When it comes to cleaning windows, the tools you will need are the following .
1. Dish washing soap
2. Bucket of water
3. The mop
4. The squeegee
5. Micro fibre cloth
These are the basic tools a window cleaner will need to be able to clean a window. Now there are other tools and techniques that are promoted on the internet. I’ve heard using things from newspapers to coffee filters and paper towels. If these items were the best things to use on glass, then professional window cleaners would be looking like professional baristas or newspaper stands.
Why do we use these specific tool?
We will go through each item and explain their main purpose when it comes to cleaning a pane of glass.
So let’s get into this…
This is the secret sauce when it comes to cleaning your windows. The humble dishwashing soap, found in almost all homes and is used to clean your cups and saucers and other kitchen utensils. It is a great degreaser when it comes to removing food from your plates and coffee rings from inside your cups.
It’s degreasing action is also great on removing dirt and stubborn stains from your windows. The soap is also very slippery, you may have noticed that when you rub it between your fingers it is like a kind of lubricant. This helps when we use the squeegee, but we’ll explain that when we get to the squeegee section.
Bucket Of Water
I’ve put bucket of water, as most people have a bucket lying around the house. But you can use any sort of container as long as the mop can fit inside it. You could fill up the kitchen sink or use a large bowl, I’ll leave that to your creative mind to come up with a solution.
With the bucket of water we are going to add some of the dishwashing soap we mentioned earlier. How much soap should we use? Well depending on the size of the container, you will only need a small short squirt of the bottle into the water. You don’t want to have too many bubbles in the bucket. You want enough to feel the water slip through your fingers.
The Mop
The mop is used to apply the soapy water to the window. You place the mop into the bucket, so that the mop head is completely submerged. We want the mob head to be wet with no dry parts of the head visible. When we take the mop out of the bucket we can run our fingers over the mop head to remove any excess water. So now, when we lift the mop there isn’t any water running off the mop and making a mess on the floor. You can however, add a towel to cover any furniture or flooring you don’t want any drips of water on.
We now place the mop on the window and soap up the glass by rubbing the mop up and down and left and right across the pane of glass. The mop helps to remove dirt and grime and provides a slippery film on the glass for the squeegee rubber to glide along the glass. When the glass is all soaped up, you can place the mop back in the bucket.
Pro Tip: Do one pane at a time so as the glass doesn’t dry by the time you have finished the first pane.
The Squeegee
This is the number one tool that you need when cleaning glass. The squeegee is a metal or plastic T shaped tool that houses a thin piece of rubber in the channel. The main purpose of this rubber is to move the water from the top of the window all the way down to the bottom of the glass.
Whilst you are moving this water, you are also removing the dirt and grime that is trapped within the soapy water. There are many techniques you can use to clean a pane of glass with a squeegee and we will cover these techniques in another post.
Micro Fibre Cloth
Last but not least, the micro fibre cloth. Now the cloth is a very important part of the window cleaning process. After we have cleaned the window the squeegee will sometimes leave a small bead of water at the top and sides of the window near the rubber seals.
We want to use the cloth to clean up that last bit of water before is starts to run down our freshly cleaned piece of glass. We don’t want our hard work to go to waste.
There you have it. These are the tools you need and a brief explanation of what the tools do and the order in which you use them. If you are looking to give it a go yourself check out our other articles on different techniques to get streak free windows. If you want to save some time, get a professional window cleaner in to save you time and money. Whatever you decide, have fun cleaning your window and enjoy looking out of your sparkling glass.
