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Just because cleaning is a chore doesn’t mean it needs to be painful, ultra-time consuming, or very expensive. There are plenty of tricks for every part of your house that will help you keep your things clean without wasting tons of time or requiring a lot of elbow grease.
You can also save a bunch of money by making homemade cleaners and feel safe and good in the knowledge that your cleaners aren’t harming anyone in your household or the environment. Don’t worry. The homemade recipes work just as well as commercial brands, just at a fraction of the cost. Check out the tips, tricks, and recipes we have gathered for you below.
DIY Oven Cleaning
The most dreaded kitchen chore of all is cleaning the oven. It’s awkward to clean, and you are forced to shove your head into something that your head shouldn’t be in, particularly along with a bunch of strong cleaning chemicals.
However, this doesn’t need to be your oven cleaning experience. This guide will show you how to clean your oven much more easily.
Wash Your Dinner Plates
If your dishes have gotten scratched up over time from silverware and general use, before you throw out your favorite dinnerware set, try using some Bar Keeper’s Friend. This handy cleaning aid comes in both liquid and powdered form, and this post suggests you use both to completely remove the scratches. Give it a try before you give up on your dishes.
Clean Rust Stains
One of the dangers of any steel or iron kitchen supply is that, over time, they can develop rust, particularly if they tend to be wet. If your knives start to develop rust, don’t immediately lament the loss of good kitchenware and toss them. Instead, you can use this method to remove the rust and increase the life of your knives.
Make Your Own Swiffer Replacement Pads
If you have a Swiffer sweeper, you know how awesome they are at cleaning up floors around the house. Sure, they aren’t suitable for serious grime, but for the day-to-day stuff, they are great.
You also know how expensive their refills are. If you love your Swiffer but hate how much you pay for refills, check out this tutorial on how to make your own reusable Swiffer pads.
Clean Your Dishwasher Regularly
Don’t slack on cleaning that dishwasher. After all, you are relying on it to get your dishes clean, so you need to make sure it stays clean itself. If you are envisioning awkwardly scrubbing the back of your dishwasher with half your body inside, don’t worry. Cleaning a dishwasher is much easier than that. Just check out this guide to see for yourself.
Shower Head Cleaner
When hard water build-up wins the battle with your shower head, and grimy white deposits end up blocking your shower’s sprayers, it’s time to call out the master of household cleaning: Vinegar. Just soak that shower head in vinegar overnight, and your hard water problems are gone. You can just use a baggy and a rubber band if your shower head isn’t detachable.
Stove Burner Cleaning
Stove burners are probably people’s least favorite part of the stove to clean (with the exception of the actual oven, particularly if you don’t have a self-cleaning one, of course).
All that burnt on gunk takes forever to scrub off and leaves you exhausted. But what if you didn’t need to spend forever scrubbing those burners to get them clean? With this method, no scrubbing is required!
Fabric Spray
Febreze is so popular because it’s a convenient way to make your home, clothing, bedding, car, and pretty much anything else you feel like smelling great.
Febreze is great, but it is also expensive and laden with chemicals. This homemade alternative does the job just as well for a fraction of the price. And you’ll know what exactly you are spraying on everything in sight.
Cleaning Your Microwave in DIY Style
You may not believe just how easy it is to clean a messy microwave if you have ever tried to clean stuck-on gunk from your microwave with a sponge. In fact, in just 10 minutes your microwave can be clean no matter how dirty it is, and you only ever need to do anything for 3 of those 10 minutes. Don’t believe me? Check out the tutorial here.
Deep Clean An Air Conditioner Unit
Normally, if you need your air conditioning unit cleaned (if you ever clean it at all), you call the air condition repair guy (or girl), and they do it for you. But there is no need to pay someone else a lot of money to clean your air conditioner.
You can do it yourself relatively easily. This guide will explain how you can clean the unit yourself, and what you will still need a professional to handle.
We hope these DIY cleaning tips have given you an idea how much you can do and save when making your own homemade cleaner. With some extra cleaning tricks, the entire house cleaning task will get done much faster and cheaper.
