Try these 10 easy spring cleaning tips to help you keep your home in order without going crazy! They are short tips for quick things that need to be done but are often forgotten.
Spring Cleaning Tips
Clean your coffee pot and sink drain. Pour 1/2 cup to 1 cup of vinegar into the coffee pot and run it through as if you were making coffee. Repeat a couple of times using the same vinegar.
Pour 1/4 cup baking soda down your drain. Then pour the used vinegar from the coffee maker down the drain. Let it sit for a minute or so.
Next, pour 1-2 pots of water through the coffee maker to wash out the vinegar. When each pot of rinse water from the coffee maker is done, pour it into the drain. You now have a clean coffee pot and a clean drain.
Clean and take care of all your small appliances. Cleaning and caring for them really does make them last longer.
Toasters – There is a little door on the bottom of your toaster that catches the crumbs. Open and clean out the crumbs once in a while. (UNPLUG THE TOASTER FIRST!)
Hand mixer – Wipe down your hand mixer after each use.
Iron – Run your iron over a dryer sheet to remove anything gummy, including fusible web or spray starch. I also keep a couple of packages of alcohol hand wipes by my iron and use them for an instant cleaning (after it cools).
I iron a lot so I use the small tubes of iron cleaners that Faultless sells. I do this about twice a year. In most places, it is found by the irons, cleaning products or where ironing board covers are found. More often than not, they are displayed hanging on a plastic strip.
Blow the dirt off of your fans, computers, or air purifiers. (You can buy cans of air for use with computers at office supply stores. These can be used to blow dirt off of other hard to clean items, too. I used to use an air compressor to blow the dirt off of house fans and heating grates.)
Two weeks before Christmas and birthdays, go through and remove several of your children’s toys, since they will soon be replaced. Let the kids play with only half of the new toys each holiday and save the other half for them to play with later.
If an old porcelain sink is marked with metal scratches, use 400 grit wet/dry sand paper and lightly sand the markings out. I also love using Comet on my old porcelain sinks on a regular basis. This usually keeps the scratches down. Of course, prevention is the best. When you are scrubbing a pan or something metal, lay a dish rag down to set it on first.
Save brown paper bags and use them for trash sacks, wrapping paper, drawing paper for the kids, oil leaks under cars, etc.
If you have a sisal rug or one like it that slides all the time, use rows of acrylic chalking about 6 inches apart on the back of it to prevent it from moving around. Let it dry then flip over.
To repel mosquitoes, stuff a dryer sheet in your back pocket.
Replace the glass or plastic pitcher part of your blender with a mason jar.
The bottom part of a blender pitcher unscrews (the part with the blade, the rubber gasket and the screw on base). If you remove these parts from the glass jar, you can screw on a mason jar, in the blender pitcher’s place. If you do this, make sure you use a larger mason jar than your contents require — like a 1 quart jar if you’re going to be blending a pint to a pint and a half.
You would just put it on there and and turn the blender upside down to blend. Then everything is in the jar after it’s blended. Turn the jar back right side up when you are done and unscrew the blender base, and put a regular mason lid on your jar.
I’m going to have to try replacing the glass jar on my blender with a mason jar. I make my own sunflower seed butter in my blender and that would save me one step — scooping the butter out of the blender and into a jar! Thanks!
Do you use only sunflower seeds, or do you need to add oil?
Thanks!
Hi Nancy, yes I add oil and a bit of brown sugar. I toast about 1 lb. of seeds in a skillet first, stirring constantly so they don’t burn. Then I pulse them 1/3 at a time, in the blender to make a meal, dumping the meal into a large bowl. Then again about 1/3 of them at a time, I pulse/blend them with oil and brown sugar to make sunseed butter. The texture is like natural peanut butter. The cheapest I’ve found natural peanut butter recently has been on sale for about $2.50/lb. This homemade sunseed butter I can make for about half of that.
How do you replace with the mason jar. I guess I would have to see it to understand.
You would just put it on there and and turn the blender upside down to blend and then everything is in the jar after it’s blended.
Hi Beth, the bottom assembly for the blender jar unscrews (the part with the blade, the rubber gasket and the screw on base). If you remove these parts from the glass jar, you can screw on a mason jar, in the blender jar’s place. If you do this, make sure you use a larger mason jar than your contents require — like a 1 quart jar of you’re going to be blending a pint to a pint and a half. Subbing the mason jar is really handy for blended things that you’re going to store for a bit, like salad dressing, or for me, my homemade sunflower seed butter. If I’d just left the blender jar as is, I’d be dirtying the blender jar and a mason jar (for storing). All you have to wash after this trick is the bottom blade assembly. And just use a mason jar cap to seal up your contents.
Please explain the jar concept more.
When you wipe off your hand mixer, don’t forget the cord. I collect recyclable paper in a brown paper sack and then toss the whole thing into our local recycle collection box. Brown paper sacks also work well for ripening underripe fruit in.
When you unscrew the base from the blender container, you just screw it onto the mason jar as if you were putting on a lid. Then you turn it upside down to fit onto the blender base. Turn the jar back right side up when you are done and unscrew the blender base, clean the blades and other parts, and put a regular mason lid on your jar. (I’ve never actually tried this yet, but it seems so much easier than scooping or pouring the mixture into the jar.)
Thanks for all the comments. I understand now. I can’t wait to try this.
I’ve found the easiest, quickest and most thorough way to clean my iron (when it is ever dirty) is to clean it while it is hot (steam setting). I place a cleaning rag on the ironing board with a stainless steel scrubber on top and just “iron” the scrubber. This works so well, I never have to worry about ironing white!
How i can clean my jar with vinegar? is it safe for the Coffee maker? please give me a suggestion.
Not sure what jar you mean Lora but if it is just a regular jar you can either put some vinegar on a rag and rub it clean or fill it with vinegar and soak it. If I am trying to get bad spots off of something on say the outside of a jar I will lay a rag soaked in vinegar on it and let it set for a bit then wipe and rinse.
It is perfectly safe for a Coffee maker. I clean my coffee maker with it all the time. I run about a cup through the maker twice as if I was making a cup of coffee, then the third time when it has run the vinegar part way I stop it or turn off the coffee maker and let it set like that for about 30 mins or so, then finish running it through and then run 2 coffee pots full of water through to clean the vinegar. It may sound complicated but it isn’t that bad. I start it up usually when I first start cleaning my kitchen up from a meal and that way I don’t have to keep running back into the kitchen between each step.
Hi Jil! I read post and your comments too!
I have a question. air compressor vs vacuum cleaner? which one relevant to blow the dirt off?
Thanks in Advance!
I am not sure exactly what your question is Robert but you can use an air compressor to blow off the dirt just be careful because air compressors are more powerful then canned air of course. Now some vacuums have a place on them where the air blows out I think to cool the motor and you can plug your vacuum hose into there and it gently blows air instead of sucks it and that might work. A vacuum used the regular way can suck some of the big stuff out but they don’t always get in all the little nooks and crannies like the canned air or air compressor.
It does really help these things to last longer by cleaning them once in awhile too.
How to clean my nasty freeze.Every month I clean this but after some days it goes same.
Wasn’t sure what you meant. If you were meaning a freezer that doesn’t defrost itself then you may have something wrong with it. If it is a self defrosting freezer and it just gets cluttered then you might try using plastic baskets or containers to store like things together in them. For example I put all my small packets of meat in one container, I put all my bags of frozen veggies in another, the bread goes in the same place every time etc. This may take some practice and forming of a habit when you put things away but it really pays in the end. Also if it is really bad, buy the least amount of things you can that needs to be frozen because if things are a mess you won’t know what you have and will waste it causing you more work. After you get in the habit of organizing it then you can start storing more in it.
That’s a great tip about using a mason jar with a blender, and thanks to the commenters who explained it in more detail!