Cleaning

With the season of flea markets and antique fairs now upon us, I’m prepping for the summer influx of secondhand furniture finds and putting together the ultimate used furniture cleaning kit. With most of these household items already in your kitchen, you’ll be ready to get any grimy piece sparkling in no time.  Baking soda. Mixed with water, baking soda forms a paste that polishes silver, lifts coffee and tea stains from ceramic and porcelain, and removes mildew and grime.

Is this the secret to chemical-free mold cleaning? I just had a root canal, which absolutely was not much fun, but it did gave me a few hours of recouperating time during which I discovered a new-to-me show from Australia on Hulu Plus called Lush House. During the course of watching a few episodes, I learned that getting rid of mold might be easier and greener than I knew.The host of the show (and one of my new housekeeping heroes – she’s so calm and helpful!

Coming home from a long trip can be a welcome reprieve: you look forward to sleeping in your own bed, raiding the fridge, and cozying up in front of the TV. That is, until you arrive to an overstuffed mailbox, fruit flies, and a fridge full of semi-liqified produce (not that I’m speaking from experience or anything).

As I mentioned recently in a post about cleaning stuffed animals, my somewhat psycho-rigid side prevents me from having too much fun with things like grime and dirt in general. Imagine my badly faked smile when a couple of weeks ago, my kids giddily brought up a box full of 30-year-old LEGOS from my parents’ basement! This brought up a mind-numbing cycle: the inventory of all plastic toys needing to be cleaned in our house and how to do it. Well, turns out it’s not that complicated.

I was hoping to sink my teeth into a juicy duct cleaning debate (possibly including scandals!), but it seems that the experts are unanimous: unless you see insect or rodent droppings in your ducts, or if someone in your household is having mysterious illnesses and/or respiratory difficulties, duct cleaning is unnecessary…and in fact can do more harm than good. Scandal! Let’s start with the big guns: The Environmental Protection Agency.

Rebecca just showed us how to refresh our bathrooms, but let’s zero in on the shower for a minute. I’ll venture a guess that it’s the area that gets cleaned the least in all the bathroom. Here are five easy ways to have a sparkling shower all year long. Cover your shower faucet with bag of vinegar and secure with a rubber band. Leave it there overnight and you’ll have a clean shower head without all the scrubbing.

I don’t know about you, but my kids are not the type to sit and play quietly on their own while I tidy up the house. My oldest daughter (soon to be four) is my constant shadow – if I’m not sitting on the floor playing princess or barn with her she likes to get involved in whatever it is that I am doing. Whether it’s cooking, putting the baby down for a nap, or cleaning – she’s there too.

Keeping your home clean is less about being born naturally obsessed with cleaning and more about finding the schedule that works with the way you live in your home. Though there are a number of methods to keeping one’s house clean throughout the week and month (like cleaning a little bit everyday, for example), this is a plan you can follow to keep your house regularly clean without lifting a vacuum or mop on the weekdays. How?

A kids’ epidemiology book, its cover depicting an ominous microscope surrounded by an eerie sci-fi green haze, confirmed what my mother always told me: Wash your clothes before you wear them — or else. Or else what? Well, poisoning for starters. Seriously. In the medical mysteries book I read, a boy was slowly poisoned through his skin by his new jeans.

As we all probably know from experience at one time or another, it doesn’t take much for the kitchen to get away from you. Especially if you cook at home a lot, have a particularly small kitchen, or share the space with family or roommates; it’s a room that can definitely develop a mind of its own. Here are some of our best tips for reigning in the beast without becoming a slave to kitchen cleaning: Clean as you go. This is a big one that we had to include prominently in the title.

Paper is the bane of my existence — and probably yours, too. In preparing for tax season, I recently digitized a box of old receipts but also ended up clearing out a filing cabinet full of statements, warranties, and other papers that have sat forgotten for years, but looked like they could be important. When it comes to paper clutter, what should you keep and what’s safe to toss?

I’ve moved in and out of eight different rentals in the last nine years, which means I’ve done my fair share of post-move-out cleaning. The one task I always dread is cleaning the oven. I hate using toxic oven cleaner, yet it seems to be the only effective combatant against that hardened puddle of food crumbs, melted cheese, and pie juice from a year of careless cooking.

A warning before you read further: this post will make your skin itch. A good friend of mine aptly pointed out that bed bugs are like the adult version of head lice. I never had head lice as a child, and I never imagined that I would have bedbugs as an adult, until it happened to me. I had heard about the great bedbug epidemic in New York back in 2010, but my personal nightmare with bedbugs began last fall.

Usually the first sign you have a moth problem is when you pull out a sweater and discover it’s laced with tiny holes. Clothes moths are sneaky little pests. They like to lie low in dark corners, snacking on your best cashmere. They rarely take time out from feasting to flutter about your house, so before you start swatting at each and every moth you see, here is what you need to know. Tineola bisselliella and Tinea pellionella are the two most common types of clothes moths.

Last spring, I celebrated sundress weather with some huge, blotchy bites on my calves. San Francisco is known for its lack of mosquitoes, so I did the sensible thing and panicked: BEDBUGS. Nope — it was spiders! In an effort to save you the same confusion, I’ve put together this list of tips for IDing your household pests. Bite in the night? Get yourself to a doctor.

Although they aren’t actually dangerous unless you’re allergic to their bites, bedbugs are pretty revolting. And, as we all probably know, infestations have been on the rise. Following are some ways to help ensure that these very unwanted guests don’t end up in your home. Here are a few ways you could unintentionally bring bedbugs home — and how to avoid them.

As nice as it would be to always keep a perfectly clean, perfectly smelling house — the truth is, bad odors happen. Whether it’s smelly upholstery from a great thrift store find, a pet’s potty training accident, or a party that needs a massive cleanup, funky smell are an unavoidable part of everyday life. With that in mind, here are the 5 products we’d recommend always having in the house to combat and remove odors. 1.

All rugs can use a good overall cleaning occasionally. But if you have a small stain or flaw that you want to address immediately without having the entire rug cleaned, spot cleaning is an important skill to have in your arsenal. Following are spot cleaning techniques for a few different scenarios: Get it while it’s wet. Once a stain dries, it’s much more difficult to remove.

Spills are almost always unexpected, and always a pain. My mother clearly knew this: when I left for college she gave me a small, thick book called “Field Guide to Stains,” which I still have and reference more frequently than I ever thought I would. STAIN REMOVAL STAPLES I find the best way to deal with stains is to be prepared.

Here’s a quick tip I learned from friends who regularly go car camping: they always bring a large size salad spinner with them, just in case they find themselves needing to wash, then dry a t-shirt, socks, or intimates… I’ve got several technical synthetic material athletic shirts, socks, and tights/sleeves I prefer to hand wash and hang dry throughout the week immediately after workouts (they can accumulate a funk quickly, the sweat hog I am).

What’s big, blue, and one of my all-time favorites from IKEA? At $0.59, the FRAKTA bag is cheaper than a soft serve cone from the Swedish behemoth, and it just might be the brand’s most versatile product. What’s it good for? How much time have you got? Laundry – The FRAKTA is enormous and weightless, which makes it great for hauling dry cleaning and laundry. The flat bottom even makes it work for collecting clean folded laundry before putting it in its place.

Alright, I keep telling myself, this is your one chance. You may never again have a bathroom with a brand-new bathtub and shower surround. Of the 10 bath/shower combos I’ve lived with in my life, none have been remotely new nor perfect…but soon all that will change. I’ve got one chance to do this right!

Give yourself a break when things get overwhelming and let go of that “I have to do it all” feeling. As long as you don’t let any extended cleaning breaks slip into a comfortable habit, there are some chores you can ignore every once in awhile. Here are five you can skip when you’re busy… Wanna know what we think are the chores you should never skip?

Assassin bugs (or kissing bugs) get their names from their habit of biting humans on the face near the lips. (It’s true people: I can’t make this stuff up.) Here’s what you need to know about this not-so-nice insect. Assassin, a.k.a. kissing bugs, are found all across the bottom two-thirds of the United States, and predominantly in Arizona, California, Texas, and New Mexico.

Pressed for time? Running late? Didn’t finish your Sunday morning “to clean” list but need to head out the door to brunch right now? Whenever you’re pressed for time — or have an extra heavy schedule a certain week — don’t let all your chores and cleaning duties slip into disarray. Keep your house functioning by being choosy with which chores you skip and which ones you tackle.

When you’re young, it’s your job to not worry and to push limits. It’s all about you, you, you. It’s up to your parents to firmly establish boundaries and rules. And while you live under their roof, it’s either their way or the highway. Sound familiar? Here are six seemingly arbitrary household rules that drove you nuts at the time, but make so much more sense today. Then: Why bother? I’m just going to use it again tonight!

Wood utensils date back to ancient Egypt and are still one of the most common tools found in the kitchen today. Wood is a great material to cook with for a variety of reasons, and with the right care wood utensils and cutting boards can last decades. After many years of new materials such as silicone dominating the kitchen tool market, wood is making a comeback thanks to its timeless functionality.

The kitchen is the heart of a home, and the countertops are where all the action is: chopping, prepping, plating, snacking, leaning, and, if you’re anything like me, even sitting. We break down, by material, how to keep those counters clean and happy for years to come: MARBLE Martha Stewart advises applying a protective sealer annually, cleaning gently with warm water, and avoiding dusting sprays (like Pledge) and abrasive cleaners.

Earlier this year I wrote the Lazy Person’s Guide to a Happy Home, full of cleaning tips for people who hate cleaning. Many of you read it, and commented, and added cleaning tips of your own, and your ideas were so good that I couldn’t help re-sharing them. Read on for cleaning tips from some very wise people, aka: you. Make cleaning easier by doing a serious purge. misterrious: One day, I just decided I had too much crap in my house.

Ah, spring: when a young man’s fancy turns to beating rugs and scrubbing the crisper. And no, those aren’t euphemisms, but chores that are infinitely easier to accomplish now that going outdoors won’t result in certain death. Some of these require access to a hose, but there’s hope for apartment-dwellers, too… I am stupidly excited about finally getting to scrub down the recycling can we keep in our pantry.

Lately it seems that I’m hearing the word “downsize” everywhere. From friends buying their first bijoux apartments after years in shared and spacious rented accommodation, to my parents’ generation selling multi-bedroom suburban houses and moving into city condos, to articles about living more minimally, owning less is trending. Obviously, downsizing is going to be different for everyone.

If you wear stockings or pantyhose, don’t let runs and snags ruin your day. And definitely don’t throw old nylons away. Because, while they might have fallen short in their promise to keep your legs looking smooth, they have a whole other future existence as versatile household helpers. Turns out nylon is pretty handy, so check out these twenty ways to reuse all your worn out hose: Locate small objects on the floor by covering your vacuum nozzle with some hose.

Anyone else at war with piles upon piles of laundry? It never occurred to me how much motherhood and laundry go together, but here we are! While it’s still an uphill battle, I have learned that some things (when I actually do them) help keep the relentless laundry situation under control.

Don’t toss those orphan socks — the singles who get mysteriously separated from their pairs between washing and drying can be helpful. Put them to use in a variety of smart ways to help keep your home a bit cleaner. Slip a couple of damp socks on your hands and give the leaves of your favorite plants the gentle touch for a dusting that won’t damage. Toss the sock in the wash when you’re done.

Now that I have my own home and family to care for, the things my mother taught me about cleaning are not only valuable because they came from her, but because they are nuggets of wisdom probably passed down through more than two generations. They’ve stood the test of time and they sure make my life easier and my home cleaner. From my home and family to yours, here are the best cleaning and organizing rules I learned from my mother.

Using technology to help manage the household can add up to a good amount of time and money saved—not to mention a significant reduction in things (paper calendars and planners) and clutter (all those papers!). Here are the top four apps I’d hate to live without. YNAB stands for “you need a budget.” And let me just say: You do. You can read more of my thoughts in Basics of a Household Budget that Works.

If your favorite part of cleaning is when it’s over, then listen up, lazybones. You can do less work and still have a clean and tidy house if you set up these strategies ahead of time to diminish dirt, wrangle clutter and keep yourself on track. It’s sooo much easier to prevent dirt from coming inside than it is to clean it up afterwards.

Try as I might to achieve that perfect pantry look (you all know what I’m talking about), I still have errant boxes of cake mix and plastic bags of who-knows-what-anymore from the bulk bin. Recently, the hodge-podge of things I knew I had but couldn’t find and the creeping lack of space drove me to the point of yet another Great Big, Real-Life Pantry Cleanup.

Do you dread the job of cleaning home? Rather pass on tackling chores? Do you view such tasks as scrubbing and mopping as the most boring and unappealing things ever? Do you either fail to get started (putting cleaning off until things are really bad) or do you run out of energy before finishing everything on your to-do list? You might need to rearrange the order of what cleaning tasks you tackle first. Have you ever heard of something called job crafting?

I don’t buy into the I-can’t-have-nice-things-because-I-have-a-pet hype. This is especially true when it comes to textiles in my home. So when I spotted a gorgeous velvet sofa on Craigslist for a song, I did my research and went for it.

Newcomers to my home can’t ever find my paper towels. That’s because they’re hidden in the pantry so the cloth towels and rags I have are the first line of defense against spills and messes that need to be wiped. Here’s how I use cloth and when even I reach for a paper towel. When and Why I Use Cloth I use a rag for wiping off the kitchen counters and the table.

Dear Alice, I live in a big apartment building with a busy laundry room — during peak days/hours the machines are usually all full. So what about those machines where the load has finished but the owner hasn’t come back to switch the wash to the dryer or take his dried laundry home? I often have to stand around waiting for someone to show up and deal with their clothes. Is it rude to remove those loads so I can get my own laundry started?

I vacillate, when it comes to grout. Sometimes it’s que sera, sera, and sometimes it’s all-out war: baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, OxiClean, toothbrushes, grout brushes, elbow grease, and five million moppings to clean the residue with fans to speed drying times in between rounds. But ever since I’ve discovered this completely awesome way of cleaning grout, I almost look forward to doing it, and really, it’s another kind of life-changing magic.

One doesn’t always factor in cleaning when thinking about your home’s budget. But all those cleaning tools, cleaners, supplies and more can add up if you’re not careful. If you’re on a tight (or non-existent) cleaning budget but want an always-tidy, always-fresh space, consider these ideas for staying clean without a lot of green.

There are a lot of places stuff can pile up on in the kitchen. From the counters (bills, kitchen supplies, dirty dishes) to the sink to even the floor, there’s one place that doesn’t often get considered when it comes to kitchen decluttering. However this spot, when cleared off, can have a profound effect on your kitchen feeling a lot less hectic and a lot more controlled.

Having a home that’s generally in order pretty consistently— not to be confused with “perfect all the time”— is in large part a matter of habit. One such habit which has tremendous impact is one I call “completing the cycle.” Here’s how you can practice it at home. Completing the cycle is a synergistic mix of Leaving Things As You Found Them and Not Leaving Things That Can Be Done Now For Later.

Sometimes, our homes can overwhelm us. What should be a place of retreat and comfort becomes bloated with items not needed, styles experimented with and abandoned, and projects started but never completed. While a good Spring Clean (whenever it happens) is always welcome, sometimes you want to go even further than that and streamline your style, too. Read on for our Minimalist Manifesto, and for ideas on how to simplify your home.

Whether you’ve got a trusted cleaning routine that keeps your home in tip-top shape or not, there are six things you should never let go uncleaned, not even for a day (barring vacation and illness, of course). Every day, take a few moments to tackle this handful of cleaning tasks — you’ll live in a cleaner home for it! You’ve heard it said before — don’t let those dishes pile up.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing has revolutionized my thinking about decluttering and spurred me to action in a way that, for once, doesn’t feel like I’m spinning my wheels. Marie Kondo tells us to ask one question when deciding what to keep: “Does it spark joy?” and I’ve been asking this while going through my entire wardrobe. Here’s why I think it’s the best decluttering question ever.

Not all painters are created equal — especially those who ch0ose to slop paint over beautiful, antique hardware. It may seem like a daunting task to return those beautiful bits to their original glory, but don’t be fooled. Homeowners and renters alike can remedy this problem with just a few supplies, none of which are toxic. If you live in an old apartment building you’ve probably got interesting design details hiding in your hardware just beneath a few layers of paint.

We’re coming up on sweater weather, y’all. While you’re slowly changing out your closet – pulling those cool-weather clothes out of under-bed storage and trying to sartorially navigate between the seasons – you might find your closet getting a bit tighter with all your bulky knits. The solution? Slim down your sweater collection to your most favorite and best-built pieces, then take really good care of them.

There is nothing more glorious than jumping into the water on a hot summer day, and while the crispy hair, dry skin, and faded swimsuits are more than worth the relief that chlorinated or salty water provides, they can be avoided by following these 14 tips. My personal tip would be to wear your suit into a cool post-swim shower. Once you feel thoroughly rinsed, take off your suit and turn the water up to a comfortable temperature.

I’ve ruined a lot of great clothes in my life and most of them could have been saved had I known a few handy laundry facts before I embarked upon my trial-and-error method of clothing care. Official warning: don’t make my mistakes! Don’t do this stuff anymore.

Preparation is the key to success. The next time your favorite sweater shrinks or you smear sauce on your sleeve at dinner, instead of furiously Googling for a solution, you’ll remain cool, calm and collected because you committed these five in-a-pinch laundry hacks to memory. No garment steamer? No problem. If your clothes are just a bit more wrinkled than you’d like them to be, don’t break out the iron, just use your dryer (if you’re lucky enough to have one at home).

If you’re feeling the spring clean and refresh bug, but haven’t yet made any progress on your goals, consider applying some performance boosting methods adapted from spring training to your home field. A clean, refreshed, and re-styled space is a serious mood boost. Carving out the time and energy to tackle it all, however, can make you want to throw the towel in before you even get started.

Instructions are important to pay attention to, especially when it’s laundry time. You might think that measly little tag inside your favorite sweater doesn’t offer any sound advice, but in reality, the future of your wardrobe might depend on it. You see, many of us take the words “Dry-Clean Only” as a slight suggestion, when they need to be read literally (should you want to preserve the life of your garments). And yet, just because a tag recommends dry-cleaning (i.e.

A few weeks ago, after waking up with neck pain for the third day in a row, I realized it might finally be time for a new pillow. I wasn’t happy about it — I loved my pillow dearly. But it was lumpy, and it leaked feathers every time I leaned against it, and under its case it was the mottled yellow color of a mummy’s wrappings. It was also, I realized, approximately 15 years old. This seemed, potentially, very gross.

When you think of essential oils, you probably think about aromatherapy. Sure, they smell amazing, but essential oils can also come in quite handy when it comes to cleaning your home. From degreasing your stove to de-germing your kids’ stuffed animals, here are 7 ways you can clean your home with essential oils—their uses might surprise you! Lavender does more than just smell and look lovely—the purple plant has natural antibacterial properties, too.

Here’s a dirty little secret of the most chill people you know: They get overwhelmed and frazzled, just like you, but the difference is that they’ve cultivated a personal set of tricks that help them cool down when things get tough.

When was the last time you wiped down your curling iron or cleaned out the back of your hair dryer? If you can’t remember—or you didn’t even know that was a thing you had to do in the first place—then it’s definitely time for a deep clean before your next styling sesh. Notice how the vent on the back of your blow dryer tends to fill up with lint over time? The good news is cleaning it out is simple. The bad news?

You love your pet more than anything else in the world, but let’s face it—your favorite furry friends can make quite the mess in your home. Between weird smells, stubborn stains, and shedding hair everywhere, cleaning up after your four-legged best friends can feel kind of impossible sometimes. You can live cleanly and peacefully with your pets, it’s just a matter of having the right products in your cleaning arsenal and the right tricks up your sleeve.

Who would imagine that a professional organizer would buy a home that has very little built-in storage? What would be a deal breaker for many buyers became a welcome challenge for the de-cluttering guru and talented DIYer Tami Hills. The owner of Nola Clutter Busters, whose home we recently featured as a house tour, shares some of her simple storage solutions with us. As an organizer, I’m NOT a fan of using plastic storage containers if they are visible.

The other day I had to recycle two shoe boxes. They were very nice boxes, and it damn near killed me. Hello. My name is Nancy Mitchell, and I am a box hoarder. I know we sometimes throw that term around, but if the definition of hoarding is that you’re unable to properly identify which things are valuable and which aren’t, I think it fits my condition, at least when it comes to boxes.

How often do you swipe on deodorant, get dressed, and get ready to leave only to realize you’re streaked with visible white deodorant marks right before you walk out the door? Sometimes you can get the spots out easily, but other times they’re so stubborn you wind up changing your outfit at the last minute. (Personally, I’ve fallen victim to trying to use a wet wash cloth and stretching out my shirts in the process—ugh, the struggle!).

When you it’s time to buckle down and get organized, not knowing where to start or what to do can leave you feeling totally defeated—and getting out from under whatever it is that’s overwhelming you can seem impossible. For some people, keeping things clean and organized and staying on top of the chores is just another part of their routine to breeze right through.

Your dog needs a bath. You don’t. You also don’t need a wet bathroom floor. Or muddy paw prints all over your carpet. And certainly no stand off pitting damp-and-grumpy you versus grouchy-and-dripping-wet Fido. Instead, you can make doggy bath time stress-free and mess-free. Follow the five tips below to keep your home and your pet nice and clean.

The idea of spring cleaning is daunting — a whole season devoted to ambitious housework. So this week we’re breaking up home maintenance into a bunch of workable parts. Try combining everyday chores with these 20-minute tasks: things you only have to deal with occasionally. The best news is that they really only take minutes each: it’s spring cleaning for people who hate spring cleaning.

In an effort to green their clean routines, some Apartment Therapy staffers are taking on small shifts at home, replacing their usual products and tools with more eco-friendly versions. Anyone who watches Shark Tank knows about Bambooee towels. In fact, while I had our roll sitting on the counter waiting to take this challenge on, my husband couldn’t resist shouting “BAMBOOEE!” (in co-founder Noam Krasniansky’s contagious accent) every time he walked into our kitchen.

Is there anyone not embarrassed by yellow pillows? Because those stale drool marks and vaguely head-shaped grease shadows gross me out. I’ve done the whole whiten-your-pillows schtick and it was super satisfying. But when we recently replaced our master bedroom pillows, I was determined to keep them snowy white from the start. Enter waterproof pillow covers, which, aside from keeping your pillows pristine, bestow other (arguably more important) benefits.

I hate doing the dishes and never have anyone over because it gets to levels no human should ever see. Can or should I get a countertop dishwasher? Will my landlord hate me? What if I don’t have any countertop for it? You could totally get a countertop dishwasher. There are even non-countertop versions, too. For instance, The Sweethome recommends this portable dishwasher on wheels, for $450.

Over on a Reddit thread about items that can and can’t be BIFL (bought for life), there’s a series of comments about what makes towels (and sheets, and duvet covers) good enough to last a lifetime. They come from Reddit user (and fabric expert) JessthePest (all of whose comments are delightful, if you care to spend a morning falling down various Reddit rabbit holes). I recommend the entire towel thread, as well as her extended sheets manifesto.

It’s better not to reinvent the wheel, sometimes. As much as modern conveniences are revitalizing our home lives, there are moments when, frankly, grandma just got it right. Today’s task in our spring cleaning plan is one of those moments. I’m thinking your rugs could use a little retro refreshing.