Cleaning just got way easier
Having a few cleaning shortcuts up your sleeve is essential—especially if you have a busy schedule. Between work, hobbies, and some precious R&R time, you don’t always have time to do a full deep clean, making some quick house cleaning tips and tricks all the more important.
And while you may think you’ll need to stock your shelves with tons of different items to achieve cleaning success, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn that many cleaning hacks only require items you probably already have. Let’s get cleaning!
If you’re not a fan of brushing your teeth with an electric toothbrush, use it for something else: scrubbing. Using an electric toothbrush to remove dirt and grime is a great home cleaning hack because it can reach those tricky corners and small areas and remove dirt more easily, thanks to its vibrations.
Use an electric (or regular) toothbrush to scrub your grout, bathtub corners, and other forgotten surfaces. Just be sure to spot-test first and make sure that this toothbrush ends up in your cleaning bucket when you’re done, and not back on your bathroom counter.
Dealing with stubborn shoe scuff marks? Sometimes you can scrub and scrub, yet the marks remain. If this sounds like you, try using a tennis ball. That’s right; you can break out your tennis balls to remove shoe marks by rubbing one on the spot.
This trick works best on wood and vinyl flooring, and you can give it some extra power by putting a (clean) tennis ball on the end of a broom handle.
Next time you have a big spill outside in the driveway or garage—whether it’s oil or some other liquid—try using sawdust. Sawdust is extremely absorbent, so it’s a great tool to soak up and remove driveway and garage spills. If you don’t have this stuff at home, you can usually find it at a lumberyard or home improvement shop. Pour sawdust on the spill, let it sit for around 20 minutes, then sweep up everything.
If you have a store-bought floor cleaning tool designed to catch lint and dirt, you can use it for more than just your floors. Instead of pouring all your energy into lugging around a ladder and getting each and every wall by hand, try using your floor tool to dust the walls. Its long handle can help you reach all those tall spots you may normally neglect.
It’s easy to ignore dirty grout—after all, who wants to spend all their energy scrubbing the tiny spaces between the tiles? Instead of scrubbing and using up your elbow grease, use a bleach pen to get in those small grout spaces and eliminate stains and stubborn spots. You can target the grout without getting bleach on your tiles with a bleach pen—just be careful not to use bleach on colored grout.
Sometimes when you try to remove dust from surfaces with a type of cloth, it just comes right back. Next time, try using a coffee filter. Coffee filters are extremely thin, making them great tools for catching and eliminating dust from large surfaces.
Speaking of dust, here’s another great hack. It’s a scary sight when you plop down on your couch after a long day at work, only to experience a massive dust cloud in your face. Regular dusting, in addition to vacuuming, can eliminate this problem.
Take all of your cushions outside and use a tennis racket to whack the dust out of them. Not only is this trick effective, but it can help you get out some pent-up energy. Show your throw pillows some TLC to reduce the dust in your bedroom.
Getting used to new pets (or keeping up with pets in general) can be a rollercoaster—filled with pet hair. It can be frustrating when you don’t have a secure way to remove pet hair from your home.
When fur tends to accumulate on your couches, chairs, rugs, and bed, try using duct tape to fix the issue. Take a sponge or cloth, wrap it with duct tape, and get to work. Add more duct tape as you work, and the contraption accumulates hair.
Have you been ignoring that soup stain on your microwave for too long? Not only will a dirty microwave look and smell bad, but it’ll reduce the appliance’s functionality. Sure, it’s no one’s favorite task, but not one you want to ignore.
Luckily you can clean your microwave with two items: lemon and water. Simply fill up a bowl with a cup of water and add a slice of lemon. Set the microwave on high for a minute, and then let the mixture sit inside the steam for 5-10 minutes. After, wipe away the grime. The hardened food will be loose (due to the lemon’s acid and steam), and bonus points: Your microwave may have a lingering citrus scent. It’s a win-win.
It can be pretty frustrating to spend hours trying to clean fingerprints with no success. Next time you’re up against stubborn fingerprints, try starch. You can literally use bread to clean them away.
Bread’s spongy texture and gluten make this food a great cleaning tool that can absorb and remove fingerprint stains. Just take a stale piece of any bread you didn’t quite eat in time, add a few drops of water, and rub the bread on the fingerprints. They’ll be gone quicker than you can make a sandwich.
Lampshades can collect dust like other surfaces in your home. When they’re made of fabric, they’re a natural magnet for dust, dander, and pet hair.
This often causes the light from a lamp to look more dull, and makes the lampshade itself look dirty and gray.
Luckily, a lint brush is a swift fix for this issue. Just run the lint brush over the lampshade until the dust is cleared.
While you might think to keep your sheets and comforter consistently clean, it’s important not to let your mattress get left off your home maintenance checklist.
A steam cleaner can remove dust mites, stains, debris, and bacteria from your resting place. Use your steam cleaner according to the manufacturer's instructions and let it dry before you put your blankets back on. It’s a good idea to do this chore when you can open your windows—the air flow will help dry your mattress quicker.
Depending on your budget, the cost of carpet cleaning by a professional may be worth it to save you some time. However, it is possible to clean carpets yourself with things you probably already have on hand—baking soda and a vacuum.
Just lightly sprinkle baking soda on your carpet and let it sit for about 15 minutes prior to vacuuming. The baking soda will lift moisture, grease, and odor from the carpet to help reduce the risk of mold and have it smelling brand new.
While advising you to grow taller may not be a valid house cleaning tip, there are other ways to reach high spaces that need to be cleaned.
Instead of climbing on a tall ladder to clean high ceilings, try grabbing a cleaning pole from your local hardware store. Cleaning poles can extend up to 20 feet or more and help you reach those high places without the risk of climbing up and down a ladder.
If you don’t feel equipped to safely take on this task, you may want to consider hiring a house cleaner near you.
Part of cleaning your house means maintaining cleanliness along the way, rather than doing everything in one day every month.
To make cleaning glass shower doors easier and maintain their look in between deeper cleans, dry them with a microfiber cloth each time you get out of the shower. Simply wipe them down with the cloth in a consistent direction and they’ll remain clear instead of splotchy.
Not only does descaling your coffee maker keep it fresh and clean, it helps make your morning cup of joe taste better.
All you need to do is fill the machine’s water reservoir with half distilled white vinegar and half water and run the brew cycle until it's empty. Once that is complete, run the brew cycle again two or three times with fresh water to rinse the machine.
Of all the house cleaning tips out there, few are focused on maintenance.Knowing how to clean your room fast on a regular basis will make the rest of your cleaning much easier.
Whether your living room, bedroom, or wherever you spend the bulk of your downtime, doing a quick sweep, organizing your belongings, and clearing the floor and furniture will make your room much more comfortable and save you time when doing a more intense cleaning.
Using a daily shower spray can help reduce mold and grime build up. You can purchase a daily shower spray at your local grocery or home goods store or make your own by combining one-half cup of white vinegar, one and a half cups of water, and a few drops of essential oil (for scent) in a spray bottle. After every shower you take, simply spray the shower all over with the cleaner.
Seeing as your dishwasher is responsible for cleaning your dishes, it makes sense that it deserves its own clean too.
Start by cleaning out any debris, then place a dishwasher safe bowl of vinegar in the bottom of the dishwasher and run a wash cycle. The vinegar should break down the built up grime. Once the cycle is finished, use a toothbrush—or any other cleaning brush—to scrub down the inside of the dishwasher.
If you have isolated stains that you need to remove from furniture, you can do so at a low price with a few basic household items.
Combine one part vinegar, three parts warm water, and one teaspoon of dish soap in a spray bottle and spray the mixture on the stains. Using a microfiber cloth or soft sponge, work from the outside of the stain in gentle, circular motions.
For leather furniture, do the same with a solution of one part olive oil and two parts vinegar.
After time, cookware can build up grime that dish soap and a sponge just won't get to. To refrain from cooking in dishes that aren’t fully clean, use steel wool to give your cookware a deep clean.
Simply opt for steel wool instead of a sponge when washing cookware with warm soapy water. The abrasive steel fibers will help remove stubborn stains and grime from pots and pans.
Your outdoor space is as much a part of your home as the inside, hence we’re including patio furniture maintenance in these house cleaning tips.
Patio furniture is consistently exposed to the elements, making it an easy target for dirt buildup. All it takes to clean your patio furniture is a mix of warm water and dish soap. Just dip a rag or cloth into the mixture and start scrubbing. Make sure to rinse with water when you’re done.
Whether it be a cat tree or a comfy bed for your pup, pet furniture accumulates pet hair and dust just like any other furniture—well, when it comes to pet hair, it probably collects even more.
Vacuuming pet furniture can clear the trapped hair and help freshen up your space by limiting the pet dander that is lingering in the air.
Kitchens take on a lot of mess. Whether it be from food splashes while cooking or a sticky hand opening a cabinet for some salt and pepper, grease can build up fast.
Thankfully, degreasing takes about as little time as it does to make a greasy mess in the first place. SImply mix some dish soap with warm water in a bucket and use a microfiber cloth or non-abrasive sponge to scrub whichever surfaces need scrubbing.
This house cleaning tip may sound a bit odd, but it works.
If you’ve noticed some scratches on your wood furniture, a walnut could be your saving grace.
All you need to do is rub the walnut over the length of the scratch in a circular motion. Once you’re done, leave the scratch for a few minutes so the walnut’s oils can seep in. Finish by polishing it off with a soft cloth.
Sure, you most likely clear your dryer lint trap after every cycle, and you might even know how to clean the dryer lint trap itself to remove caked-on debris. But to keep your dryer working its best (and to avoid a potentially dangerous situation), you must also clean your dryer vent.
To do this, disconnect your dryer from its power source and pull it away from the wall. Then, disconnect the vent from the dryer. After you remove any big piece of lint from the vent by hand, use your vacuum hose to vacuum the vent as far as you can reach. Using a dryer vent brush, you can “scrub” the inside of the vent by feeding the brush into the duct while rotating it to loosen up any lint that is stuck.
If this task is new to you, you can always hire a professional to do it. The cost of dryer vent cleaning ranges from $105 to $185. They can clean and inspect your dryer vent and even show you how to clean it yourself.
