Household Cleaning Tips

I am the queen of household cleaning tips, the princess of polishing and scrubbing, the daughter of the empress of perfection.  Except, I don't use the knowledge or skills as often as one would expect.  I am not as obsessed, anally retentive, or unwittingly energetic as a displacement of anger or frustration or stress.  I don't clean for catharsis or to impress anyone.  I don't obsessively clean or clean for hours only when company's coming.  I just can't seem to keep up with or care about keeping up with the dust, the dirt, the cobwebs, or the clutter.  

When I was young, I lived with a mother who had a spotless home, one that Better Homes and Gardens photographers, had they discovered it, would have done a full-paged spread on.  Using the rationale that you never know when the president will stop by for a visit, and issuing commands such as I want that floor so clean we can eat off it, my mother would enlist us in daily chores and tasks that rendered the ten-room farmhouse, well, so clean we could eat off anything.  Literally.  But she didn't just force us to clean, she taught us household cleaning tips, directly and indirectly.  She worked just as hard or harder and was the ideal model for household cleaning as if any mote or mite would kill us; as well, she spoke of the ways to do things and the reasons for doing them.

So here I share with you a few tips on household cleaning tips, tips that may seem like common sense to some of us but may be surprisingly helpful to others of us.

First, as you go about your tasks or as you practice newly acquired household cleaning techniques, do not put the cleaning towel/dust rag over your shoulder in interims when you are not using it.  The dander from your head and hair contaminates the rag.

Next, as you begin the process of cleaning a room, do so from top to bottom.  For example, in the kitchen/dining room, sweep away cobwebs first, then dust or wipe off the tops of furniture, then, last, do the floors.  I had never thought of the order when I was first learning household cleaning, but it makes sense that if you clean the tables and floor first, when you do anything higher, the crap falls all over the clean furniture and floors.



This leads us to the next ordering strategy.  Do not use the bathroom sponges for the dishes in the sink, or the floor sponges for the countertops, etc.  Each sponge should have its own purpose; each room should have its own sponge.  Here's an interesting ditty I just recently read about on LBN (Levine Breaking News), which comes to my inbox online:  a young girl (in the sixth grade, I think) did a science project that involved her testing the toilet water and the ice [water] in some randomly selected fast food restaurants.  The ice more times than not was dirtier than the toilet water. After much consideration, one teacher at the girl's school commented that while the toilet water is treated with anti-bacterial chemicals, the ice is not and the employees did not clean the ice bins at the self-serve sections.  Customers would use the toilet, not wash their hands, then go and scoop ice.  So you get my point that mixing elements/cleaning tools is frowned upon.

Speaking of mixing.  Never mix ammonia and bleach.  Sure, it seems that since bleach is a great cleanser and ammonia is a longtime used and effective product that together they would make for a turbo-strength cleaner.  But instead, the two combined create a deadly gas that will kill you.

What about nowadays, as we learn household cleaning tips and learn how to find healthy, natural cleaning solutions?  The old standbys still work as ideal and healthful items:  when you clean a coffee pot, never use soap.  The residue does not completely rinse away and instead clings to the residual coffee that also does not completely go away with soap.  Instead, put a scoop of ice (clean) in the pot, a tablespoon or so of salt, and some lemon wedges.  Swish the pot vigorously but carefully.  The salt will act as the abrasive (with the weight and pressure of the ice swirling, that is), and the lemon will be the astringent you need.

Windows.  Using fresh lemon may leave pulp and seed, too, so instead of using lemons on glass, try white vinegar.  It is just as astringent if not more so.  And if you hate the idea of using a roll of paper towels and/or are a big recycler, use newspapers instead of brand new paper towels on the glass in your home.

You can also use newspapers to wipe the butt, but that's another household cleaning issue altogether.  So, I digress, not to get back to my own cleaning, Gawd forbid, but to go on to give lofty lectures on how we should be acting and performing.