Methods

What you physically do. Chemistry gets the attention, but contact time, temperature and mechanical action decide most outcomes.

Listed alphabetically.

• Absorbent powder treatment

  Lifting an oily mark out of a porous surface with a powder rather than dissolving it with a liquid. The gentlest route on anything water would ruin.

• Agitation

  One of the four variables in every cleaning process, and the one people reach for when the other three are wrong. More force is rarely the missing ingredient.

• Blotting

  Lifting a spill straight up into an absorbent cloth rather than working at it. The opposite of what almost everyone does, and the trade bodies are explicit about why.

• Chimney sweeping

  Not housekeeping. A fire-safety interval set by the fuel burned, and work for a competent sweep rather than the householder.

• Cleaning along the grain

  On a brushed or directional finish, the direction you wipe decides whether marks disappear into the pattern or cut across it permanently.

• Conditioning

  Replacing what cleaning and age removed. The leather trade fences it far more tightly than the market does, and its frequency is measured in months.

• Controlled resurfacing

  Removing the marked material rather than the mark. The right answer only where the surface is meant to be renewed, and irreversible everywhere else.

  Carries warnings

• Descaling

  Dissolving mineral deposits with an acid. Effective, well understood, and the wrong answer on any surface made of the same mineral.

• Dry cleaning

  Not dry. Cleaning in a liquid that is not water, chosen because water is the thing that swells fibres, moves dyes and felts wool.

• Dry soil removal

  Taking the loose material away before any liquid touches it. Skipped almost universally, and it is the step that decides whether the rest works.

  Carries warnings

• Dusting

  The lowest-status task in cleaning and the one that prevents the most damage — because what is being removed is abrasive, hygroscopic and edible.

• Freezing

  Making a soft, sticky deposit brittle so it can be broken off, instead of melting it so it spreads.

• Hot-water extraction

  Inject solution, recover it immediately. The recovery is the method — what is left behind is what causes the next problem.

• Ironing

  Heat, moisture and pressure applied together. Two of them are useful and the third is what makes a wool sweater permanently shiny.

• Machine dishwashing

  Hot, strongly alkaline and unattended. It is the most aggressive routine cleaning most households own, which is why so many things are excluded from it.

  Carries warnings

• Machine scrubbing

  Mechanical action applied evenly and at a controlled pressure, which is the variable a mop cannot supply.

• Machine washing

  Four variables the machine sets for you, and a care label that constrains two of them. The label is issued for the garment, not for the fibre.

  Carries warnings

• Mild abrasion

  Removing a deposit with particles softer than the surface beneath it. Safe or ruinous depending entirely on relative hardness.

  Carries warnings

• Moisture control

  The treatment for mould that is not a cleaning product. Every authority puts it first, and it is the only thing that stops the problem recurring.

• Neutral cleaning

  The default that four separate trades converge on independently: a neutral detergent, warm water, a soft tool and a thorough rinse.

• Poultice

  A paste left on a stain for a day or two to draw it back out of a porous material. One of the few methods measured in hours rather than seconds.

• Pre-treatment

  Treating a mark before the main process, because the main process is usually the thing that would make it permanent.

• Pressure washing

  Permitted and fenced. A manufacturer's own guidance gives the angle, the setting and the check afterwards — and says excess shortens the life of the surface.

• Protective waxing

  Not a cleaning step but the step that makes the cleaning survivable — and cleaning removes the coating, so skipping it leaves the surface worse off.

• Pyrolytic (self-clean) cycle

  Burning the soil off at a temperature nothing else in a kitchen reaches. The reason to open a window is more specific than most people are told.

• Re-lubrication

  The step after degreasing, and it is not optional. Cleaning a mechanism removes the lubricant deliberately, and stopping there is worse than not cleaning it.

• Rinsing and drying

  The step people skip, and the one that decides whether cleaning protected the surface or damaged it. Residue left behind is exposure that continues after you stop.

• Sealing

  Buying time rather than building a barrier. The stone trade corrects the name itself: these are impregnators, and they are repellent rather than stain-proof.

• Soaking

  Extending contact time so chemistry can do work that would otherwise need force. Often the difference between scrubbing and wiping.

  Carries warnings

• Solvent treatment

  The branch that starts before water rather than after it — and it carries a warning the aqueous branch does not.

• Solvent wiping

  Dissolving an oily soil and letting the solvent evaporate. The answer where water would leave a mark or cause harm.

  Carries warnings

• Spot testing

  The step named by more trade bodies than any other, and the only one that turns an irreversible decision into a reversible one.

• Stripping and refinishing a floor

  Not cleaning at all. Removing a sacrificial coating and putting a new one down, which is why the floor looks new and why it is the tier that goes wrong.

• Surveying with a UV lamp

  Find the contamination before treating it, because the visible mark and the actual deposit are frequently in different places.

• Tumble drying

  The step most likely to make a stain permanent, and the appliance whose maintenance instruction is printed under a fire heading rather than a cleaning one.

  Carries warnings

• Two-stage degreasing

  A solvent pass followed by a detergent pass. Each finishes what the other cannot, and the trade documentation says so in one sentence.

• Two-stage disinfection

  Clean first, disinfect second, and leave it wet for the time on the label. Almost every household version of this skips one of the three, and each omission stops it working.

A method is what you DO, as distinct from the tool you do it with and the chemistry you do it with. Almost every trade document specifies an order of operations, and most of the damage they warn about comes from doing the right thing at the wrong point in that order.