Spring cleaning can be very tedious, physically demanding and very stressful at times. To make things a little easier, we have a few tips that will help you have a clean and organized home any time of the year.
Get Rid of Dust: When dusting the house, move around each room in a circle starting with the highest points as you work your way down to the floor. The best tools to use to get rid of dust from your house and leave it thoroughly clean include Swiffer dusters, air purifiers as well as vacuum with sealed HEPA filters.
Clean the Kitchen: Clean kitchen cupboards and fridges thoroughly and make sure they are properly organized. Discard canned goods and any other items that are past their date of expiry.
Put away linens: During springtime, you will need to put away heavy quilts and blankets and replace them with lighter-weight bedding. Before storing the bedding, be sure to thoroughly wash and dry it. If you don’t clean them properly, body oils that accumulated on them during usage will attract moths and insects. After making sure that they are dry, store them in zippered bags, under-bed boxes or vacuum seal storage bags to protect against insects and save space. For extra freshness, insert cedar or lavender sachets where you have stored them.
Start up Your Dehumidifier: Make sure that your dehumidifier is properly cleaned and it is in a good working condition and then run it in a partially underground room or a humid basement. This will eliminate dampness during the spring season which causes mildew.
Clean Carpets: Make sure you clean the carpet immediately the spring mud season is over. Ensure that they are vacuumed thoroughly, and then shampoo them with a spray foam or powder. You can also rent a steamer from a hardware store near you and use it to do an even deeper clean on the carpet. This is a must do for spring cleaning.
Clean Shower Curtains: Whether your shower curtains are made from plastic, vinyl or fabric, toss them in the washing machine to get rid of all the soap scum, shampoo as well as mildew. These elements build up during the usage of the curtains and the perfect time to remove them is during spring cleaning.
Clean Dirty Faucets: Wipe cloudy faucets with a damp cloth and then swab with vinegar. Soak a paper towel or cloth with vinegar and then wrap it around the faucet. Wait for about an hour and then remove the wrappings. Give the fixtures a final rub using a fresh towel.
Make your house sprinkle with spring cleaning tips, additionally search your local house cleaning services on home improvement portals and get assistance from them.
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InfoStrat president James Townsend's thoughts on digital transformation, marketing automation, customer relationship management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly CRM), government contracting, customer service and more. For breaking news, follow me on Twitter @jamestownsend and for more depth see the InfoStrat website at www.infostrat.com
Recently I have been working with federal agencies that are adopting commercial customer service techniques for helping government workers be more productive.
The new trend I am seeing is to add self-service functions to traditional help desks. Government workers are telecommuting more frequently, and for some agencies can be scattered around the country or around the world, leading to challenges in call center coverage.
Younger government employees in particular are often more comfortable searching online than picking up the phone to call a help desk. They expect from their government agencies the same kind of customer care that is offered by companies.
Publish FAQs and Troubleshooters on websites and intranets. By providing step-by-step instructions, you can forestall some help calls and provide service even when the help desk is closed. You can seed the FAQs by analyzing historical trouble tickets and identifying those that are both common and can be resolved without intervention by another person such as a network administrator.
Organize your knowledge base. The answer is out there, but it may be difficult to find. Search engines are part of the solution, but creating a visible taxonomy (set of categories) for topics can make it much easier for users to navigate to the right web page or document.
Treat employees like customers. If you adopt a mindset which is similar to a commercial company, you can measure and reward behavior that improves employee satisfaction.
Deflect calls. Phone calls to a help desk are one of the most expensive types of support, and sometimes you can avoid them by providing information as the customer requests help. For instance, an online form can ask the employee for the problem type, and show links to possible solutions.
Allow multiple paths to support. Employees appreciate options of different ways to get support at different times. Some people have strong preferences for a particular support channel, while others will use many. For instance, when I interact with my phone company, I have used phone, email, live chat, and knowledge base searches depending on the issue at hand. Live chat is especially good when you need to communicate a computer problem and describe what is on your screen. Sometimes email is best when I want to "fire and forget" because I need to move on to another task.
In an earlier post, I wrote about Microsoft's new Employee Self-Service Offering brings this approach to customers. A white paper "Justifying Knowledge Management in Customer Service" by CRM analyst Esteban Kolsky is available.
I expect this trend to continue in order to enhance productivity and retention of government employees despite budgetary pressures.
The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act enacted in May 2014 calls for making spending data available in open, standardized formats to be published online. It is a continuation of transparency initiatives and lessons learned with experiences such as grants.gov, the 2009 economic stimulus under the Recovery Act and the spending site USASpending.gov.
Government grantees will have significant new administrative responsibilities. Many organizations that were tracking grants in spreadsheets or documents will have to adopt more sophisticated automated grant management systems such as Microsoft Grants Manager to keep up with reporting rules.
For profit companies will lose some privacy as a result of this law. Grant recipients will be required to disclose information including officer salaries.
Continued improvements to publishing grant opportunities such as grants.gov may make it easier to find grants. These reforms together are designed to improve the effectiveness of grant prog…
Can I add new fields to the solution? -- Yes, the solution is fully customizable and you can add your own new fields to any form, view or report.Does Dynamics 365 for GovCon work on mobile devices? -- Yes, Microsoft offers mobile apps for all the most popular platforms including iPhone, iPad, and Android phone and tablets.Does Dynamics 365 connect with bid data systems such as Deltek and Onvia? -- Some information services, such as Onvia, offer integration with Dynamics 365. Others require third party solutions such as the InfoStrat integration with Deltek GovWin IQ.What do customers typically customize for their unique requirements? -- Not all contractors follow the same steps in the capture process. Most clients will tailor the business process to add or remove steps in order to match their sales methodology. Of…
This month my company InfoStrat announced its participation in Microsoft CityNext, a global initiative empowering cities, businesses and citizens to re-imagine their futures and cultivate vibrant communities. Through the Microsoft CityNext initiative, Microsoft and InfoStrat will help leaders to do “new with less,” by combining the power of technology with innovative ideas to connect governments, businesses and citizens with city services that increase efficiencies, reduce costs, foster a more sustainable environment and cultivate communities where people thrive.
In a recent study, IDC named Microsoft the most trusted smart-city vendor. "Whether it's traffic congestion, citizen services, energy efficiency or operating costs, our Microsoft CityNext partners are equipped to tackle whatever problem or priority local governments want to address. Microsoft’s IDC smart-city scores are really a credit to our partners, which leverage our trusted cloud platform, powerful data analytic…
James Townsend, Founder and CEO of www.infostrat.com, is a leading expert on Microsoft solutions for government, and a pioneer of Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) as a development platform. He has published over fifty articles and books on software development and other topics.
Trend-setting restaurants, Northwest cookbooks, local food news and the people who make them happen.
In today’s paper I wrote about FareStart, Seattle’s much-applauded not-for-profit culinary training program. I recently volunteered my services there as a waitress at one of their frequently sold-out weekly “Guest Chef Nights.” If you’ve never been, it’s a screaming deal: only $24.95 for a three-course meal. I encourage you to check it out. Ditto for weekday lunch, another enormous value where you can eat good and do good all at the same time.
During Guest Chef Night, dinner is prepared by some of our city’s finest, in concert with FareStart students and staff. And it was here that I met Seth Caswell, president of Seattle Chef’s Collaborative and late of Stumbling Goat Bistro:
Later that evening, Seth told me about his plans to open his own restaurant, Emmer, ETA next spring. And though it’s not a totally done deal, he’s got his eye on South Lake Union. This was his third guest-chef appearance at FareStart, where he procured the local ingredients donated for tonight’s dinner. Those included Full Circle Farms greens and River Valley Ranch goat cheese; Anderson Ranch lamb; Blue Bird Grains emmer; and dessert made with Empire ice cream, peaches from Rock Island Orchard and puff pastry from Columbia City Bakery.
At the end of service, volunteers (whose tips go directly back to support FareStart) ate the same three-course dinner the paying guests did — though we ate our cafeteria-style, downstairs in the brightly-lit student dining room. But after dinner we hung out at the communal table in the restaurant, enjoying a glass of wine and one another’s company:
I was especially impressed with my sauvignon blanc from SaintPaulia Vintners, sold to customers by the glass or bottle and poured here by volunteer “wine guy” Tim Hicks:
Maybe that’s because I got to drink it in the company of winemaker (and regular volunteer) Paul Shinoda. That’s Paul on the right, below, wearing glasses, standing alongside his friends from St. Luke’s “Grub Club” — some of whom were “newbies” here, as I was:
Hanging out with my friends after work was one of the things I loved most about waiting tables. Today Seattle’s late-night dine-and-drink options are endless, but back in my day that was far from the case. Back then you pretty much had 13 Coins, Sea Garden and the Dog House. But those of us who working at the city’s fine-dining venues inevitably ended up at the bar at Campagne where, come 1 a.m. on a Friday, we’d be eating country pate, drinking eau de vie and hanging from the rafters.
I was thinking about just that on Monday night, when I shared a bottle of rose and these incredible duck-fat-fried potatoes with my friends Chris and Jack in the courtyard at Campagne, in celebration of Chris’s birthday:
Chris was pretty impressed when we were joined, at a nearby table, by a famous actor whose name I can’t recall. But I was more impressed to be dining in the company of chef-exec Daisley Gordon, who has also been a guest-chef at FareStart, seen here on a “busman’s holiday” with his wife, Shelley:
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The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only, and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.
Bethany Jean Clement is The Seattle Times food writer. Her writing has also appeared in Best Food Writing, Food & Wine, Gourmet.com, Beard House, Town & Country, Edible Seattle, The Stranger and more. Follow her on Twitter: @BJeanClement.
February 19 - 2:01 PM News you can eat: The Streamline Tavern is reborn, the Market Hall concept is realized, a cat cafe pops up and more
February 5 - 3:05 PM News you can eat: Edouardo Jordan’s forthcoming restaurant, local chefs’ favorite places and more
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When Public Health Seattle-King County inspectors came to call at Skillet Street Food Monday night, they were not amused. The traveling Airstream parked near Safeco Field during the Mariner’s game was unpermitted. What’s more, Skillet was cited for several other red-flag offenses, and when the email alert “Food establishment closures in King County” went out with Skillet’s name on it today, the blogosphere exploded with the news. “I wonder,” chef-owner Josh Henderson said, “If a taco truck got shut down, would it be on all the blogs?” Not likely.
But Skillet ain’t no taco truck, as you know from reading this blog. And perhaps you’ve seen the love given Henderson’s “rock star of a burger” in this month’s Seattle Metropolitan cover-story — and on TV. Or the ink given to the street food-sensation recently in the Stranger. There’s a reason everyone’s crazy for Skillet: the food is superb, and the price is right. So what prompted the alert?
“We have one trailer not fully approved,” explained Henderson as he readied for tonight’s game. “The original trailer people see every day was having some mechanical issues, so we were forced to bring out the one that’s not approved.” Forced? “We signed a contract with the Mariners for the season, saying we’ll be out in that lot.” It was a choice between not operating and potentially having a breach of contract, he said, or not having a permit for the night and hoping they could get away with it. “We made a bad choice.”
The Skillet trailer opened at 5 p.m. Monday evening and closed at 6, according to Henderson. “We didn’t even serve any food. We went back on Tuesday and operated as normal with a permitted truck, and Wednesday they came back and re-inspected us and gave us the official go-ahead. They’ll come back next week and inspect us again.”
This isn’t the first time Skillet’s run afoul of the law. “We were shut down when we first started,” said Henderson. The reason? “We were operating a non-permitted trailer.” Now fully permitted, that trailer’s been up-and-running for more than a year, tracked down by fans all over town and making the national press sit up and beg for bacon jam. You’d have thought he’d learned his lesson the first time, but apparently not.
“We’re a young business. We’ve invested money. We’re struggling to pay bills. We don’t have deep pockets and large investors. When it comes down to paying payroll and operating a business, sometimes these risks are outweighed by other stuff. That’s the reality.”
Henderson sounded pretty glum today knowing that Skillet’s reputation is being scarred by this week’s health-department call-out. He’s concerned about the visibility of the red-flag issues cited, including the potentially hazardous foods at unsafe temperatures (“we were holding them on ice”) and the unavailability of hot water: things that would make many customers see red, too.
“I don’t fault the health department,” Henderson said. “It was our decision, our choice and unfortunately we made a wrong one.” But he does feel uncomfortable knowing that the health department’s closure alert remains online and “Skillet closed” may be the first thing potential diners see when they Google his business in hope of tracking down the famous Airstream. “We actually voluntarily closed [the unpermitted trailer]. We shut down for the evening when they came by. But none of that stuff gets talked about.
“I’d appreciate it if the site said, `They made a mistake, these are the actions we asked them to fix. They fixed them. We went back to re-inspect Wednesday and they’re in full compliance with the health department.'” Instead, “it may take seven days for them to take that notice down. It’s like getting flogged in the town square and everybody walks by you and sees you in shackles and laughs.”
Tonight, with the blessing of Public Health Seattle-King County, Skillet is serving street food outside Safeco Field from 5 p.m. till first pitch, and they’ll be there Sunday afternoon (throwing over their regular gig in West Seattle). You can follow Skillet via their Website, but hopefully not via this one.