Keeping your home clean is no small task. The bathroom, the kitchen, the dusting, sweeping, organizing, decluttering; it can add up to no less than a full time job!
Many people are fairly stuck in their ways when it comes to cleaning and may not realize that some of the methods they are employing are actually doing more harm than good. If you are unsure whether or not your cleaning style is costing you extra work or actually making things less clean, here are 5 cleaning mistakes you will want to avoid.
Scrubbing spills out of the carpet. Most people when they spill that glass of wine or cranberry juice on their beautiful carpet immediately run for the rag and the club soda and begin scrubbing away. However, this is highly counterproductive. Scrubbing carpets actually begins to unravel the carpet fibres and ingrains the stain in even further, causing permanent damage.
The best course of action is to remove any surface liquid with a spoon, blot the area dry with some white paper towel or a cloth that won’t bleed and once dry, apply a stain remove to the area.
Cleaning windows while the sun’s out. Not only are you cooped up inside, but the heat of the sun will cause the cleaning solution to dry rapidly, leaving streaks on the glass. Your best bet is to work on a cloudy day or a day when the temperatures won’t cause liquids to dry up quickly.
You’ve gone lemon juice and vinegar crazy. While organic cleaning is all the rage and lemon juice and vinegar certainly have their purposes, many people equate organic with less damage, but that’s not entirely accurate. Lemon juice and vinegar are both acids and are quite capable of damaging natural surfaces, like onyx, marble, limestone and travertine. If applied too liberally or not properly wiped down it can permanently dull the appearance of stone.
Deodorizing the garbage disposal with coffee grounds. If you have a garbage disposal, it is necessary to deodorize it as bacteria and food particles that become trapped over time will start to smell bad. While many garbage disposal manufacturers say it’s fine to put coffee grounds into the grinder, not giving the grinding mechanism a thorough rinsing afterwards can lead to the ground actually clogging the machinery which can lead to smelly, non-functioning machinery.
The wrong tools for the wrong jobs. Using the wrong tool for the wrong job is usually the biggest problem within the context of kitchen cleaning. For example, the common green-backed cleaning sponge is great for the bottom of heavy-duty pots and pans or the grill, but will wreak havoc on plastic, ceramic and laminate. White-backed sponges, however, are much more gentle.
Cleaning, for most people, is not fun to begin with. It can become doubly tedious if you are creating more work for yourself and damaging thing around your house in the process. Keep in mind the above five mistakes to avoid when cleaning and be confident that you are getting the job done right and keeping your house not only clean, but in full working order.