Sure, you think your house is pretty clean. You tidy up during the week and then devote a couple hours of your Saturday morning to giving the house a scrub. But despite our best efforts, there are some areas of the house we just forget to clean. They aren’t out in the open, so they don’t hit our cleaning radar.

OK, you’ve dusted the bookcase, mopped the bathroom and wiped down the kitchen counters. Seems you’re on track to have a clean house, right? Maybe not. How much time did you spend eliminating biopollutants. Bio-what?

Mold, mildew, green gunk, black blobs – it’s all the same, right? While we tend to use the terms “mold” and “mildew” interchangeably or even together, there are subtle differences.

Trying to involve your children in the house cleaning process can oftentimes seem a herculean task. Just getting them to pick up toys, let alone scrubbing the bathroom sink or dusting the end tables, can be a major accomplishment. But it’s important to involve your children in the cleaning process. It teaches them responsibility as well as consequences (you made the mess, you clean it up). Being part of a family means shouldering some of the chores and kids need to contribute to the household in age-appropriate ways.

What item in your house do you hate to clean the most? Yes, the toilet. Just because the dog takes a sip out of it now and then doesn’t mean you relish the thought of getting on your hands and knees to give the toilet a proper scrub.

Cleaning is an easier chore when the house is tidy and you’re not trying to dust a coffee table piled high with magazines or vacuum a bedroom when the floor is covered with clothes and toys. Probably one reason so many people dread cleaning is because they realize some serious picking up and straightening will precede the dust cloth and mop.

More than 50 million Americans (that’s 1 in 5) have some kind of allergy, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Allergies have been on the rise since the 1980s and are the fifth leading chronic disease in the United States. Now, that’s a lot of Kleenex.