Keeping a clean house throughout the winter is a lost cause. However, the moment you wake up and find that the birds have come back out, everything is a bit greener outside, and your sinuses are clogged to the brim. Look around and you'll see that there's dust in places you never thought dust would accumulate in. You feel confused, you feel alone. Suddenly, you look at your phone and discover this list. You are filled with determination.
Using an Onion to Clean Your Grill
If your grill grates have the wintertime blues, cheer them up with half an onion! If you heat your grill up and rub a halved onion on the grates, the sugars and water in the onion will essentially "deglaze" your grates. The evaporating water will get under the built-up grime and pull the nastiness right off of your previous grills.
Lemon/Vinegar Microwave Cleaner
If you love cleaning caked on gunk off of the inside of your microwave, then ignore this hack completely. If you hate cleaning your microwave like the rest of us, then this hack is for you. Microwave a bowl of lemon and water to soften the gunk on the inside of your microwave. The lemon will shine the inside as well!
Cleaning Your Shower With Dryer Sheets
Have you been looking for a streak-free shine but don't want to use harsh chemicals? Cleaning your shower with a dryer sheet is probably your best bet. Shine the glass outer and any glass on the outside of the shower to de-scum and de-streak for cheap.
Clean Cobwebs With a Tennis Ball
The best part about tennis balls is the cool static qualities that they have. The tight weave of these little green spheres stores a fair deal of static electricity. Just swipe your pesky cobwebs with a tennis ball and viola! You will be cobweb lens in seconds.
Squeeze Bottle Vacuum Attachment
Having trouble getting all that dirt and dust out of hard to reach places in your house? Well, if you have an extra squirt bottle laying around, you're in luck. Take the squeeze bottle top and tape it to the suction nozzle of your vacuum, then suck up dust to your heart's content.
Onion Deodorizer
Onions may smell aggressive in the kitchen, but they have some odor busting characteristics that work just as well as the chemical competitors. If your basement smells like mildew, or if you have stinky litter boxes down there, cut an onion in half and place it down there on a plate. The allicin in the onion will suck the bad smells out of the air almost immediately.
Sanitizing Your Cutting Board With Lemon and Salt
The natural cleansing power of salt and lemon is key for cleaning your cutting board. Since wood is permeable. you run the risk of creating a nest for bacteria when you clean your cutting board with water. However, if you use the lemon and salt method, the lemon will kill all bacterial growth, and the salt will exfoliate all the permeable nooks and crannies.
Remove Toilet Stains With Denture Cleaner
Denture cleaning tabs aren't just good for cleaning out your fake teeth. The bubbles that come from the Alka-Seltzer tablet will work their magical scrubbing action on the toilet as well. Just toss a tablet in and watch the foam do the work for you.
Buff Wood Dings With a Walnut
The waxy coating on a walnut will buff out wood dings like they never happened. Just dist off a ding and start rubbing a walnut right onto it. This may sound insane, but people have been using this trick for centuries.
Cleaning Faucets With Vinegar
Vinegar breaks down all calcified materials that could stick to metals. Got some Lyme stains? Maybe some water damage? Buff that out with some good ol' vinegar.
Clean Your Toilet With Cola
If you have any hard-to-fix stains in your toilet, the corrosive properties of cola should fix that right up. The sugars and carbonation that are in the average can of cola chew up all solids that are on the side of porcelain. Cola can even shine the porcelain, believe it or not.
Shower Head Bag Cleaner
If you fill a bag with vinegar and water and fasten it over your shower head, you won't even have to worry about scrubbing. The vinegar will eat through all the water stains and leave your showerhead looking shiny and new. This is a no-effort cleaning hack!
Microwave Sponge Sanitizer
If you didn't know this already, heat kills bacteria. Specifically, microwaves can be an invaluable source for cleansing your products that are microwave safe. Sponges are prime examples of this fact. They can be laden with bacteria, but when wet and superheated in the microwave, you can rest assured that those germs will die.
Clean Your Blender By Blending
Blenders are awesome kitchen tools. But, they can be a pain in the butt to clean. Depending on the blender that you have, you might be able to circumvent scrubbing out the whole thing. Just toss some water and dish soap in the blender and give it a whirl. Rise, inspect, and repeat if necessary.
Broken Glass Catcher
Never worry about getting glass stuck in your hand with this special trick. The next time you break a small glass object, pick up the big pieces and then use a slice of white bread to pick up the smaller ones. This is safe to throw away immediately after use.
Cleaning Metal With Olive Oil
Olive oil has just as many practical applications as it has nutritional benefits. Along with being a great source of B vitamins and healthy fat, olive oil can polish and de-stain metals. More specifically, you can use olive oil to pristinely shine stainless steel, and it will even provide a protective coat on the outside.
Clean Your Garbage Disposal With Lemons and Limes
Do you ever notice a weird smell coming from the inside of your sink? Toss a few lemon slices down there and run some hot water. This will clean out your garbage disposal, as well as freshening your kitchen's general odor.
Remove Carpet Stains With Vodka
Although it seems somewhat counterintuitive to clean an alcohol stain with alcohol, bear with us here. Vodka has a higher ethanol content than wine, and it also lacks pigment. The ethanol in the vodka will eat the pigment out of your carpet and neutralize the stain as long as it's fresh.
Eliminate Stains With Shaving Cream
Shaving cream has the same properties as a lot of cleaning products. Shaving cream is essentially aerosol soap with baking soda added. This is a one-two punch for cleaning up pesky stains and removing odors from upholstery.
Cleaning Your Tub With Baking Soda and Vinegar
Combining baking soda and vinegar is one of nature's "miracle cures" for cleaning. when combined, these ingredients will create a cleansing chemical reaction that can lift even the peskiest stains. Give it a try for yourself!
Toss That Same Solution in the Toilet
You can practically clean anything with vinegar and baking soda. Be careful not to put too much into your toilet, but this combination will work as a cleanser in a pinch. Although this does not work as well as a toilet specified cleanser, this combination will disinfect and deodorize better than most other non-toilet specific cleaning products.
Shining Your Toilet With Essential Oils
Everybody knows that oil is shiny when spread out. However, not many people know that you can impart some of that shine into your toilet by dropping some essential oils in. Simply put a few tablespoons of your essential oil of choice into the top of the toilet and flush.
Cleaning Your Sofa With Baking Soda
Baking soda naturally pulls oils and liquids out of fabrics. As long as your couch fabric is permeable (not leather), this trick will work for you. Pour on a generous amount and scrub until your arm gets tired.
Cleaning Your Oven With Baking Soda
In addition to combining baking soda with vinegar, using a water solution can help you clean your oven as well. Mix water and baking soda into a paste, smear it onto the inside of your oven and wait an hour or so. When you come back, you'll find that pulling all that pesky grease off of the interior of your oven will be a total breeze.
Toss a Fresh Coat of Paint Up
When all else fails, toss a fresh coat of paint on the walls. Sometimes scuffs and chips are beyond the point of return maintenance-wise. You might end up saving yourself a ton of time and money by simply hard resetting the paint on your walls.
Use a Razor to Remove Paint From Clothes
After you're done painting your walls, you're probably going to suffer a few casualties in the clothing department. Fear not, the standard razor will be your salvation. Simply shave your clothing like you would shave your face (or any other part of your body) and magically pull away all that paint with no damage to your clothes.
Clean Your Blinds With Vinegar and Water
Vinegar helps shine and restore the color in sun-damaged plastics. Simply make a 1 to 3 solution of vinegar and water, add to a spray bottle, and spritz away. Wipe the blinds off when you're finished, sit back, and relax for the rest of the day.
Remove Water Rings With a Hairdryer
Did you let a drink sit too long on a wood surface and regretted it afterward? You should apply some direct heat from a hairdryer before the spot dries. This will preserve the varnish on the wood as well!
Remove Oil Stains With Baking Soda
We've said it before and we'll say it again. Baking soda will set you free if you're trying to clean anything that's covered in oil. Baking soda even effectively removes weeks old oil stains that survive through multiple washing cycles.
Use Lemons to Clean Your Shower Faucets
The acid in the lemon works just like the vinegar does. It's fast, cheap, effective, and will last longer than some cleaning products. If you have no vinegar on hand (or just want your shower to smell like lemons), this should be your go-to.
The Magic Tub Cleaning Paste
Believe it or not, you can blast your entire tub with vinegar, peroxide, and baking soda all at once. This will clean, shine, and protect your precious tub for the foreseeable future. Do not believe the lies that cleaning chemical companies tell you, natural cleansers are where it's at.
Using Sea Salt to Clean Cast Iron
The scrubbing power of salt can pull even the peskiest bits of burnt grime off of the bottom of your cast iron pan. Simply distribute, scrub (dry), and wipe out the bottom. If you use soap in your cast iron pan, you deserve to go to prison for life.
Clean Your Knives with Cream of Tartar
Cream of tartar will pull tarnish off of high-carbon knives. Even if you have a lower carbon knife, a long enough treatment with cream of tartar will leave them mirror clean. This will not do anything to preserve your knife though, so proper maintenance is recommended afterward.
If Cream of Tartar Doesn’t Work, Use a Lemon
For particularly high carbon knives, using a lemon to buff them will work almost instantly. The tarnish that develops on knives is a form of patina because of the carbon content of some high-quality handmade knives. If you have to clean your knife with a lemon, you definitely have a knife worth preserving.
Clean Your Baseboards Clean With Dryer Sheets
Dryer sheets develop static electricity and leave behind a sweet, natural, and long-lasting smell. The dryer sheet will cling onto any hair, dust, or dirt that gets in its way. The same cannot be said about any other cleaning product.
Clean Grease Stains Out of Clothes With Chalk
Chalk and baking soda have the same drying properties that are present in a lot of commercially available stain removers. If you have ever known a mechanic, this is how they get the grease stains out of their clothes. Chalk can pull even the harshest oil out of fabric with ease.
Use a Toothbrush to Clean Your Keyboard
Get between those nooks and crannies just like you dig the scum out from between your teeth. The bristles on your toothbrush are gentle enough to keep your electronics safe when digging around where you might think isn't the best place to dig into. Fear not, most keyboards have anti-penetration protection that will protect the motherboard from any outside assailant.
Use Duct Tape and Vinegar to Clean The Inside of Your Toilet
Pour some vinegar into the top of your toilet, sit back for about 20 minutes, then flush once. Use duct tape to pluck out any stuck-on grime under the rim of your toilet. Bing bang boom, you've got yourself a sparkly throne.
Use Oil and Baking Soda to Clean Your Cabinets
Oil will not break down the varnish on the outside of your cabinet as many harsh cleaning products will. Use a toothbrush and some baking soda to scrub off hardened oils and sediment. The oil will follow behind for a shining and protecting effect.
Use Rubbing Alcohol to Remove Nail Polish from a Carpet
If you don't have any vodka on hand, rubbing alcohol will do the same thing in a pinch. Additionally, if you have regular nail polish remover (without any added color), this will do the trick just as well. Nail polish remover is just alcohol with some skin safe additives, so you're pretty good with any choice in this department.
Clean Your Cheese Grater With Raw Potatoes
This may sound crazy, but it works really well. Potatoes will de-clog all those bits of gunk out of the fine prts of your cheese grater. Also, the starches in the potato will cleanse and shine your grater when all is said and done. Hashbrowns anybody?
Use a Squeegee to Remove Hair from Your Carpet
If you have a window squeegee, you may never need to buy a vacuum. Pulling cat hair out of your carpet is as easy as 1-2-3 with this nifty hack. Just rub your squeegee on the carpet until the static electricity causes the hair to create a tight ball, rinse, and repeat.
Use Steel Wool to Clean Your Curling Iron
Using a brillo pad or regular brandless steel wool on burned hair will change your whole life. What once seemed impossible is now as easy as tying your shoes. Just wet, heat, scrub and relax.
Clean Your Coffee Stains With Baking Soda
Coffee is a particularly difficult stain to fix. However, trusty baking soda has your back here. Pour baking soda onto your coffee stain and let the powder work its magic until the area is sufficiently dried. Viola! There will be no stain when you remove the soda.
Clean glass Baking Dishes With Aluminum Foil
Aluminum foil has anti tarnishing properties that strip the patina from silver jewelry with ease. Did you know what else it cleans with ease? Glass Pans! Line a pan with aluminum foil and pour some white vinegar over it, let that sit, wipe, and you've got yourself a clean pan.
Use Play Dough to Clean Up Spilled Glitter
If you dropped glitter on the ground, we have some good news for you. Instead of going out and buying glittery play dough, you can make your own at home while cleaning up a mess at the same time. Wouldn't it be nice if everything in life was just this simple?
Clean Makeup Brushes With Baby Shampoo
Baby shampoo will strip the oils out of the weird powder that forms on the brush's exterior. As long as you soak the brush afterward and hang the brush to dry, things should go back to normal. we just saved you $20-100 right there.
Use Cola To Clean Oil Stains Off of Concrete
Cola has some serious properties that could even make you consider not drinking it anymore. If you pour any commercially available cola on the ground of a place and let it sit for a few hours, it will pull any oil stains out of your concrete for good. Just spray the cola away with a hose and continue on with your day.
Clean Your Earbuds With A Q-Tip
There is some nasty gunk that can get under your earbuds. Instead of facing the ear infection to come, just dip a q-tip in a little (we stress, LITTLE) bit of alcohol and gently scrub the scum away. This will also make your music even clearer than before.
Clean Your Coffee Grinder With Rice
If you haven't cleaned your coffee grinder in a while, you're definitely up for a good rice treatment. Shake out the grinder as best you can, then put about a quarter of a cup of rice into there. Whizz the rice up, throw it away, and you'll have a scent-free, oil-free coffee grinder and no more worries.
Clean Your Sneakers With Toothpaste
Whitening toothpaste helps whiten your teeth, so why shouldn't it help whiten your shoes? Toss a little toothpaste onto your shoes, scrub away with a toothbrush, and you'll have some brand new shoes after you're done. By the way, this works on the rubber and the fabric.
Clean Your Rings With Toothpaste
The baking soda and sulfates in your toothpaste is actually the perfect formula for cleaning your old, tarnished jewelry. Scrub your ring like you'd scrub an individual tooth. Make sure you get all of the space covered, rinse, and let the ring airdry until the tarnish disappears.
Clean Your Pans With Baking Soda and Vinegar
All that caked on crust can be removed with some baking soda, vinegar, water, and a little elbow grease. As a matter of fact, scrubbing just about anything with this solution will clean it. Just be careful, some surfaces aren't well suited to the harshness of these chemicals.
Clean Your Hairbrush With Shampoo
Hairbrushes can be cleaned easily by hand. However, the water that gets trapped inside the plush part of the brush can produce bacteria and mold easily. Without using chemicals that can damage your hair, your hairbrush can be cleaned by soaking it in a water/shampoo solution.
Clean Your Leather Furniture with Shoe Polish
You clean leather shoes with shoe polish, why not clean a leather couch? This seems like a no-brainer all around the board. Just gently scrub your couch, apply a layer of polish and let it dry. If need be, continue this process until you find that your couch has been sufficiently polished.
Clean Grout With Baking Soda and Bleach
The little spots between your bathroom tiles need some love too. When you're using a baking soda solution in your tub toss a little bit of that into a bowl with a few teaspoons of bleach. Scrub your grout with vigor and it'll come out shiny and white.
Clean And Dry Your Shoes With Newspaper
Newspaper is great for a lot of things. You can learn about the weather, the news, you can start your grill with it you can clean your glasses with it, and you can even use it to dry your shoes. Since the newspaper is a fairly unrefined paper pulp, it soaks up water very well.
Clean Your Glue Gun With Aluminum Foil
Aluminum foil will provide the scrubbing power you need to clean off your glue gun. However, you can only use aluminum foil on your glue gun if it's still hot. As long as your glue is still heated, you'll be able to pry it off of your device.
Remove Your Bathtub Ring With Grapefruit and Salt
If you have literally nothing else on hand, these two objects work well together to clean out tub rings. The acid of the grapefruit and the scrubbing power of the salt will break down your tub ring almost immediately. Say goodbye to gross days in the tub, say hello to citrusy freshness.
Lint Roll Your Lampshade
This one is a no-brainer, but not everybody has a brain. If you use a fresh lint roller sheet on the outside of your lampshade, you'll be able to pull the dust and hair off with ease. There will be no more days of being plagued by a dusty lampshade, from now on you'll be filtering your light as cleanly as nature will allow.