Regardless of where you live, unless you have a ventless gas fireplace you must have your chimney cleaned by a qualified person once in a while.
Even if insurance companies do not compel you to do so regularly it is good practice to do so for your own safety. A regular cleaning has some distinct advantages.
It will save you money on energy (one millimeter that is 0.04 inch of soot on the walls of the heat chamber will generate 8% more wood consumed).
It reduces health risks, each year thousands of people are hospitalized for respiration problems due to heating issues, several hundreds even die each year.
It reduces the risk of a house fire, and thus protects your property and your family.
It helps against air pollution, by reducing the release of toxic materials into the air.
So if the image of the chimney sweep from a Dickens novel is long gone from our streets, it is nonetheless true that sweeping the chimney is still part of our lives.
The technique to clean a chimney has not changed much from the old days. A chimney is cleaned with a brush that is a the end of a long flexible stick, to which additional length can be added to reach all the necessary areas of your chimney. It is pushed from the top (on the roof) to the bottom where a large vacuum cleaner will take all that falls into the fireplace. Usually professional protect the area around it to ensure that they leave your house as clean as they found it.
If cleaning the chimney is not something you want to put up with any longer, you can consider modernizing your old fireplace and convert it to a gas or an ethanol fireplace. You will still need to get it cleaned one last time before doing the conversion. An ethanol fireplace or a vent free gas fireplace
are the least demanding in terms of maintenance and closing your chimney will prevent heat from escaping to the sky.