF LIFE, NOT A WAY TO BE PUNISHED.

Telling our children that life involves not only play and have fun, but chores, projects, goals activities for their self development in areas like responsibility, organization, planning, and many other things, they will understand that is better to accomplish what they have to do to then,  enjoy the right of playing and having fun.

APPLY ADMINISTRATIVE PRINCIPLES EVEN WHEN TALKING ABOUT CHORES.

No matter if they are toddlers, we need to explain them that in every single stage of our life we need to be organized, then show them how to plan the after-school activities at home, start by simple things like helping to set up the table for dinner, take the garbage out, bring the mail, put their dirty clothes in the basket, fold the clean clothes. Then, when they grow will help you easily while they live at your home.

NEGOTIATE WITH YOUR KIDS ABOUT A SCHEDULE TO HELP AT HOME.

We need to talk daily about what to do tomorrow, during the weekend or next week, for this reason, is better to have a schedule in which we show them that every day we will have to do something but it does not have to be a strict plan, we may negotiate with them;  but remember that there is still something pending, otherwise you will have to do what they were in charge of doing.

Make your and your kids’ life easier by teaching them timely that is better to act now than being postponing because at the end of the week everybody will have tons of chores to do and no one will be able to enjoy of free time.

Anyways, remember YOU can do the simple things, and our company may help you with the hards things like cleaning your bathrooms, kitchen, dusting, vacuuming, etc.  You just mention what you need and will take care of your house on a regular basis, or even just for one time.  Visit our website www.maidprofessionally.com, or our Facebook page www.facebook.com/maidprofessionally 

 

 

 

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WHAT IS A REGULAR CLEANING ?

There is nothing more exciting than coming to a clean house and being able to enjoy your family.  That’s why we at MAIDPROFESSIONALLY, are committed with our customers to maintain that sensation every time we go to their houses and clean with honesty and dedication, because we like them to have free time to spend with their families.

When we get to know new customers we first ask them what do they want (talking about cleaning needs) to be done in their houses, frequency, supplies preferences and areas of concern in their houses.  Once we define all of these facts, we schedule the cleaning and keep in touch with the customers to adjust any detail and start as soon as they want.

The best way to perform a first cleaning is to pick up all toys (normally customers do this part) but in case we find something out of order, we put it back to where we think it goes, then re-make beds or change the sheets if requested by the customer, we also pick up dirty towels in the bathrooms, so everything is away to start our job.

In the bathrooms, we clean the sinks, faucets, countertops, cabinets’ doors, shower or tubs, fixture lights, baseboards, toilets, all bottles or adornments are cleaned too.

In the kitchen, we clean the sinks, faucets, countertops, cabinets’ doors, refrigerator and stove on top and front, microwave inside and outside, floors and switches.  Dirty dishes are normally placed in the dishwasher.

We understand that every part of your house is important for our customers, that’s why we clean it as it was ours and make an effort to satisfy every detail you want.

In the bedrooms, we make the beds (if customers request it) dust furniture, pictures, clean switches, blinds, windowsills, also vacuum and mop, if there are tile or wood floors, otherwise, we just vacuum.

Some of our customers prefer to make the beds by themselves, we just organize around and clean bed’s frames. It’s up to every one.

In the common areas, we dust, organize, vacuum and mop if needed.

EXTRA-ACTIVITIES

We do some extra-activities like cleaning baseboards, doors’ frames, fans, light fixtures, porches, windows’ tracks, laundry or folding clothes, organizing the garage, organizing your closets, organizing the kitchen cabinets in extra-time and will charge accordingly.

IN CASE YOU REFER US TO ANY FRIEND OR RELATIVE, WE WILL DO ONE OF THESE ACTIVITIES OR PART OF THEM IF IT IS TOO LONG, WHICH COULD BE COVERED IN ONE-HOUR /ONE-PERSON WORK.

Call us in case you want to know more in detail about special cleanings, seasonal cleanings, moving out or moving in cleanings, pre or after party cleanings, and much more.

Remember we are here to help you and want you to be satisfied with our performance, and at the end of every cleaning we like to hear from you, please give us your feedback to know how did you like it, and if it is worthy to refer us to others.

Like us on Facebook and share us with your friends. Thank you and have a great day.

 

SPRING IS HERE AND YOU WILL NEED YOUR HOUSE TO BE POLLEN FREE. WE ARE HERE TO HELP!!

Spring time is as the other seasons…. beautiful, but brings with it the POLLEN as a natural procedure for us enjoy later of great food, fruits, etc. For this reason I would like to share with you some positive and negative facts about pollen. First of all, let’s talk about the positive ones:

• Pollen is collected by bees when they travel from flower to flower and go back to their hives, when they do this they get a lot of grains of different plants,  it is full of proteins maybe five or seven times more than other sources.
• Pollen is well know to be a source of anti-aging nutrients and excellent as performance supplement used by olympic athletes.
• Pollen is useful to reduce weight without loosing essential nutrients needed for the body (you first need to consult your physician about it)  Shanna Israel, holistic lifestyle expert and founder of Vertical Wellness, explains that the meaning of “bee pollen diet” varies. “Pure bee pollen is known as a ‘perfect food’ and can have health benefits if you are not allergic. Some people relate a bee pollen diet with weight loss supplements, but there are many people that use pure bee pollen in smoothies to get the health benefits of added vitamins, minerals and proteins. It depends on whom you ask.”
• Pollen may help men when we are talking about their prostate’s health. Pollen has a component called Cernilton helpful to relax the urethra and sphincter.  Dr. J. Curtis Nickel of the Department of Urology, Queen’s University in Ontario cites reports of beneficial results in treating chronic prostatitis with Cernilton, noting that patients improved or recovered more often using Cernilton than they did with a placebo.

Picture taken from the website of pollenlibrary.com

We live in Florida, one of the states that have to deal highly with Pollen.  You can see in this map how affected it is and why is so important to be aware of Pollen’s presence.

Talking about negative facts about Pollen, we could say that it stains furniture, cars and windows during spring season, but the most problematic fact is allergies caused by it to more than 67 million of United States habitants. Here are some of the allergy symptoms caused by touching or breathing pollen in the air, and some of them could cause life-threatening reactions. Severe anaphylaxis can occur in individuals with bee pollen sensitivities. Though serious or fatal reactions are rare, anyone who has concerns about allergies should consult their doctor before taking bee pollen. Here are some of the symptoms:

• sneezing
• wheezing
• nasal congestion
• coughing
• itchy, watery eyes
• runny nose
• itchy throat
• stomach ache
• itchy skin
• hives
• fatigue
• irritability

Children especially might develop a rhinovirus, an infection in the nose that causes the common cold, said Dr. Shih-Wen Huang, a pediatric allergist at Shands at the University of Florida. Huang said children in day care or nursery schools are particularly prone to the 120 sub-strains of the virus, which are contagious

For all these negative facts, we suggest you to clean constantly your house exterior to remove any pollen’s particles.  Maid Professionally may help you with the cleaning.  We may recover those pillows that have been covered by pollen for days and avoid you or your children dealing with them, and you will enjoy of these sunny days and the pool without being worried about it.  Remember we are here to help, and you will get the Professional Cleaning Service You Deserve!!

• muscles and increase bladder muscle contraction.  Dr. J. Curtis Nickel of the Department of Urology, Queen’s University in Ontario says that this ingredient helps men managing prostatitis and benign prostatic hyperplasia.

My mom, so many things to learn from her.

Some days ago, I asked my mom Rosa Lilia Bermudez to please write a book with the most vivid memories she has had during her whole life (she celebrated her 90 years on November 2014), then she started laughing about the idea, and asked me,  about what?…bad things, good things or what?  So I replied, about everything you can remember.  When I heard her laughing so much like being kind of nervous,  I told her,  this is because I want to know more and more about you, maybe things that have escaped from our chat-moments and I want to know them and better yet have them by written…; she asked me, when I am gone you mean?? No, definitely no!! is just because I want to keep something yours and be able to show it to my grandchildren and so on.

I understood that she was thinking in the moment she leaves this world and was sad, but I encouraged her to write and write, because to me is the best way for her to pour her feelings with no questions or regrets so your soul will feel free.

Sometimes you realize that you have wasted your time in worthless things while the good moments escape from your sight as the water from your hands. I have so many questions for my mom, like for example what does she feel now that my dad is not anymore with her?  Now  she does not have anyone asking behind her about what to do or not.  What will she change about her life and her family if she could?  What were the best and the worst moments in her life?  What would she repeat if she had a chance?  What was the situation that she was afraid of when she did not allow us to leave with our friends?

One of the things I know for sure that she is afraid of, is dying without seeing her family united, and her prayers are constantly asking God to allow her seeing that miracle before leaving.

Why do we as human beings behave in such selfish way that we are not able to put our own feelings away and help our parents or grand-parents live a better life, listen them telling repeatedly their stories?   we need to be humble and try to make others happy, especially our parents and grandparents who dedicated so many years to us.  They deserve to be happy and better yet, try different things, visit new places, challenge their minds remembering old situations and challenge their bodies to execute new activities, dancing,  walking longer distances, assembling puzzles and completing crosswords, because maybe their bodies are not  at 100% in good shape but their spirits are strengthened by overcoming adversities in many ways and in the moments they had to face it, their minds were so lucid and so eager to live that we would be surprised.

In my mom’s case she has learned that the best way to be happy is to leave all things in God’s hands and I have learned that too, trusting that everything in our life happens because of a Godly  purpose.

My mom has taught us the tenacity to follow fighting for the things we want, no matter what we are facing, we need to breath, pray and try again.  How many times?  As many as we need to surpass sad or difficult moments being diligent and work by ourselves.

When we ask different questions to our elders not routine things,  they will feel that they and all what faced during their entire lives… matter!! they will feel important, and thank every single moment being listened.  They have so much experience,  and even silly things to share with us from which we and our children may learn, we should not waste those precious moments to get the most amazing tales.

I invite you dedicate some minutes to your parents if you still have them alive, enjoy them and what they have to tell you.  There is so much to hear and learn, then, hopefully what we do with them, will be repeated by our children with ourselves.

Using Bleach??? Definitely not! Knowing its risks makes me reluctant to use it.

You and I have probably known “Bleach” as the best product to whiten your clothes, clean your bathrooms and all around your house, but maybe we never investigated about the risks it represent to cleaners, home owners and in the environment in general.  Therefore, I have found a lot of information about how harmful is it and for this reason we are encouraging our customers to become “Green-consumers” , it means, to start using products which not represent a risk-factor for us and for the best place to live … our earth.

1) Bleach is a mixing chlorine and caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), in a kind of reversal of the chlor-alkali process.  Maybe you and I do not understand or know about chemistry, but it does not sound so encouraging using this in our houses. Since both products are so dangerous in or outside of our houses.

2) Bleach is not good for humans, when you mix it with ammonia creates a deadly gas which narrow your respiratory conduits avoiding you to breath and causing nausea or vomiting, then chocking. People who work repeatedly with Bleach “develop adverse effects from repeat inhalation exposure to chlorine.  It can cause short breathnes , affects inmune system, blood and in general human health” EPA.  It also cause cancer, liver and kidney problems.

3) Bleach is not good for plants, it impedes their growth and depletes nutrients residing in soil.  As plants depends on microorganisms like fungus and bacteria in the soil, which cause aeration in the soil helping retain water and nutrients good for them. Then, when you pour any bleach on them it kills these microorganisms and makes earth to become sterilized. Even though plants need chloride in very small quantities to help with the growth of chloroplasts.

4) Bleach is not good for environment.  It contains chlorine which was used as a weapon during the first world war.  It poses a high risk to the wild life because the waste waters running throw our rivers, and has been connected with laboratory-animals cancer. Pets and birds are also in extremely risk because of their small air-capacity when filling their lungs of contaminated vapors. According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)  the risk of being exposed during long periods and the frequency of those exposures makes people and environment more harm-vulnerable.

You can find alternative products to use to whiten clothes and places like your shower at home.   Try using baking soda or vinegar;   soak any garment diluting water and baking soda and leave it for some minutes, then you will see the results. Hydrogen Peroxide also can help to get whiter places at home.  And the last but not less important is the solar power, you can expose your clothes to it and the effect of the ultra-violet rays will recover the whitest state of your clothes.

Lemons are also good to clean around your faucets, your glass containers or windows.  Maybe you need to spend more time, but at the end you will see that you have saved yourself and your family of facing risks as the mentioned before.  I sincerely invite you to change your mind and use “Green Products” around your house to ensure a better health quality and preserve our earth, which is a marvelous place to live.

Give me your feedback about this article and how helpful you have found it.  Visit our website Maid Professionally and our Facebook.com/maidprofessionally and contact us for a free estimate. God bless you!!

Simple Cleaning Tips

When you are going to start cleaning your house, have in mind the following tips so you can have more free time to spend it with your family:

-First of all,  pick up toys, clothes around the house and put all furniture in the place that you have assigned for each piece.

-Start by the kitchen, put all dirty dishes in your dishwasher, you know this will save time and money because you will spend less water than doing it by hand;  then when you follow with the countertop  where you should lift every single piece you have, you will be surprised how much dirty is beneath containers, microwave or other tools you may have on top of it.  After that, clean the cabinets’ doors inside and outside, the front of the refrigerator, microwave and sink.  If the microwave is too dirty, better warm a cup of water to generate steam on its walls what will ease your job to clean it easily;  the glass plate is better to wash it directly in the sink to get it shiny and with no stains on it. The last thing to do in the kitchen must be the sink where you must remember to clean the drains, they use to get too dirty and you do not realize how much germs they could accumulate.  Floors of course are equally important, if you do not clean them constantly they will get sticky and wet, what is dangerous either for you or your children.

 

-Follow with the bathrooms; put Lysol in the toilet while you pick up all wet towels and dirty clothes you have there, place them in a basket or in the washer machine;  start by cleaning the countertops with an All Purpose cleaner or Ajax, make sure you brush the sinks and faucets; then use Windex or vinegar to clean the mirrors.  The cabinets’ doors must be clean with Pledge.  Next step is the toilet , you need to use the toilet’s brush or disposable sponges (Wands) making sure you reach the hidden parts of the bowl, scrub and get rid of any dirt accumulation.  And the last thing to do here is the shower or the tub.

-In the bedrooms you need to pick up all clothes and organize the beds.  If you need to change the beds, do this first to start the washing cycle.  Dust all furniture and make the beds again.

 

 

-In the common areas like dinning room and living room, once you have picked up all toys, if you have children of course, you need to dust all furniture on the horizontal, vertical surfaces and legs, clean windows, baseboards anddoors.

And finally, vacuum all rooms, mop them and allow to dry for some minutes before passing again to put all cleaning supplies in the corresponding place you have for them.

You think is too much work…. well, my best advise is “CALL US NOW”  we can help you, and we can assure that all this will be done in a third part of the time you spend to do it.

Maid Professionally will give you a hand organizing your most valuable asset, your home.  We can meet you whenever you need to give a free estimate.  Our phone number is 352-278-4106

Maid Professionally’s Blog

Maid Professionally is a local family business which started with a dream of a person some years ago, for this reason I would like to tell you how was its start-up. Later on… we will follow posting some tips and articles about cleaning.  For now, let me share our story with you.

Once upon a time, a young 16-year old girl living in Caicedonia, Valle, Colombia had a dream,  to become an entrepreneur, and succeed; for that reason… me…? yes I was that girl, who later moved to Cali, another city in the same province,  studied Bilingual Secretariat, International Trade and Business Administration.   In the meantime, I worked in different companies getting experience for the future adventure in which I was going to be involved.  My first job was in Caicedonia, planting coffee seeds, which was paid at $70 Colombian Pesos for every thousand of seeds planted in a day.  It was around 1975 when there was a bonanza of coffee in Colombia, and all students were allowed to go to the farms to help planting, producing and then picking the coffee beans.  After working in the coffee plantations, I was hired at a cooperative store as a salesperson,  from 2pm to 6pm seven days a week.  Later, I worked at Telecom as phone system operator when people still went to that place to make long distance calls.

However, I realized that there was nothing else to do in my hometown as a high-schooler; so I decided to travel to Cali and got enrolled in the bilingual program for Executive Secretaries offered by the Colombo-American Institute.   After getting my certificate as a Bilingual Executive Assistant, I got my BA degree in Business Administration at the Universidad Libre in Cali, Colombia.  My educational background and my previous work experience enabled me to get different jobs where I gained a lot of experience and a sound knowledge on foreign trade matters.  Finally I was hired as Import and Export Head at Warner Lambert Ltd., in Cali.  Notwithstanding, my entrepreneurial spirit was still latent and after working for about eight years, I made the decision of starting our own business with my husband and some of my sisters.  In 1994, we established a packaging company offering the packing and labeling services to different local and multinational companies located in Cali.  in 1998, I had the opportunity to travel to Chicago to participate in a packing fair.  I got enough information about innovative packing systems and specialized packing machines we could use to have more efficient packing processes with high-quality standards in the company.

When visiting Chicago,  I realized that we could open a branch of our company in the United States and do business in the same way we did it in Colombia, keeping in mind that we would have to move to this country. I shared the idea with my family, then after a lot of prayers, planning and research, we hired an immigration lawyer to get our L1 visas to emigrate toward this country.  You could say that “it was a crazy idea”, and indeed it was!!  because coming to United States and establishing a company here is not that easy, especially when you do not have a lot of money to start, and in this case we had just a dream, a good attitude to face all the challenges, and better yet… the faith to wait  the best in every moment without any doubt that success could be also ours.

After traveling between Colombia and the United States with my brother-in-law, I found a business to start earning a living, a “cleaning franchise”, which acquired and started working with.  It was very hard but it was the beginning of our adventure.  In nine months, we were able to bring our families, fourteen members in total, all with L1 and L2 visas.  Having the families together was our best motivation to keep on working hard.

Owners of Maid Professionally

My husband Jorge Abadia and I, Maria Ramirez decided to close the company in Miami because the visas were not renewed to some members of my family, and move with our children to Gainesville City for them to study at the University of Florida. After being working as self-employees in this beautiful place for more than eight years, we have decided to formalize our business and establish it with this name:

Maid Professionally;  I think we are now in the right path to make our American Dream become a reality by pursuing on being a successful couple of entrepreneurs in this country.

God has helped us in every moment during this process,  we thank Him for it!

We hope you support us by referring our services to your friends and families, then we invite you to visit our website www.maidprofessionally.com , read our blog and share it with them!!

If you have someone who wants to be part of this dream, either because need the house to be cleaned or because wants to be part of our cleaning team,  just contact us

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