We’ve all had big and small appliances or items we’ve purchased that supposedly requires you to purchase “special” cleaning products just for those items. Well, don’t be fooled. Sure you can spend the extra money and know you’ll get a good clean, but do you really want to have 20 different cleaning products under your kitchen sink (or wherever you keep them)? Neither do we. Take a look at these helpful cleaning tips that only require items that everyone has in their home.
Blenders
Dish soap and hot water is all you need. Be sure to do this immediately after you make your favourite blended concoction so that nothing has a chance to stick to the blades. Put a few drops of your everyday dish soap and fill the blender half one-third or one-half full with hot water. Put the lid on and turn the blender on high for about 10 continuous seconds. The whirling force of the blender will clean all the nooks and crannies including the blades. Once you’ve had a good spin, dump the water, rinse it out with more hot water (don’t forget to rinse out the lid as well). Take a wet towel to the base as well to clean up any spills you might have made as well.
Pots and Pans
You’ll need half a cup of baking soda, 1 teaspoon of liquid dish soap, 1 or 2 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide, scrub sponge. We’re all guilty of burning some food while cooking, leaving pots and pans worse for wear. And sometimes it’s easy enough to remove with a little scrub and elbow grease. But sometimes it’s not. And no matter how much you scrub or wash, the stain is a permanent reminder of your cooking faux pas. Mix the ingredients together in a small bowl and mix until it looks like whipped cream (just don’t eat it). If you think you need more liquid, add more hydrogen peroxide as required. Spread the mix on your worst pots and pans and let them sit for several minutes while the ingredients do their thing. Baking soda is a gentle abrasive while the hydrogen peroxide will break up the stuck-on build-up. Then, use the scrub brush to work the mixture into all the corners and scrub until your dishes are left sparkling. Clean and rinse as you would and repeat whenever it’s needed.
Coffee Grinder
If you enjoy making coffee with freshly ground coffee beans, then you likely have a coffee grinder at home. And if so, you need to clean it as small pieces of the beans will get stuck in hard-to-reach spots, eventually leading your machine to not work as efficiently. This is the simplest of all DIY cleaning solutions. Stale bread. All you need is to break up stale bread into small pieces (remember your coffee grinder was meant to grind coffee beans), and then grind. After a few seconds of grinding the bread (into bread crumbs!) you’ll open up your appliance to find the stuck-on coffee grinds and bits on the bread. Dump it and voilà. Like new.
Iron
Who doesn’t have an iron? We all have an iron and like to have our clothes stay crisp and wrinkle-free. But even your iron needs cleaning sometimes. An iron is hot and sometimes can burn a button when ironing a shirt or jacket, or if there was a stain and you ironed over it, it’s likely you might have gotten some “gunk” (that’s the technical term) on the iron itself. This might eventually transfer to the next piece of clothing you iron, which is never a good thing. The simple fix is salt. Everyday, sodium chloride. Sprinkle some salt on a sheet or paper and then iron it with a warm (not hot) iron. Unplug the iron and let cool before wiping it down with a cloth. Any residue stuck to your iron will easily be removed.
