Sprucing Up the House: 15 Cleaning Tips To Make Every Place Look Spic and Span
Bacteria, germs, dirt, and allergens exist everywhere. How can we target all of these things to keep our homes or spaces clean? How can we keep up with a continuous cleaning routine? How should we incorporate rules into our daily lives to keep our living spaces spotless?
1. Keep Up With Houseplants
Houseplants grow despite the buildup of dust, bugs, and dirt. Please treat them with the same respect you give to other furnishings. Dust their leaves, water them, check on them, and keep them healthy.
2. Don’t Limit the Lemon
Lemons are limitless. The citrus fruit cleans cutting boards, wicks away mold and mildew, freshens up materials, reduces grease, and releases a fresh scent throughout the cleaning process. Mix lemon with vinegar for an unbeatable cleaning solution.
3. Clean Out Storage Areas
Trash cans, pantries, ovens, and refrigerators get dirty, too. Ensure you take the time to clean them out. Bacteria and bugs love breeding in areas where food sits. For example, my roommate left an open container of cake mix in the pantry for months. We both either forgot about it or ignored it until we noticed an army of ants setting up housing in the pantry. We found the culprit after searching through every box and a can of food.
4. Clean As You Go
We’ve all allowed a pile of dishes to gather in the sink, turning from one dish into a pile and multiplying in muck. We walk past the sink and think to ourselves, “I can wait another day to do the dishes.” That mindset tricks us into thinking we have less work to do, so we ignore the dishes until they become an unavoidable mountain of grime. Instead, wash the dishes after each use. You will notice this method carrying itself over into other life tasks.
5. Top To Bottom
Let’s paint the image. A ceiling accumulates dust, which falls onto the ceiling fan. The ceiling fan spins around, chucking the dust through the room to the ground. As the dust falls, shelves, tables, and chairs catch the residue until the remnants hit the floor. Why would you start from the dusty floor when the ceiling will gather and dump more dust as you clean the floor? Always move from high space to low space when tidying up.
6. Mattress Maintenance
An inspirational quote from Admiral McRaven reads, “ If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” While the admiral preaches about basing a quality of life off of making the bed, before making the bed, air out the mattress and clean the base before putting the sheets, comforters, and pillows back in their places. We may clean our bed sheets and pillows in the wash, but what about the frame supporting our body weight? If left uncleanly, a bed can produce bacteria, mold spores, and dust mites and attract bugs. To avoid these unpleasant happenings, air out the mattress by removing the sheets each morning and using a steamer over the mattress. For extra precaution, throw a bit of baking soda on the bed and vacuum it up after it sits for a few hours.
7. Tennis Ball
Tennis balls have plenty of uses besides on a tennis court. They can roll out stiff muscles, help clothes dry, and buff out streaks on wood floors. Cut a slit in the tennis ball, insert the end of a broom or mop into the slit, and rub the tennis ball over the streak. Watch the mark dissolve.
8. Clean Cups
You know that one mug or cup you use every day? The one that switches between a morning coffee cup, a midday juice cup, and a milk cup at night? The one with the noticeable stains lingering at the bottom. Those stains leak into the drink, altering the taste. Dust the mug with baking soda and add warm water to the container. Mix the two into a paste, scrub the cup with a sponge, then rinse for sparkly results.
9. Clean Glassware
See-through glassware gives off a regal feeling unless, of course, the glass turns cloudy and scuffed. Add some distilled white vinegar to the mix to rid glassware of this worn-out look. Light spots call for a five-minute soak of room-temperature vinegar, while tougher stains ask for a five-minute soak with warm distilled white vinegar.
10. Sanitize the Shower Head
As water travels through the nozzles of a shower head, the mineral makeup gets caught in the tiny openings, causing clogged exits. When this happens, water spurts in all directions and the water pressure and water quality might decrease. Clean the nozzles by spraying or submerging the showerhead in distilled vinegar.
11. Use Mop Slippers to Clean Excess Dust
Throw on some tunes and put on your mop slippers for a wild Friday night. Yes, mop slippers do exist. The shoe coverings slide over shoes or socks and act as a dusting device. After use, wash them in the laundry and restart the process.
12. Clean The Blinds
Blinds linger in the corner, unassuming dust traps that limit air quality in a home. Maintain a rigid blind cleaning schedule to prevent dust, mold, bugs, and other allergens from landing and spreading throughout the home. Clean them from top to bottom with a cloth or a duster, and vacuum the floor dust.
13. Clean Underneath the Garbage Disposal
Liquids and food waste fall down the sink into the garbage disposal area, where a machine blends the contents and releases them into the sewers. Pieces of the food stick to the bottom of the sink’s drain as a pile of smelly, cakey, leftover food. Get a toothbrush and clean out the residue for a fresh-smelling disposal.
14. Spruce Up the Shower Curtain
Shower curtains keep water and moisture inside the shower. The frequent contact with hard water turns a once bright, white shower curtain into a red, brown, or yellow-stained sheet. Alas, we know the hack to rid the curtain of these marks. Place the shower curtain in the washer, turn the water on warm, and add a dash of detergent and vinegar or baking soda in extreme cases.
15. Clean That Cell
We carry our cell phones everywhere with us. People take their phones into the bathroom or hold them while eating, letting bacteria and germs collect on the surface. A tried phone cleaning method includes:
- Wiping or spraying the surface.
- Soaking it for a few minutes.
- Wiping the cleanser away with a cloth.
Wisdom Gained: 14 Things You Should Stop Doing After 55
There is a time for everything. In your 20s, you have plenty of room to take financial risks, engage in risky behaviors, and test your physical limits. By age 55, you should look at life through a wisdom-tinted lens. Generalizing about humans of any age can be perilous, but there are undeniable physical, cognitive, and temporal realities that every 55-year-old mustn’t overlook.
Wisdom Gained: 14 Things You Should Stop Doing After 55
Hidden Markups: 20 Products That Are Cheap to Make but Expensive to Buy
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Hidden Markups: 20 Products That Are Cheap to Make but Expensive to Buy
15 Side Hustles for Introverts: Make Money While Staying True to Yourself
The typical backroom accountant probably wouldn’t do well as a fundraiser, and vice versa. Our personalities and proclivities lend themselves to different professional roles, and knowing your strengths and limitations can be the first step in finding a fruitful career—or side hustle.
15 Side Hustles for Introverts: Make Money While Staying True to Yourself
