Brilliant New Hacks That Will Make Spring Cleaning An Absolute Breeze
Keeping the floors clean can often feel like a monumental task. It seems like every time your freshly mopped floors or perfectly vacuumed carpet are finally clean, someone comes in tracking dirt or grape juice spills at the worst possible time.
Luckily, there are ways to keep your floors clean without setting aside an entire afternoon and lugging out your mop and broom. These ingenious floor cleaning hacks will change everything about how you approach the most time consuming household chore.
1. Filling up your mop bucket can be a real hassle, especially if you don't have a spacious sink. Next time, use a pool noodle to fill up the bucket with ease. Attach one end of the noodle to the faucet and place the other end in your bucket. Easy!
2. It can be hard to remove sticky substances such as gum and glue from hard surfaces or carpet. But there is an incredibly simple solution: Use ice to freeze the unwanted stain, and then use a scraper to gently remove it.
3. To freshen up your carpets, combine baking soda with your favorite essential oil and sprinkle the concoction on the floor. Let that sit for an hour, then vacuum it up. Your carpet will feel brand new!
4. Once you drop something tiny like an earring back on the floor, it's almost impossible to find. Instead of sucking it up into the vacuum void and losing it forever, place a stocking or tights over the hose. The fabric will act as a catch-all.
5. Vacuums are expensive, but they tend to stick around for a number of years. Wear and tear can cause them to get pretty musty, so if your machine starts to smell, vacuum up some laundry scent boosters or lavender to freshen it up from the inside.
6. If you have hardwood in your home, you know it can be prone to scratches. Shallow dents and scratches to these floors can be removed with the help of a shelled walnut. The natural oils from the nut helps to hide flaws.
7. Surprisingly, tea bags can be extremely useful for more than just tea parties; they can restore the sheen of hardwood floors. Steeping tea in boiling water and then wiping down hardwood with the cooled drink can help restore the shine of even the oldest hardwood.
8. Failing to sweep remaining debris into a dustpan is frustrating. So next time you've broken out the broom, wet the edge of your dustpan. This will make it easy to get every speck of dirt!
9. Most vacuums come with attachments that help you clean hard-to-reach places, but they don't have an attachment for every surface. Using a toilet paper roll, you can create your own crevice tool by flattening one end of the tube and connecting the other to the vacuum.
10. Mops and brooms always seem to get in the way. They usually have a handle for hanging but can be oddly shaped. If your broom doesn't fit on your existing hooks, attach a zip tie through the loop on the handle and hang it up that way!
11. Swiffers can be a convenient and streamlined answer to a clunky mop and bucket, but refills for the cleaning solution and the mop pads can be expensive. Create homemade reusable Swiffer pads with fuzzy socks slipped on the pad surface.
12. When cleaning your home, rubber gloves can be an unsung hero! Using a rubber glove to wipe down surfaces such as stairs and other difficult to reach places can pick up pet hair, dirt and dust with ease.
13. Grout lines are the enemy of everyone who owns a home with tile flooring. They are tough to clean and prone to attract a lot of dirt. Use carpet cleaning spray and a scrub brush on your grout and let it sit. Then, wipe it down and behold your clean grout!
14. Hair and other fibers can get caught in the vacuum brush's rotating mechanism and prevent you from getting the best clean possible. Use a seam ripper to clean it out in a jiffy!
15. Linoleum floors can be difficult to clean and get scuffs out of with basic cleaning supplies. Toothpaste can be an asset to buffing these blemishes out of finicky floors.
16. Baseboards seem to get dirty more quickly than anything else and it shows. Dryer sheets can be re-purposed to wipe baseboards clean with ease.
17. If you have kids, this hack can be a fun one to get them to do their chores: Attach dusters to the bottom of an old pair of slippers. Kids can glide across the floor to remove dust and dirt!
18. Spills are inevitable on household carpets, but they don't have to be permanent. Sprinkling salt on stains and sweeping it up can help remove even old stains in carpet.
19. Just taking off your shoes before entering the house every time can make a world of a difference. It stops dust, dirt, and grime from ever making it to the floors in the first place.
WD-40 can do a lot more than you think. This magic stuff can get scuffs out of hard floors and help remove stains from carpet. WD-40 is basically a cure all, and it has so many uses around the house.
1. Polishing silver: If you have a collection of silver that always seems to be tarnishing over time, WD-40 can definitely help you out with that. Spray down your silver and wipe it clean. It's just that easy to keep it looking sparkly and new!
2. Cleaning shoes: When it comes to sneakers, WD-40 is a person's absolute best friend. In the winter, you can remove stubborn rock salt spots that build up by spraying them and wiping them down. If you want to make your whole shoe waterproof, spray the entire surface with the stuff.
3. Protecting bird feeders: While having a bird feeder in your yard is a great way to keep beautiful birds in plain view, squirrels are notorious for stealing seeds from them. To keep these critters away, spray down the center pole with WD-40 and the squirrels will slide right off.
4. Cleaning toilets: Depending on the type of water in your house, cleaning your toilet can feel like a pointless task. If you use WD-40 the same way you would use your regular toilet bowl cleaner, you'll notice that it gets clean quickly and stays clean longer.
5. Unsticking gum: When gum doesn't make it to the actual trash can, it can get stuck on shoes, or worse, your pants. If you need to banish hard, chewed-up gum that you accidentally sat in, then go ahead and spray it down with WD-40. That will help it come right off!
6. Removing crayon marks: Do you have kids who love to take their crayons and scribble on walls and furniture? Don't break your back trying to remove the marks! Instead, lightly spray them with WD-40 and they should rub right off.
7. Defrosting ice: Whether you live in a cold climate year-round or you're gearing up for the winter season, spray your windows down with WD-40 and then wipe the excess away. Believe it or not, this will keep the ice from sticking to your windows and save you time getting out of the driveway in the morning.
8. Removing water stains: It's so frustrating that the same shower you step into to get clean tends to collect a crazy amount of water stains. If you want to get rid of them fast, follow up your usual cleaning routine with a spritz of WD-40 and watch the water stains disappear.
9. Polishing scissors: If you use scissors in the kitchen or crafting regularly, then you know just how sticky they can get over time. If you want to keep that stickiness at bay, polish them regularly with a healthy dose of WD-40 and they'll be just perfect.
10. Removing stickers and price tags: If you have ever tried to peel off a sticker on a window or a bumper sticker on your car, you know what a hassle it can be. Using WD-40 makes it a breeze. Just coat the sticker and gently peel it away!
11. Unsticking zippers: Is there anything more frustrating than having a zipper on your backpack or your favorite coat get totally and absolutely stuck in place? Here's good news: if you spray WD-40 on the zippers and gently work them back and forth, they'll slide right back into place!
12. Removing tea and coffee stains: If you or a house guest have ever spilled a little coffee or tea on a table in your home, you know how hard it can be to ever get it out again. Thankfully, combining your regular cleaning routine with a squirt of WD-40 will banish it in no time.
13. Banishing tar stains: If your car gets covered in tar, then it's definitely time to break out the WD-40. Just spray down the surfaces and even the most stubborn patches should melt away like hot butter! How great is that?
14. Taking off rings: If you wear a ring regularly then you probably know what it's like when it gets stuck on your finger. It happens to everyone at some time or another. Don't panic! The easiest way to remove it is to cover your finger with WD-40 and then slide it off. It works like magic!
15. Remove lipstick: Lipstick is always a fun way to make your look for the day pop. Unfortunately, it's less fun when it transfers onto other items of clothing and settles in to stain. Luckily for you, WD-40 as a pre-wash stain treatment will help remove that lipstick in no time flat.
16. Helps Open Rusty Locks: If you’ve got a rusty key or a keyhole that won’t cooperate, apply some WD-40 and you should be able to gain easy entry.
17. Extends the Life of Shower Heads: This is another little-known household use for WD-40. Shower heads have a tendency to break down over time, but applying WD-40 can extend their life span by years.
18. Removes Mildew From Refrigerator Gasket: We’ve all seen it before: Disgusting gunk builds up on your refrigerator gasket. Well, WD-40 will remove this. Simply apply, let it sit for a few minutes, wipe off, and you’re done.
19. Filters Dust When Sprayed on Air Conditioning Filter: Spray a light coating of WD-40 on your AC filter before installing, and your filter becomes exponentially more effective.
20. Removing Leftover Tape: Whether it is an old sticker or leftover tape from winterizing your home, spraying a little WD-40 on the affected area will make removal easy to complete!
Did you have any idea just how many different uses there were for this household product? Next time you come face-to-face with a seemingly impossible problem, remember to reach for some WD-40 first!
No comments: