Blog about Home Restoration in Chicago, Lincolnwood, Niles, Park Ridge, Deerfield, IL, and Surrounding Areas

 5 Easy Ways to Clean Smoke Damage

Has your home or business centre recently been through an unforeseen fire? If so, chances are that you are now looking for fire damage clean up in Chicago, Niles, Morton Grove, Skokie, and Lincolnwood.

But there is an alternative to these services: doing it on your own. It is not as difficult as it sounds, although it will require some time and dedication from your part.

1.       The sooner the better

Going through fire damage restoration can be a strenuous experience, both physically and emotionally. But the sooner you start recovering from the damage the better. Smoke tends to stick to clothes and fabric and with time is becomes difficult to remove it from walls, furniture or floors.

So make sure your household items are not ‘soaked’ in smoke because it will be very difficult to recover from smoke damage.

2.       Let air come through

A good starting point is to let your windows wide open so air can come through. Even though you don’t feel like it helps much, fresh air contributes to eliminating the unpleasant smoke odor. But of course, air can’t do much on its own. This is why your help is needed. Or the help of a professional fire damage cleanup agency. Here’s where number 3 comes in:

3.       Vacuum cleaner and disinfectants

Baking soda can do wonders to a lot of the household items that have been affected by fire. Besides this, make sure you vacuum the soot that remains from the fire. If wet, soot can easily create long lasting stains, so it is better to vacuum and not wash it.

Use disinfectants to clean up appliances. If you want to get rid of the nasty odor sooner, create a solution from water and vinegar. Vinegar smell is not very pleasant either, but it can eliminate smoke odor and it will vanish after a couple of hours.

4.       Walls: try this if washing doesn’t work

Walls are probably the most difficult part of the house to clean. If everything else failed to clean them, try baking soda, as mentioned at point 3. If that also fails, then you may want to consider re-painting the room(s).

5.       Contact a professional property damage restoration company

So these are the 5 easy ways to clean smoke damage. Remember that you will need some time to go through these, so if you can’t take time off from work, maybe it is better to consider asking for help from professionals. Contact a fire damage clean up company that works nearby: Chicago, Niles, Morton Grove, Skokie, and Lincolnwood.