Wear rubber gloves to wash the walls.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health states that trisodium phoshate, TSP, "is corrosive to the eyes, the skin and the respiratory tract," and warns against breathing its dust.
Removing grime, dust and soiling from walls creates a surface ready for fresh paint. Borax provides a safer way to clean walls. Keene State College includes borax in a list of green cleaning supplies and notes that borax is a natural mineral that disinfects, deodorizes, removes stains and inhibits mold. Borax provides an alternative to TSP and is strong enough to remove difficult wall stains.
Instructions
1. Dust the walls, working from the top to the bottom. Sweep the duster along the ceiling above the walls, into the corners and down the corners to remove cobwebs and debris that could fall onto the wet walls or later into the wet paint.
2. Vacuum the floor. Use a brush attachment to clean the baseboards.
3. Spread tarps under the walls to cover the floor.
4. Pour 1 cup of borax into a bucket. Fill the bucket with 2 gallons of warm water.
5. Put on rubber gloves and pull the tops of the gloves over the bottoms of your sleeves. This keeps the cleaning water from running down your arms.
6. Dip a sponge mop into the bucket and spread the cleaning solution over the baseboard and up the wall, cleaning one strip of wall at a time. Dunk the mop in the bucket and squeeze out extra moisture after you apply the mixture to each strip of wall.
7. Continue mopping the wall from the bottom to the top until you've cleaned all the walls you plan to paint. For heavily soiled walls, repeat the cleaning and leave the mixture on for 15 minutes.
8. Empty and rinse out the bucket. Fill the bucket with plain warm water. Rinse out the sponge mop thoroughly under running water.
9. Apply the plain water, working from the ceiling to the baseboard, rinsing one strip of wall at a time.
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