September 22 marks the last full day of summer, and already, many New Englanders are getting their homes cleaned and ready for spending a lot more time indoors.

In this edition of Money Saving Mondays, Nick Charlton, general manager of LTC Cleaning of Concord and Wellesley, Mass., showed us ways to save money and do a better job cleaning carpets and windows.

For carpet stains, Charlton shows how to use four clean towels, water, soap, and his special ingredient, rubbing alcohol, to achieve the same cleaning results you’ll get from a power carpet washer. The rubbing alcohol works as a solvent and disinfectant.

With towel one, you soak it in warm water and make sure there’s plenty of water saturating the stained area, then apply your soapy water with a spritz of alcohol to the stain. With towel two, use a tapping motion to work the carpet up and down against the towel and keep flipping it until you see less and less stain passing from the carpet to the towel. Blot it dry with towel three. Then put towel four on, under a candle or soup can or something with some but not too much weight, to fully dry the carpet. You can run a hairbrush lightly over the stain, once you’ve wet it, to improve the cleaning action.

For window cleaning, Charlton’s trick is to dilute supermarket-brand window cleaner one-to-one or even two-to-one with water, because most off-the-shelf window cleaners come highly concentrated. If you don’t have a squeegee, use a washcloth first to get off most of the grime, then a t-shirt to remove the remaining moisture without streaking. What Charlton has found is that on a properly cleaned window, what leaves the most streaking is excessive amounts of cleaning product. So using a watered-down glass cleaner can mean less streaking.

“The soap is what's left behind. That's the residue, usually, that creates the streaks. It's not the dirt,’’ Charlton explained. “I’m surprised more people don't, honestly, dilute their cleaning products.’’