Having a clean home makes everyone feel great. We especially like the feeling of relaxation and calm it gives us. I have always been a bit of a neatnik, even as a small child.
We recently saw a segment on Good Morning America, offering some interesting tips on house cleaning, that we thought were great and wanted to share those mentioned as well as ours with our readers.
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The best way to dust blinds: Close them, then wipe them up and down with an old dryer sheet. It’ll create an antistatic barrier that helps prevent dust from building up again.
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The Magic Eraser is your friend. It will cut your cleaning time in half for bathtubs, sinks, countertops, and dirty walls. Be careful with semi-gloss or faux paint finishes as the eraser can remove such finishes; always test on a small, not easily visible part of your wall.
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To clean glass and mirrors, use coffee filters, not paper towels. They leave no streaks or lint — and they’re cheap.
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Vinegar and water is a great deodorizers for a musty bathroom. Spray your shower down as you’re getting out. It really absorbs the odors, and the smell of vinegar goes away in an hour. Vinegar also works well to remove hard water deposits.
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Vacuuming bathroom mats is a nightmare. Toss them in the wash every week or two instead.
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To damp-mop wood floors, use plain water or a water-based floor cleaner like Bona. Don’t use vinegar. The acid in it will pit your polyurethane finish, can void your warranty, and may reduce shine over time.
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Seventh Generation dish liquid diluted with water is a great nontoxic all-purpose cleanser. Just put two squirts in a spray bottle and fill it with water.
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Our biggest secret weapon? A powdered product called Bar Keepers Friend. We use it on everything. Its active ingredient is rhubarb powder, which really cuts through grit and grime. It cleans glass-top stoves, counters, toilets, porcelain, pots and pans and more. Your sink will never be shinier.
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To clean your microwave oven, microwave a cup of water with some baking soda in it until it’s boiling. That eliminates odors and makes it super easy to wipe away all that stuck-on stuff.
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Clean cobwebs with a yardstick covered by a tube sock. That also works for cleaning under stoves and refrigerators.
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Shine your bathroom tiles with lemon oil. It also helps prevent mold and mildew. We also love to use lemon oil on all our stainless appliances; cleans off smudges and leaves them very shiny.
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To eliminate that ring in your toilet, drop in a bubbling denture tablet, and leave it for at least 30 minutes or overnight. The stain will come off with just a few swishes of the brush.
Baked on food and sauces can be a nightmare for pots and pans. We have tried scrubbing, soaking and a myriad of products to no avail. The easiest and least expensive solution is to simply fill the pot, pan or baking sheet with enough water to cover the encrusted areas. Then sprinkle with baking soda and boil, watch it bubble and lift off, everything that’s stuck, except the finish of course. Then wash, dry and put away.
Sources: Soffia Wardy, Torrey Shannon, former maid service owner in Westcliffe, Colorado; Lynette Haugen, owner of True Blue Maids of Pasadena; Tangela Ekhoff, a housecleaner in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Theresa Peterson, owner of Quality Cleaning “Maid to Order” in Fremont, California; Dee Strickland, owner of A Zing Zap Cleaning Service in Minneola, Florida.
