Home Cleaning Spots You Might Be Missing

 

No matter how much a person dusts, scrubs and polishes during regular home cleaning, there are usually still a few places that get overlooked. What can you do to take your cleaning routine to the next level? How do you identify these problem areas? To help answer these questions, here’s a look at five of the most often missed cleaning areas in a home, along with tips for how to clean them well. Add these to your cleaning habits to create a brighter, more inviting home!

 

1. Ceiling Fan: Look at your ceiling fan and what do you notice? If you’re like most people, the answer is dust. All along those fan blades, dust collects and piles. What’s worse is that every time you turn the fan on, you send that dust flying through the room. In order to clean your fan, use a stepstool or ladder and wipe down those blades one by one with a microfiber duster. These dusters can clean and polish at the same time to ensure your fan is free of dust particles.

 

2. Indoor Plants: That big fern in the living room or the rubber plant in the hall could have more than greenery lurking in its pot. Look closely at the leaves and branches. There’s a good chance that what you’ll see is dust. Plants covered in dust aren’t able to convert light into food sufficiently. This means they won’t get the nourishment they need and won’t be able to thrive. To clean your plants, rinse their leaves in the sink or, for larger plants, wipe the leaves with a damp cloth.

 

3. The Front Door: Your front door is more than just an entrance; it’s a first impression for everyone who visits your house. While you may not spend a ton of time looking at that door, others will. Open it up in the daylight and see how it looks. Does it need a good wipe-down? Is it covered in dust? Clean up this area of your home using a microfiber cloth to knock out yet another area that is easy to miss — and don’t forget the doorknob! How many hands have touched that spot? To revive your doorknob’s sheen, consider using a gentle polishing cloth.

 

4. The Couch: It’s where you watch TV, gather with friends and maybe even eat dinner, so is it any wonder that the couch sustains a lot of damage over time? Your couch cushions are probably hiding all kinds of crumbs, dust, trash and other debris. Just pull them out to see. Once in a while for regular maintenance, you need to pull out all the cushions and vacuum everything thoroughly. Even in couches where the cushions are not removable, take the time to vacuum every nook and cranny well.

 

5. Mattresses: You know to wash your sheets and pillowcases, but what about the mattresses they cover? To give yours a deep clean, strip all sheets and covers and spread baking soda all over the mattress. Let this sit for 30 minutes and then thoroughly vacuum the entire area. If you’re feeling even more ambitious, you can pull your mattress outside on a sunny day and let the natural bacteria-killing powers of sunlight work wonders on your mattress, too.

 

To improve the ways you clean and care for your home, pay attention to the five problem areas above! The better you get at keeping your home clean, the more enjoyable it becomes — after all, who doesn’t like to tackle projects that end in success?

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Author bio: Carmen Fiordirosa serves as Director of Marketing at CleanTools. CleanTools provides a variety of drying and polishing products for home, automotive and marine use. When not at work, Fiordirosa stays busy cleaning her own home and taking care of her four children.